It seemed a strange thing to be frightened of given he’d just told her she’d most likely die in childbirth. But he assuaged her fears as best he could. “At first I assumed this would be the case, but now I do not believe it so. I can smell no shell in your womb, so I must assume this babe will come out in the mucous shell of this planet’s hominids.”
With his words, the fear diminished from her flame. And she gave a short chortle, before saying, “Okay, well, not having an egg crack open inside me probably increases my survival odds by at least a thousand, right?”
“You have told me already of this ‘joking’ your civilization engages in. Is this one of those jokes, or do you not have the intelligence required to calculate the odds?”
“Wow…”
“Because in either case, your odds are still very low.” Then remembering his manners, he added, “Reverence.”
Yet though his words were true, she shook her head and said. “No, no…I just can’t believe this is how God wanted me to go out. I mean, I don’t. Believe it, that is. Especially if I’m not expected to carry this baby for nine long-ass months, which I’m suspecting is the case since you seem more closely related to a lizard than a human.”
“A lizard,” he repeated, the reverent tone slipping from his voice. “You would compare a great drakkon to those specks that scuttle about your planet?”
“Calm down. I’m just saying lizards usually have two to three-month gestation periods, and I’m hoping it’s the same for this birth, even if there are no hard shells involved.”
He waited for his flame to cool a bit before admitting, “Well, yes. A typical drakkon birth only lasts about three of your moons. However, already the babe gives you painful carry. I doubt you will be able to walk in a few weeks. Or, as I already mentioned, survive the laying.”
She appeared to brush his predictions aside. “But we’re…fated mates, right? The best DNA link possible in, like, the universe, or at least on this planet. My cousin, Koko, and my Aunt Alisha have been working on a theory about the time gates. They believe the gates provide an improved fertility system, which accounts for the high birth and survival rates of those mothers who found their mates via the gates.”
“Is this always the case?”
“Well, no…” she admitted. “My mother only had me. But she got through the birth just fine. And my grandmother survived three childbirths during the Viking age.”
He remained silent, not wanting to dash her hopes, but still too much of a scientist to encourage her belief.
“Look,” she said, as she took his hand and placed it on her chest, right above her heart flame. “Do you want me to survive?”
Of course. The question caused his flame to crackle with desire for that very outcome. However, “Wanting and probability are not related when it comes to childbirth.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
He looked at her for a long time before saying, “Yes, I wish for you to survive the laying and to raise this hatchling with me. I have wish to pay you living Reverence, not mourning Reverence.”
“Okay then…living reverence sounds nice. Let’s go with that option,” she said.
Her lips were quirked upward, and he couldn’t tell if she had once again engaged in “joking.” But his flame burnt with a strange emotion. One he was beginning to recognize as hope.
Xenon had come to this planet in exile. Hopeless he’d ever find a mate, not daring to so much as imagine a life with any companionship. But now, for the first time, he was not alone. He had a companion. Not just that, but conversation beyond the crude gesture-based language of the Far Travelers. And the mating. Constant and nightly, despite the female being so heavy with child. How it delighted him. No, he could not forget the mating. He feared he might never forget the mating. Or her.
Even though drakkon lived long lives, and by the end of them forgot more than they ever knew, he had the feeling this fragile female of his would be in his mind until the very end, no matter how short their time together might be.
“Come, we will journey outside,” he said, going to the door so he might palm it open for her.
She nodded, and they walked through the exit tunnel in silence. He thanked the mothers when he saw that the two moons did not linger in the sky this morning.
Female 7-133 hated the moons, once confessing they ashed her flame with an emotion she called “the heebie-jeebies.”
However, once outside in the brisk air, he found the need to empty his bladder as well. So he shifted, as he still found it easier to perform his biological functions outside his shell.
But when he looked down from his now increased height, he found his mate wide of eye, her flame burning dark orange with fright.
“You have no need to fear me in this form,” he told her. “I would never hurt you inside nor outside my shell.”
Still, she continued to look at him in a way that sparked her flame with black spikes of disgust. Which gave Xenon pause.
He revered her for the chance at continuance she had bestowed upon him with their mating.
Yet he disgusted her. Injured pride and reverence tangled inside him as he studied her flame….
In the end, reverence won. He reshelled himself, and though he had much pondered morphing back into drakkon form as it was the one he preferred for sleep, he resolved to remain shelled for the little time they had left together.
As if to reward his decision, the lupine clasped his shell hand in hers as they walked back into the tunnel.
“I’m looking forward to my morning examination,” she told him, resting her face briefly against the side of his arm.
Her words cheered his fire. This was a coded compliment of sorts since frequently her examinations resulted in more mating between them.
His Reverence. Usually, a drakki’s new Reverent titles were withheld for the mourning period after birth, or on very rare occasions for the days of celebration after her survival. But Female 7-133’s blanket rejection of her certain death prognosis gave him a strange, tentative hope. And in his mind, Xenon began to refer to her by her mated titles: Fated Mate, Reverence, Treasure—even though they’d had no ceremony declaring them such.
Over the next moon, they fell into a routine. Despite her grim prognosis, she seemed to sleep through the night more easily. In the morning upon waking, he’d often escort her from the cave, then bring her back into the warmth of his lab for a thorough examination that would end with her shuddering beneath his forked tongue.
However, one morning when they stepped out of the glacier station’s entrance, they both stopped short. For what looked to be the entire Far Traveler Experiment Group 7 village had set up camp outside his glacier station.
“Whatthahhellisthis?!?!”
His mate’s native tongue, spoken out loud, interrupted his surprised musings.
Xenon did not understand either, but soon more lupins began to emerge from the mammoth fur and bone huts. And what seemed to be every male and female lupin, adults and children combined, in the village came to stand before him.
“King of Us! King of Us!” they chanted in their Far Traveler tongue, tossing hunks of gold and jewels at his feet. “King of Us!”
“What are they saying?” his mate demanded inside his mind. She moved closer to him, perhaps remembering her last encounter with these people.
“I am unsure,” he answered. “Perhaps they are upset about the deaths three moons ago. They chant ‘King of Us’—which was the title of one of the men who tried to give you claim.”
“Wait,” she said. “You mean you killed this pack’s alpha?”
“Yes, he was their leader,” he admitted. But his eyes stayed glued to the chanting group, watching them for any sudden movements. “You must away to the lab, Fated Mate. I can deal with this alone. And I would not have you hurt.”
“No, wait, hear me out,” she answered. “They wouldn’t be chucking gold and gems at your feet if they were here to kill you. They probably also wouldn’t
have set up camp, and brought their kids along.”
“Then why are they here? And chanting?” he demanded. He wanted very much to protect her. But he was afraid to shift for fear of hurting her in some way.
Yet her voice registered no such fear. Instead, she made that odd chortling sound again before asking, “Are you the kind of guy who reads the manual on how wolf culture works, or are you like my papa and just sort of bang around until you figure it out for yourself?”
Though he would never have described himself in this manner, he confessed, “I did not read the Royal Geneticist’s report in its entirety. It was…excessively long. And I had much work to do with regards to setting up my station.”
“So what you’re saying is you never got to the part of the manual about how if you kill the pack alpha, that makes you the new pack alpha?”
At first, Xenon failed to understand her meaning, and then—quite suddenly—he did.
He’d killed the “King of Us,” and now these chanting wolves had given him a new title.
“KING OF US! KING OF US! KING OF US!”
With one kill, he’d gone from being the Prince of the Drakkon, to the King of the Lupin.
18
“You called, Blue Father?” Damianos asked as he strode into his father’s lab in Zone 6.
He found his sire standing before his second lab’s computational wall. It contained readings from the local lupin population, Damianos noted with a glance. But he did not bother to observe more than that.
His father’s mission to assess the spiritual capacity of this population annoyed his flame. As someone tasked with readying the population for the hunt in the event the entire planet wasn’t declared a sanctuary, he cared little for his father’s directive, which conflicted with his own.
“You did not ask permission to enter, Blue Son,” his father noted, without turning from the Drakkon words scrolling down the wall. However, his eyes flicked to the anthro who’d followed Damianos into the lab. “Nor did you ask permission to bring one of your hominids into my abode.”
Damianos’ own eyes flicked down to the accompanying anthro. He’d almost forgotten about the two-legged primate he’d godspoken into making this journey with him. The squat hominid looked about the glacier lab, babbling in his North Traveler language about the wonders of the “ice cave.” Asking if this were the home of all the gods. If—
“Quiet,” Damianos commanded in the North Traveler tongue. The anthro immediately complied as if the command had come from—well, a god.
Then to his father, Damianos replied, “He is but meat, Blue Father. A walking, talking midday snack who cannot understand our tongue. And if you wished me to ask permission, you should not have coded me into the door. Now shall we speak upon the matter so urgent that I was commanded to abandon my post and meet you here, so far from my assigned territory?”
“The Second Prince made the door coding decision. Not I.”
“Is that so?” Damianos asked. “I must give the Prince of Drakkon my thanks if ever he lifts the ban on access to his work zone. At least he seems to have a care for not wasting my time.” He chose to use his cousin’s new title, as opposed to the one he’d held when they departed for their journey to this water and ice planet
His father’s flame colored a vexed orange and red, though in truth, it was Damianos who had the most right to be vexed.
But instead of chastising his son for his impudent attitude, the older drakkon let out a long-steamed breath. “I find myself in need of your counsel,” he admitted. “I’ve been secretly tasked with what is proving to be a very difficult mission. My first attempt completely failed.”
What followed was quite a story. Shortly after arrival, the newly crowned King of Drakkon sent his uncle an encrypted message with a predictable, but by no means simple, mission. His uncle was to ensure the Second Prince never returned from this planet.
Apparently, much had happened on Drakkon since the new king’s inauguration. Though he had received the best mate the matching device could provide, their first attempt at a child had ended in the deaths of both the egg and its drakki mother. Which meant the Blue King’s line would end, unless the Prince of Drakkon produced an heir. The same prince who had been all but exiled to not just another part of their planet, but another planet altogether. Still, it should have been a simple matter of calling his brother back to Drakkon to take a mate, and hopefully ensure an heir to the throne.
However, instead of doing that, the King, in a rather public fit of petulance, declared that the fating portals should be recoded so royal drakkon, and those in the upper echelons of Drakkon society, could take two wives to mate—thereby increasing their odds of breeding. In the King’s opinion, this announcement should have been met with much fanfare, since drakki now had that much more chance of marrying above their status.
It was not.
In fact, there had been so much protest among the poorer classes (not to mention those who truly believed in the sacred rites of Reverence), that a small but powerful “Second Prince” following had arisen.
According to the new king, these drakkon, without having much knowledge of the Second Prince, had cast him in the role of the most ideal ruler imaginable—a title which technically belonged only to the King of Drakkon. And the King feared the Second Prince’s popularity would only grow during his absence over the next nine-hundred-plus years. Therefore, the King had asked his beloved uncle to deal with the oblivious usurper. Quietly, speedily, and discreetly.
The Royal Overlord, being a loyal subject, had immediately set about godspeaking an anthro band of hunters with the task. Had even provided a shuttle so they could set up camp as close as possible to the Zone 7 Experiment Group without giving any cause for suspicion. He’d spoken to them about the evils of the Group 7 wolves and had told them to not only attack the village of evil skin-shedders, but that they also should take the red eye of the blue “serpent demon.” He’d told them this eye had much power, and the warrior who captured it would possess immortality.
Complete smoke, but Damianos could easily see how a species whose lifespan lasted barely as long as a drakkon hibernation could be compelled to such an act.
As soon as the Second Prince announced his unexpected arrival outside the glacier station, the Royal Overlord had godspoken his anthros to the Zone 7 Glacier Lab to lie in wait.
But the hunters never reported back. And though the Royal Overlord had some hope of using another set of godspoken hunters to attempt another assassination, the Zone 7 observation camera had quite suddenly shut down. A few days later, the Prince of Drakkon sent him a message stating that the female anomaly he’d been meant to deliver had gone into heat. He had given her to the Group 7 lupins, per protocol, and unfortunately, she had not survived the mating.
This was even more unfortunate for the Royal Overlord because it meant he wouldn’t have another opportunity to use his godspoken hunters to kill the Prince—especially without a functioning camera to track his movements beyond the glacier.
“He made no mention of the attack?” Damianos asked, his flame consternating with black.
“He did not. The offline camera also went without mention. When I sent him another message about no longer having eyes in his zone, he said he was aware of the problem and would fix it anon. But anon has yet to come.”
The camera was of little surprise to Damianos. Things went here as they went upon his home planet. Those who did not understand the technology remained at the mercy of those who did. And if they attuned their powerful antennae to their fire planet at this very moment, they would most likely pick up the static of many an irked drakkon complaining likewise about the universally slow technical drakkon’s failure to fix their technical problems.
“Your first mistake was using food to do a drakkon’s job, Blue Father. I care not for the new king myself, but I am also not so deluded by his brother. I will pay him a visit, and finish the job your godspoken meat could not.”
“But
this you cannot do, Blue Son.”
Damianos’ flame chilled at his father’s words. Little did he like being told what he could or could not do, and as one of the largest drakkon in living history, few drakkon dared do so. “And what would stop me?” he demanded of his father, the one drakkon in the position to question his decisions.
“The King asked us for discretion. If the Prince is found killed by another drakkon’s roar, on a mission led by the King’s most trusted advisor, there will be questions. It could come back to you. To us!”
Damianos’ passed his father’s argument over his cooled flame and found it to be fireproof. He was right, blast him. Never mind Damianos could easily best the princeling. They’d be put on a trial they could not be sure of winning if they returned to Drakkon without him. But if they didn’t complete this secret mission, the King’s retribution would be severe, but not swift.
This was another reason the lower classes roared for The Second Prince, even before he left the planet. His flame burned ever dark blue and neutral. Partly, it was said because he’d been raised away from his father and brother. On the other side of the planet. While his brother, the current King still had the doctor who attended his dead mother’s birth locked away in a dungeon over two-thousand years later, many drakkon believed The Second Prince incapable of such torture.
Damianos, however, was not of the lower class. And moreover, he didn’t necessarily believe his cousin fit to lead simply because he didn’t share his brother’s penchant for torture. And perhaps most importantly, he’d rather not have his father in the position of either murdering or be murdered. The old drakkon vexed him so, yet he was still family. But how could they complete this mission without being found out?
“Why should the Royals have this power over us? I am the strongest drakkon our planet has ever known, yet here I sit, subject to the whims of a spoiled king. And unable to protect my own father’s life.”
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 29
