Fensa’s stomach leaped and curdled at the same time. Leaped because he’d come back to her. Curdled because he’d done it in dragon form.
“Hi,” she pushed into his head carefully. Not knowing what else to say after yesterday’s knockdown, drag out fight.
Silence, during which she could only hear the heavy flap of his wings, treading air. Then, “You will come with me. Turn around.”
Okay, yes, Fensa had her pride, but it wasn’t like she had anything else to do. Plus, she really needed to pee. She did as she was told. Turned her body so Xenon could lift her into the air. At least she didn’t have to look at his dragon during the process.
But after they landed, just out of eyeshot of the Far Traveler’s camp, he didn’t bother to reshell.
Instead, he said, “I have found something resembling the bath of which you once did speak. I will give you escort there.”
Xenon indicated she should move forward by extending one clawed hand in front of them.
Okay, she thought before answering, “I’ve got to pee. Can I at least do that first?”
He seemed to think about it for a moment before giving her a sharp nod of his great dragon head. Then came the really awkward part where she got to feel his eyes burn a hole into her back while she crouched somewhat precariously behind a small bush.
Fensa thought about running but she couldn’t leave Eos—plus, it would be way too easy for Xenon to catch her. Especially in dragon form.
She eyed him warily when she returned from her port-a-bush, and reluctantly began walking in the direction he indicated. He soon fell into step beside her.
It felt like walking next to a building, or a dinosaur, the ground vibrating beneath his enormous feet as he strode purposefully forward. His pace was almost comically slow since it took roughly ten of her steps to equal one of his.
Fensa peeped up at him, then quickly back down at the ground. “Um, don’t you think you’d be better off if you shifted back to your other form?”
“You do honor me with your concern, Fated Mate. However, I prefer to remain unshelled. You may shift if you wish to walk faster.”
She did, but her wolf despised the tropical weather. Not nearly as much as her human had hated the arctic cold, but it was a close second. Which was probably why the richest wolf states in North America were almost always those with real winters. Wolves naturally migrated to colder regions. Almost like they’d been created during an ice age or something, Fensa thought to herself with a wry chuckle.
“I’m fine,” she said over their mate bond. “It was just a suggestion.”
Silence once again enveloped them as they continued to walk in this awkward fashion. Fensa did her best not to appear uncomfortable, to pretend that walking beside a fire-breathing dragon wasn’t completely freaking her out or anything, but she had no doubt her “flame” was giving away all her feelings no matter how hard she attempted to mask them.
“I have failed you,” he said, eventually. “By Drakkon tradition, I should have built you a home of your own shortly after Golden Son was laid. Another glacier where you could have lived without our nightly congress. This is what my father did for my mother. He built her a dome of such grand scale that it could be seen from our ship, long after we set off on the Great Star Sea. And though he was my mother’s most reverent acolyte, he restricted himself to only two visits a day cycle. In truth, I thought of doing the same. I found a glacier a few wingbeats away, and started to make the necessary renovations so you might live there with Golden Son.”
His tone became quieter. “But after two day cycles of work, I found I had not the flame to finish the project. I flew away from the glacier and never returned. In truth, I enjoy sharing furs with you. And sharing a home with you and our son.”
“I, um…enjoyed it, too,” Fensa admitted. “You didn’t ask me, but if you had, I would have told you I didn’t want to live apart from you. The relationship you and Golden Son have is so special. I wouldn’t have wanted you to…”
She trailed off realizing how damning her words must sound in the aftermath of trying to take Eos away.
And into her guilty silence, Xenon said, “Do you know I had plans to fly to the south of our ice land where I’d heard tell of an animal similar to your cow? A true drakkon would have done this for his Most Revered. Would have flown to retrieve such a gift if only to place it upon your altar. But I, as I have so often found over these past three rotations, am incapable of being a true drakkon when it comes to you. For I want too much to be in your presence. I often find myself facing this contradiction. I want to feed you with meat, but I also do not want to be apart from you for longer than a day tide. At times, not even that. I want to please you, and make your flame bright. But I could not bear to do the things that would have been considered the most reverent.”
“I never asked for any of that from you. I never asked you to praise or revere me. I didn’t want a cow…or a pedestal. I just wanted…”
She trailed off again.
“Tell me,” he said.
“How much further?” she asked, instead of answering his question.
“Approximately ten more wingbeats,” he replied.
Whatever that meant.
Fensa tried again, “How is Eos? Is he okay?”
“He fares well. I sent him ahead with the rest of the advanced team to set up a temporary camp for the Far Travelers.”
“That was a good idea. I should have thought of that.”
“You will come to find I am full of good ideas,” he answered. Voice level, but she clearly felt like he’d just issued another threat.
Fensa pondered whether to press him for more news about their son but then decided against it. That subject had way too many minefields. Probably best not to piss him off again. But it gave her comfort to know her son and mate were right below the cave Xenon had imprisoned her in.
“Here we are,” Xenon said after what had to be at least two hours of walking.
Fensa gasped out loud because “here” turned out to be an actual hot spring. Which shouldn’t have surprised her, since wolves also tended to settle next to hot springs. What surprised the hell out of her is she recognized this place from the day trip Koko had insisted they take together, when Fensa and her mom came down to tour the college. At the time, the hot spring had been about eight-by-eight-feet wide and only ankle deep. But in this day and age, it was huge! More like a small lagoon than the wading pool she remembered.
At that moment, all Fensa’s serious concerns about her future and her freedom were overridden by the prospect a hot bath.
But then a voice behind her said, “Remove your clothes.”
And with the suddenness of a light switch, that “Orange is the New Black” feeling flipped right back on. Yup, she was still his prisoner, wasn’t she? His to be commanded now that she’d so blatantly betrayed his trust.
But to hell with all that. She was at a hot spring! An actual hot spring! And it had been years—not months—since her last hot bath. So Fensa ignored the voice in her head telling her not to give in to this dragon, and did as instructed, all the while trying to ignore the feel of his unblinking gaze as she did so.
Fensa pushed words into his head, “You know, if this is the place I think it is, it still exists in my time. Only it’s way smaller.”
A large splash answered her comment. When she looked up, she saw Xenon was already in the water, sunk all the way down, so she could only see his eyes, one scarred, one glowing, above the steaming surface.
“You will join me,” he said, his voice dark and seductive inside her head.
Fensa hesitated, not quite as eager to take her first bath in years as she had been a few moments ago. There was something a little—off-putting—about hopping into a deep pool of water with a known predator. Even if said predator was her fated mate.
“Come, Reverence…join me,” he said again.
She took a few awkward steps forward but stopped just at the spring’s
rocky bank.
“It is so difficult for you to look upon me in this form?”
She thought about lying, then decided it was best to stick with the truth. Her flame would give her away, anyway.
“Yes.”
“Tell me why this is.”
“Well, uh, all that stuff I said about dragons being my father’s sworn enemy…you know, because you guys kind of slaughtered his whole family and all his friends. So there’s that.”
“Your father’s enemy. Do you understand I would never hurt you? Even when my flame was at its most heated, as it was the day before, I would never raise claw or tail or roar to you.”
Yes, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Technically—at least not physically. But that didn’t keep her stomach from twisting at the thought of getting in there with him. “Could you… maybe just come back up out of the water a little?” she asked. “You’re giving off some, like, serious lake monster vibes right now. And I’ve seen way too many horror movies to ever be comfortable in this kind of situation. So, yeah…it’s really not helping.”
A beat. Then with a great cascade of water, he granted her request, moving closer to the shore until only his lower half remained submerged. Only to say just a second later, “Your flame has gone even darker now that I have granted your request.”
“Can you please stop tracking my flame?!” she asked, her tone as irritated as she presumed her heat signature was. “Just because you can read me doesn’t mean you should.”
“But it also does not mean I can simply shut it off. It is, after all, how I see.”
“Well, you don’t have to report back on every damn thing you see, do you?”
“No, I do not. I am sensing you now wish to have another child’s argument on this matter, Reverence?”
A child’s argument. That’s what he called it when they got into a back and forth discussion like this. One neither of them could win.
Her defiant eyes rose to meet his—only to find she still couldn’t look at him in this form. She dropped her gaze with a mulish, “I’ll wait until you’re done in the water, and then I’ll get in.”
A long silence followed. Then: “Look at me, Reverence.”
Fensa couldn’t. Instead, she stood with her arms crossed, eyes glued to the ground.
Another long silence. Then a huff of steam from his great nostrils, the dragon’s version of an impatient sigh. “I see. You are…what is the word you used to describe how rose-colored hominids treated brown-colored hominids in your civilization? Racist?”
At that, her gaze shot up, and her eyes narrowed. “I am not a racist.”
“The other lupin respect and honor me in this form, yet you do not.”
“Yes, but the Group 7 wolves weren’t raised by someone whose entire family was slaughtered by your crew!”
His great dragon head turned slightly as if he was giving her response some serious thought. “I see. Your father was racist.”
Then before she could defend Papa, Xenon asked, “What would he think if he knew your mate was drakkon, I wonder?”
Fensa didn’t wonder at all. She knew exactly how her father would respond, and she was frankly glad his grave was so far in the future, that he couldn’t possibly roll over in it. But instead of admitting any of this to the dragon, she said, “Well, I doubt your dad would be happy about you being mated to a wolf.”
“No, he would not,” Xenon answered, his tone thoughtful. “But I am not mated to a wolf. I am mated to a hominid whose long ago ancestor had lupin spliced into it by Drakkon’s Royal Geneticist. This is all to say there is a difference, Reverence. One I fear you do not fully comprehend.”
“I understand my nature. I get what you’re saying,” she answered.
“No, it is not your nature, I speak of, but my own. You misunderstand my nature, and that stops here and now.”
He tilted his head, spearing her with his good eye. “I am drakkon.”
“I know you’re a dragon.”
“Not a dragon. Drakkon. I am not a hybrid, like you. My shell is simply an exoskeleton. Technically biological. But designed specifically for this trip. My shell is not me. It is merely a house for my true self. Because what I am—what I really am—is drakkon. You are not truly a wolf, though you’ve been genetically altered to take the form of one. However, the form you see before you? This is me. My true self. Do you understand, Reverence?”
Fensa did. She didn’t want to. With her father’s backstory, how could she want to? But she did.
“I would have your words so I know you truly understand.”
“You’re a dragon. Not a shifter, like me—but a dragon,” she repeated dully. “That’s the real you.”
“And my shell…the form you prefer?”
“That’s not really you,” she admitted. Less surprised than she wanted to be by this news. But the truth, now she’d been forced to acknowledge it, made it obvious.
Her kind passed for normal every day, with nothing more than a slight alteration of their biochemical signatures—aka scent—to distinguish them from their human counterparts. But Fensa had always been aware of something more foreign, more alien about Xenon than just his scent. Something so other, she’d recognized him as non-human from the very beginning. Assumed he was a robot, way before it occurred to her he might be human—which, as it turned out, he wasn’t either.
“This is the real you,” Fensa conceded.
“I would have your eyes, Reverence.”
She made herself lift her eyes, and tried hard to ignore the way her heart sped up with terror as she gazed up at the great beast. The real Xenon.
Maybe he sensed her fear. Or more likely read it in her heat signature. Because her mate stood as still as a paused video game screen, letting her take him in. Really take him in for the first time since she pulled that spear out of his red eye.
He was… Well, when she removed the admittedly biased filter of her father’s backstory out of the equation—Xenon was incredible. Powerful and muscled, and of such a deep shade of blue, she could almost mistake him for black in some places. Unlike with his human counterpart—no, not counterpart, she reminded herself. Unlike with his humanoid shell, she couldn’t see the slightest evidence of his male works. But she guessed they were tucked safely inside the pale blue vertical scales of his soft underbelly.
A sudden image of the fight her father had described flashed through her head. Olafr’s brother stabbing the blue dragon through its soft neck with a special sword. Then dying a few minutes later, when another blue dragon fire-balled him in a fit of rage.
“Come back to me, Reverence.”
Fensa returned with a blink to find the dragon staring down at her. His expression the same blank screen of Xenon’s usual unemotional mien. “Tell me, where did you go?”
She shook her head.
The air displaced above her, and when she looked back up, the great beast had turned his head to the side, apparently in deep thought.
“Reverence, you realize there is no match portal in this land.”
“I do,” she replied, looking down at her bare feet.
“I know what you know, but I no longer assume what you understand. So now let us review the basics: you will spend the rest of your lifespan with me, your fated mate. Understand you this?”
“Yes,” she said, fighting against the rising tide of grief in her soul.
“I am your final destination. You will never return to your civilization. You will never again see the family you had in that time. Because you are my fated mate. Understand you this?”
She nodded, too overcome with unspeakable grief to push words into his mind.
“I would have your words to assure me you understand this to be true.”
“Why?” she demanded on a choked sob. “Why do you need me to say I understand?”
“Because I thought you understood this before, but you did not. So now I will be assured,” he answered, his voice as remote and cold as the Siberian tundra they’d l
eft behind.
Fensa would not cry again. She would remain Viking strong, Detroit fierce. “Of course I understand I’m never going to see my family again. That all hope I had of ever returning home is gone, along with that damn gate. You’re crazier than I once was if you think I haven’t figured things out by now.”
Fensa hoped to get a rise out of him. To make him feel even a tiny iota as bad as she did right now. But Xenon only continued in his same dispassionate tone. “I am your drakkon. I give you honor for the child you bore me. And even more honor for surviving his birth as you foreswore you would. For these past few rotations, that reverence alone has been enough to keep me inside my shell as you wished. But no longer. You are now aware your portal does not exist in this time. You are now aware you will live out the rest of your life with me, and with our son. We—he and I—are the only family you have left.”
“I know that,” she spat back. “I understand! However you want me to put it, I get it. You don’t have to keep rubbing it in!”
“You misunderstand my intent. I do not speak these words to cause you further pain and suffering. I merely wish to help you understand. We are all you have. Just as you and Golden Son…you are all I have.”
Now that…she didn’t understand. “Wait a second. I mean…I thought you said you brought, like, a one-hundred dragon crew with you.”
“I did say this. And that crew was called back to my home planet more than a rotation ago. We were meant to return, and report that the most advanced species here was unworthy of sanctuary. That they were little more than beasts.”
“But…that’s not true!” Fensa said, her mouth dropping open, even though she spoke no actual words outside the mind link. “We go on to become a civilization! I told you that. You know that!”
“Yes, Fated Mate. This I know, but there was no way to convey any of these details to the Royal Overload without negative consequence.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Reverence. You honored me with a son. However, on my world, this honor is deeply forbidden. I am drakkon. To be specific, I am Prince of Drakkon, second in line to the throne of all Drakkon. This means Golden Son is also now in line for the throne. And in many ways, he is more eligible than I. If my brother fails to produce an heir, the throne will pass on to the next worthy drakkon under the age of 15,000. I am only two-thousand solar rotations younger than my older brother, so it is unlikely I will be eligible for the throne when he dies. This means it would pass on to Golden Son. The throne of Drakkon is his birthright. His due. But…he is only half drakkon.”
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 35
