by S. E. Smith
Guilt plagued him. He had known that the brothers were getting increasingly unstable. The Village Council, which he led, had discussed the situation. The twins had recently turned their attention on Mula, one of the young girls in the village.
Brogan had confronted the girl’s father, insisting that she was his and Barrack’s true mate even though their symbiots would have nothing to do with her. The girl and her parents, frightened for her safety, had asked for protection against the twins. Creja had confronted the brothers when Brogan tried to approach Mula and explained that she had requested protection. Brogan had become agitated. Only Barrack’s intervention had prevented violence that day. Still, Creja had seen the trace of madness in Brogan’s eyes.
Today, the thin thread of sanity had snapped for Brogan. He had attacked Mula. Grief swept through him as he turned his head to the burnt out remains of the girl’s home. She and her mother had fled while Mula’s father had held off the enraged dragon. Barrack had no choice but to protect his brother when the men of the village came to help.
Several men had been wounded and four had been killed, including Mula’s father. It would not be long before her mother passed to the next world to join her mate. A man or woman may live if their true mate dies, but not the dragon. The dragon would mourn for his or her lost mate until death stopped the pain. Only if they were not true mates would Mula’s mother have a chance of surviving. He seriously doubted that was the case.
He turned to look back at Lyla, who sat holding his hand. “We must protect the boys,” he forced out. “Others will want to kill them now.”
Lyla turned defiant eyes to those standing around looking at them. “Then we will leave,” she whispered. “We will go where they will be safe.”
*.*.*
Calo leaned back against the side of the cottage. He looked at Cree who was staring at the remains of the twin dragons. They had arrived in time to hear what Barrack told their father. They watched as he was put to death, his head severed from his shoulders. They heard the murmurs from the other villagers agreeing with Barrack.
“Do you think…?” Calo whispered, staring at the smoldering remains of the green and white dragon.
“No,” Cree answered as a grim determination filled him. “You heard him. We will die in battle, like warriors, before we let this happen to us. We will do the honorable thing before we hurt another.”
Calo turned his suddenly older gaze to his brother. He could see the tightness around Cree’s mouth. He could feel the quiet sadness that mirrored his own. For as long as he could remember, their father had told them the legends of a warrior one day earning the right to be blessed with finding his true mate. Now, he realized that was all it was… stories.
“We will die in battle,” Calo agreed, watching as their father’s symbiot healed him. “Or we will take each other’s life before we hurt another.”
Chapter 2
Two Centuries later:
The Asteroid Prison known as Hell
Cree wiped the blood from his face. He nodded to his brother. The Great War had been going on for too long, but there was finally hope. He, Calo, Prince Creon Reykill of Valdier, and the Sarafin King, Vox d’Rojah, were on a mission to rescue the Curizan Prince, Ha’ven Ha’darra who had been kidnapped in a bid to prolong the conflict. The traitors hoped to blame the Valdier and Sarafin for the act. Only this time, it wouldn’t work.
“Kill them all,” Creon ordered as he stepped over the body of a Valdier traitor. “Ha’ven should be in one of the cells. We need to find him before re-enforcements arrive.”
Cree nodded before he froze as his dragon growled in warning. His eyes darkened and a snarl curled his lip. Calo felt the threat, as well. More traitors were coming.
“Go, my Prince,” Calo growled under his breath, glancing in warning at Vox. “Cree and I will make sure that no traitors live. You and… King d’Rojah find the Curizan and get him out of here.”
Creon noted Calo’s hesitancy when he mentioned the Sarafin King. Vox was coated in the blood of the men they had just fought. He knew it would take time for his people to learn to trust the Sarafin and Curizan again.
His partnership with their former enemies was still new to him, but he knew who the true enemy was now. He had discovered the depth of the deceit and betrayal from his ex-lover who had sold her soul for power. He had wrung every betrayal from her before he killed her. Even so, his own soul was now as black as his dragon. If Ha’ven was dead, it would prove that there was no saving him from the darkness inside him.
Creon nodded before he called out to Vox. “There is only one more level. Cree and Calo will make sure no one else gets through.”
Vox shook for a moment before he shifted back into his two-legged form. His eyes ran over the two identical looking men. He had a better appreciation for their skill after this mission. They had taken out three times as many traitors as the rest of them put together.
“Make sure they don’t kill any of my men,” Vox warned. “My warship should arrive at any moment.”
“You’d better order them to stay out of our way,” Cree grinned, fingering the knife at his waist. “Especially Viper. I owe him one.”
Vox’s eyes narrowed at the underlying threat. A low rumble shook his chest as he sensed the danger to his younger brother. There was no love lost between the three species after a century of fighting.
“Be careful, dragon,” Vox warned. “I could use new curtains for my windows. You and your brother are about the right color in your dragon form.”
Cree began to shift when he felt Calo’s hand on his arm. A slight shake of Calo’s head and a glance at the door told him that now was not the time to challenge the young King. Instead, Calo pulled the knife from his waist and pointed it at Vox for a moment before he turned and followed his brother out of the room.
“They should be caged,” Vox comment to Creon as he watched the twins leave. “They are just shy of being insane. Especially the one known as Cree.”
Creon glanced from Vox to the empty doorway before he turned. He had felt the darkness in the brothers as well. That was why he had them with him. They were the deadliest warriors he had.
When they appeared at the beginning of the Great War and offered their allegiance to the Royal family, he had eagerly accepted their services. He knew the legend of the Twin Dragons. He knew they expected to die in battle. It would not be against the Sarafin or Curizan now. It would be against those that sought to divide and conquer the three royal houses through deceit and treachery.
“I know,” Creon replied as he started down the stone stairway. “But so are we.”
*.*.*
Present Time:
“So, how long do you think we will be on babysitting duty?” Calo asked as he rolled his shoulders to relieve some of the tension, and soreness, from being around Carmen Walker all day. “Remind me to volunteer for the night shift next time.”
Cree grinned at the look of suffering on his twin’s face. “What did she do to you today?”
“Besides kick my ass?” Calo ruefully laughed. “She had me showing her some different moves. Lady Carmen is a quick study.”
“I know,” Cree said, holding up his knife. “It took me a week to get this back. You’ve been showing her some moves that we use. Keep to the ones that others use next time.”
Carmen Walker was an enigma to the two men. Creon Reykill, the youngest of the five Valdier Princes, had assigned them as her personal guards. They had been slightly insulted at first, especially when they first met her. Of course, they should have considered it an honor to be asked to do something as important as protecting the Valdier Prince’s true mate, they just expected her to be… bigger… less fragile looking.
Cree shook his head as he remembered their first meeting. Both he and Calo had taunted her. They should have heeded Creon’s warnings, or at least taken them more seriously. He fingered the strands of slightly shorter hair on the side of his head.
Calo had an id
entical missing section. Carmen had taken his knife from his waist and knocked them both on their asses. To add insult to injury, Ha’ven Ha’darra, had joined in. He and Calo had ended up with the Curizan Prince across their chests, knocking them to the ground again, before Carmen had sat on the three of them and taken a swath of each of their hair in victory. Of course, the fact that she was in her dragon form had helped.
Since that day, both he and Calo had developed a growing respect for the human female. Her intelligence, skill, and a haunting sadness pulled at their need to protect her. The only problem was, it also emphasized the growing emptiness that their dragons were feeling.
“She is an amazing female,” Cree murmured as he slid his thumb over the carved dragons on the handle of his knife. “I wish…”
Calo sighed and rested his hand on his twin’s shoulder. “I know. We have talked about this,” he said quietly. “I can feel the darkness as well. My dragon is getting more difficult to control. He hungers for a mate and refuses to be satisfied anymore with the females I try to use to slake the restlessness that is eating at me.”
“Mine is the same,” Cree acknowledged. “It is getting worse, Calo. I’m not sure how much longer I can control him. I…” He looked away from his twin, ashamed to admit what he had come close to doing.
“It almost happened to me as well,” Calo said. “I came close to fighting Creon for Carmen as well. Each day gets harder. My dragon knows she is not our true mate, but he is to the point he doesn’t care anymore. He is attracted to her fierceness, to the sense of frailty that clings to her even though she fights to conceal it.”
“Perhaps we should tell Creon, just in case,” Cree suggested before he ran both of his hands through his hair and groaned as a shaft of pain swept through him. “Goddess, my dragon is raking my gut. He needs a mate, Calo.”
Calo closed his eyes as his own dragon snarled and raked at him as well. A shudder went through him as it pictured taking Carmen. As a man, he liked Carmen, but he was not attracted to her in a sexual way.
Want a mate, his dragon snarled, pushing against him. Need mate. Take female.
She is not ours to take, Calo snapped back, pushing down on the restless creature buried inside him.
His eyes opened when he felt the soothing warmth of his symbiot as it pressed against him. He had not even heard it enter their living quarters. It must have sensed his distress. He dropped his fingers to the smooth, golden creature. A strained smile tugged at the corner of his mouth when he realized it had taken a form very similar to Creon’s that stayed at Carmen’s side.
“What did she call this form again?” Calo asked as he looked at Cree’s which had taken an identical shape.
“A dog,” Cree said gruffly. “When this mission is over, I am done, Calo. I… It is getting to be too dangerous. I am sorry, brother. I have reached the end.”
Calo didn’t argue. He had made up his mind the day before and was just trying to figure out how best to tell his brother. A wave of relief and sorrow filled him.
“I want to see Mother and Father one last time,” he said in an emotionless voice. “I promised Mother.”
“Just as I promised Father,” Cree responded. He held out his hand. “Together.”
“Forever,” Calo murmured, gripping his brother’s hand and pulling him closer. “We go together, brother.”
Cree’s throat tightened and he nodded, embracing Calo before stepping back. “Get some rest. I spoke to Creon earlier. We will be at the Antrox mining area on the outer edges of the Cardovus star system in a few hours. He wants both of us to remain close to Carmen while he and a team search the asteroid.”
“Perhaps it would be better if we went,” Calo suggested tiredly. “We could…”
“No, I already suggested it,” Cree interrupted. “Creon was insistent that we stay with Carmen. He says he trusts no others.”
Calo gave a short, bitter laugh. “If he only knew,” he muttered before he pulled off his shirt and started walking toward the cleansing unit. “I’ll be ready.”
Cree watched as his brother slammed his palm on the access panel to the door of the cleansing unit. Calo’s admittance that he was losing control of his dragon was alarming. His brother had always been the easier-going one out of the two of them.
He fingered the knife at his waist. When it came time, he would slit his brother’s throat before Calo knew what was happening. He knew his twin thought that he could follow through on their agreement, but he also could feel the reluctance.
Pushing the dark thoughts to the back of his mind, he pressed the comlink linking him to Carmen. He sighed when it showed she was in her and Creon’s living quarters. He hoped she stayed there for the rest of the evening. He was barely hanging on and needed to work out. Perhaps he could talk Ha’ven into a match in the training room.
Chapter 3
“We don’t have much left, Mel,” Cal said in his scratchy voice. “A couple day’s food, a few days longer of water if we conserve it. The replicator that you found has finally died.”
Melina looked at the defeated curve of her grandfather’s shoulders. He had been working on the lone replicator for the past three days, trying to get it to work again. They were living on the things that Melina had hidden over the past couple of months in various nooks and crannies that she had found wandering the maze of tunnels throughout the asteroid that had been their home for the past four years.
“It will be alright, Gramps,” she replied, laying her hand on his shoulder. “I can search again. There has to be something they left behind.”
Cal looked grimly at his twenty year old granddaughter. She wasn’t wearing the oversize hat that she normally wore to hide her rich, dark brown hair. It was growing longer and showed off how beautiful she was becoming, just like her mother and grandmother at that age.
For years, he had been forced to cut it short to hide the fact that Melina was a girl. It helped that she was small-boned. He knew the last few years she had started binding her chest to hide her developing figure from the creatures holding them.
It was dangerous enough with the damn aliens thinking Melina was a male. It would have been deadly for her if they had suspected she was a female. She would have been used in ways that Cal refused to even think about.
His tired eyes swept over the small cave that had been their living quarters since they had been kidnapped from Earth. The trader that had taken them had sold him and Melina to the Antrox, a reptilian species known for their greed for making profits. They used slave labor to mine the ore from asteroids. Once the ore ran out, they abandoned the asteroid taking everything of value with them.
He and a handful of other men had been considered too old and feeble or too ill to take when they left two months ago. They had been given a few days of food and water between them. Cal suspected that was done to speed along their deaths. The guards who delivered the items knew that those left behind would fight to the death to secure the small amount of food and water for themselves.
The guard had been right. Cal watched as the remaining men attacked each other. He was more worried about finding Melina. His fear that she had been taken overrode any other thoughts. He eventually found her hiding in one of the abandoned tunnels along with an infant Pactor that had been born with a birth defect.
“They would have killed it, Gramps,” she had told him as she stroked the beast that would grow to the size of a small elephant. “Just because its leg isn’t right. She is such a sweetheart, I couldn’t let them kill her.”
He remembered the pleading look in her eyes. He had been so relieved that she had managed to escape being taken away from him, he didn’t have the heart to tell her there wasn’t any food for them, much less a Pactor that could eat their weight in food in a week.
She had surprised him with her resourcefulness, though. She had found an old replicator that had been tossed aside to be fixed. She had also stashed parts, dried food, and water and hidden them around the mine. That resourc
efulness had given them the ability to survive longer than any of the others.
Now, their luck was over. If they killed the Pactor, they could survive for a few weeks longer. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure the environmental system would last that long. The bastards had left that because there was a chance they could sell the asteroid to another business. What they didn’t leave were the parts to clean the filtration system. One by one, he had been closing off sections as the air became unstable.
A human couldn’t survive long without food, water, and fresh air. He cleared his throat. He wouldn’t give up until there was absolutely no hope at all. It was Melina that kept him going. He was determined to find a way to get her back to Earth so she could live a normal life.
“I’ll help you,” Cal said, straightening his shoulders. “We can start in the discard area. We’ll see if there might be another replicator.”
Melina smiled and nodded. “Then we can move up. There are miles of tunnels still open. I’m sure we’ll find something. We always do.”
“Yeah, we always do,” Cal mumbled. “We can start in the morn….”
Cal broke off and his eyes widened as the lights flickered. The faint sound of an alarm warning that an outer door was about to open sounded in the distance. It was the door leading to the landing bay.
“Gramps?” Melina whispered, her voice filled with hope and fear. “Do you think they’ve come back?”
“Hide, Melina,” her grandfather ordered. “Don’t come out unless I call you.”
Melina nodded as she picked up her hat and slammed it down over her head. She ran her hand under the chin of the Pactor and tapped the small beast to show she wanted her to come. She paused at the entrance to their living quarters and bit her lip.
