Chapter Two
Galsthenn
From the moment I saw her, I knew she’d be mine. Rosalyn. What a striking name for a woman. My eyes followed her curves from the tarmac back onto the shuttle. The ride back to Udora took weeks, the latter half of which Rosalyn, along with the other women on board the shuttle, were put into a cryogenic deep freeze.
The cryo chamber was kept dark, as to not disturb the women’s eyes when they awoke. The room was curated for a peaceful atmosphere, something I thought they’d done a spectacular job with. The only light found in the sea of beds were the somber glowstones that shone their blue hue. These heavy stones were found in the deepest parts of Udora’s waters, and humans were said to be so taken with them that they began using them to light everything.
Attacks on human females caused the cryo room to be under tight lock and key, which was fine by me. I was ready to get back home and be with my new mate.
The government of Udora was called the Koth. The Koth had always been made up of 10 shifters and 12 advisors. This structure worked for decades until recently. A rebel organization had sprouted from under our highest ranks and forced us to cut them down in recent years. Now there were only 3 shifters and 5 advisors. Only those whom we could trust implicitly.
My father was Bromis, a gray dragon. He had massive wings that never retracted and was overloaded with thick, long scales across his body. He was the oldest shifter on Udora and the unspoken head of the Koth. While thought to be a democracy by onlookers, what my father said was law. What he believed was how the council would vote. Soon he would be stepping down and handing his position to me.
This was a great honor that immediately gained me the respect of the shifters around me, even those who had once professed to be my enemies.
The weeks went by in slow agony, me waiting for my chosen one and fighting the overwhelming itch to touch her and make her mine. We landed on Udora, and the weather was unsurprisingly cool. Snowflakes fell heavily from the sky but never made it to the ground as snow. Instead, ice covered everything in a thick layer, causing the entire planet to glisten.
Snow would turn to green grass. These were the only two seasons on Udora. It never got hot like it did on Earth, nor would we have a period of autumn. Ice sheets and marvelous spring were all we knew.
I took Rosalyn to my high-rise in the city center. I loved Udora’s architecture. We used to live in stone cities on the outskirts of the mossy fields that we now mined for resources. But, after the humans came, we began living like kings.
Though some shifters resented human presence on our planet, I was never of such an opinion. I enjoyed the food, the energy, and the buildings. Oh, the buildings. My apartment took up the top floor of the glassy, blue building and overlooked the shimmering lights of the city. We stepped into the building and left my guards at the door behind us. I locked the entrance tightly and rolled my eyes slightly at the company.
“Does it make you crazy?” Rosalyn asked in her beautiful, sweet tones; obviously noting the irritation on my face at the sight of my guards.
“Yes,” I said quickly and then immediately retracted, “No… I don’t know.” I laughed. “I guess I’m so used to it.”
“They were all over the ship, too,” she quipped as she removed her tall heels at my front door and stepped into the living room.
The fireplace raged with heat, and she found her way to it like a ship to a beacon. Rubbing her pale hands against the blaze, she turned to me and offered an unsure smile.
“They would be all over the ship if I were there or not. Security also accompanies shifters to Earth. For your protection and ours, though I don’t know what they’d think you could do to us.” I blanched. “No offense.”
She laughed into her warming hands and waved my statement off. “Please, I couldn’t even carry my bag of shoes onto the shuttle by myself.”
“And would this shoe bag be a travel specific item, or is this what you’re carrying around all the time?”
“Hey, I’m not that crazy, yet.” She giggled once more and stared at me in the same way I was staring at her: charmed.
“I’m afraid you may have to get used to it, as well. Security is sort of a given on this planet.”
She gave a slight nod but said nothing. She set both of her hands on the glass wall that took up the majority of the living space and peered at the vast city below. The night had quickly overtaken the day. I told her tomorrow we would be meeting my parents for a private dinner and then she would be led into the city for a great parade to be held in our honor.
My mate seemed immediately excited as I explained how grand the celebration would be. I loved that about her already; she was so… feminine. I’d encountered other choosing participants, and some seemed brash and ready to be combative. We’d had Zaphira, the head of the Riddell organization, and her second in command had married one of our Koth advisors ten years ago now. She’d come to the planet and stirred up quite a mess.
People worried for the longest time that she came to turn the Koth against one another or sought to control them somehow, much in the same way that Zaphira had frequently tried to, but in time, she became one of us.
“Eighteenth century,” Rosalyn said whimsically as she fingered through the furniture in my apartment, breaking me from my thoughts.
“I saw it in a magazine,” I shrugged and watched her move through my space with captivation.
“It’s a beautiful choice. I always loved that era. There’s something timelessly classic and refined about that period. The gilded gold on everything. The use of whites and all of these curved lines.
I nodded. “I wanted it to seem like a castle,” I laughed bashfully. “I’ve been to France, and I was absolutely taken away.”
“Too bad you couldn’t just fly one here, right?” she teased as she spun on her heel.
“I don’t think Earth would like that much.”
“I don’t think your shuttle driver would like it very much!” She giggled. “A bit of an awkward item for hauling through space, wouldn’t you say?”
I smirked and sat across from her on an embellished sofa. “I guess I’ll have to stick with my apartment.”
“I guess you have to,” she repeated somewhat flirtatiously as she made her way next to me. She sat down, her thick legs crossing gently and seductively as her thigh grazed mine.
A flush of heat traveled through my body, and I felt the need to take her then and there… but I didn’t want to be that shifter. So many aggressive dragons took their women into their beds the moment they arrived, and I’d seen it become the downfall of the relationship. Women don’t want to be treated like property. My mother has whispered it in my ear since I was a boy and I guess it stuck.
I looked over the light brown hair that cascaded down her face and far down her back, ending just above her backside. I loved her long hair. There was something so natural about her appearance. It made the blue in my scales flash, and I felt a hot throbbing course through my body.
She stared at me in wonder and set her hands unsurely on my arms, feeling my scales as she had at the space station. The way her fingertips carefully caressed my scales felt as though she were trying to get them to light up once more.
“I want to give you everything,” I offered sincerely. I wanted this to be the perfect union. I didn’t want her to be a breeder. I wanted her to be my wife. I could already feel our connection in my being. I knew she was the one who would stand by my side and make me happy. All I wanted was to be that for her in return.
“Like a kiss?” she asked brazenly.
“Like…” I laughed, stumbling over my thoughts. “Like a life that you will be proud of.”
“Here I thought I was a wife of obligation.”
A frown creased deeply between my brows, and I watched her eyes turn from flirtatious to horror as she studied my expression. She knew I was taking a seat with the Koth. This was similar to taking a throne or presidency on Earth. This was the reason my parents had encouraged me to attend a choosing, but I didn’t want her to think that was the only reason she was now at my side.
“Don’t say that,” I said gently. “There’s no obligation to me. I chose you because my soul needed you.”
“There’s no obligation to me, either,” she said sweetly and leaned in, fixing long white hairs behind my ear and getting close enough to me that I could feel her breath.
Maybe I’d read her all wrong. Maybe she didn’t want to go slow.
I nodded, hoping I didn’t look like too much of a confused idiot as she took my hands and put them on her breasts. It was easy to feel the shape of them through her silky shirt. I used a soft touch to explore her hills before leaning in to kiss her beautiful face. She smelled like strawberries.
My lips curved instinctively around hers, and she breathed heavily into my face. I kissed her slowly, dipping my tongue into her mouth and teasing the lust out of her. I could tell now how badly she had wanted this. Maybe more than I did.
Our kisses never broke, even as I began to unbutton her yellow shirt and watched as her breasts spilled out willingly.
“They don’t like shirts,” she said of her breasts with a hushed laugh as she continued invading my mouth with her wet, slippery tongue.
Unable to marry my need to be a gentleman and to ravage her, I gave in to the latter. I picked her up from the couch and lay her down in front of the crackling fire. I removed my clothes and watched as she eagerly did the same.
I stepped back as I hovered above her to see her human body in its entirety. I explored the different areas of her body with my mouth, kissing every inch of her and licked and nipped at her most private parts until I knew she was ready for me.
Rosalyn’s hazel eyes were thick with lust as I mounted her, pushing deep into her and feeling the sparks of fire land on my wings. She felt warm and silky against my throbbing hardness. I tried to go slow for, determined to send her over the edge, but she seemed more fascinated with my form than making love.
I fixed my hands in her curtains of hair and grabbed her chin, kissing her with a soft yet hungry passion as I thrust in and out of her. I buried my face in her breasts and teased her nipples until they became hard buds under my tongue. The actions made her moan quietly through her heavy breaths, but still, I could see her gaze was fixated on my scales and the large scars that showered my body.
She reached behind me in a vain effort to feel my wings. I felt connected to her in a way that was unexplainable to me and my mind, yet there was something about the gesture that made me feel like a specimen on a table.
I shifted my wings away from her touch and felt myself slip deeper into her, causing a loud noise to bubble forth from her lips. The longer the interaction went on, the more I wanted it to be over. It wasn’t that it felt bad. It felt amazing. But I wasn’t quite sure if she had climaxed or how long it was supposed to go on for.
But more than anything, I didn’t want to scare her, and the longer our bodies were joined, the more she seemed to realize what she was making love to wasn’t human.