The shadows moved. Calexa spun, raising her gun.

“Hold, my love.” A hand came down on her shoulder. The tension drained from her body as Ares chuckled softly. “It’s only me.” He was beside her. He was also in front of her.

Darkness coalesced into a familiar form. Ares. He emerged from the thorny grove like a specter, as if he were wrought from the very shadows themselves.

“You have to stop doing that,” she grumbled, trying to control her racing heart. Now she understood why Vradhu Hunters had those black markings on their faces. They helped them blend with the darkness and shadows of the sekkhoi forest.

The Vradhu possessed the perfect natural camouflage. Ares could have been standing still in the shadows and she would have walked straight past him. He could probably sneak up on her on those bare three-toed feet of his, and she would be none the wiser.

What fearsome stealth.

Young One shrugged and offered her a strange oval-shaped fruit. Its deep blue skin was decorated with delicate pink stripes, and it emitted a sweet, tantalizing fragrance that invoked memories of Earth.

“Yasoo,” he said, by way of explanation. “Very rare, but delicious. The smell was driving me crazy, so I had to go and find the mother-tree. Try it.” Small, fresh cuts covered his hands.

Both forms of Ares watched her expectantly as she bit into the soft, tender fruit. Their eyes traveled in the same direction, watching her hands, her face, her mouth. The same devious little smile played across both their lips. They seemed to particularly like it when she ate—and enjoyed—the things they gave her.

“Unngh…” She moaned in surprise as the bitter-sour-sweet flavor of the yasoo burst in her mouth. Sticky juice ran down her chin.

“It is good, yes?” Winged One laughed at her reaction, his rich voice ringing through the shadowy grove. Thick black branches curved above their heads, crisscrossing to form a jagged network of thorns. The shadows were deep and still, the sekkhoi so thick in places that she couldn’t see where she was going, but she wasn’t afraid.

Not when she had two badass Vradhu walking by her side at all times.

“This is amazing,” Calexa gushed, swallowing the rest of the fruit. She licked her fingers, feeling like a kid again. “Are there more? We have to bring some back for the girls.”

How surreal it was that just a few weeks ago, she’d been ferrying a group of humans to Torandor on a dangerous unsanctioned route, waiting for the next Paxnath attack.

In the Fiveways, credits were scarce, competition was fierce, and mercenaries lived on a knife’s edge. Calexa had existed in precarious limbo between her brutal past and the grim present, desperately trying to find a way to fill the void.

Her nights and days had been a sleepless, never-ending cycle of jobs and colorless destinations and debts. Running the Medusa was expensive, and they were always a few credits away from a breakdown, but the ship was home—their small island in the cruel, boundless Universe.

At least, it had been home.

Now she was here, eating fruit in a grove of thorns with two mesmerizing aliens.

“I will gather more on the way back,” Ares said, his lips quirking in satisfaction. “Now come. We are almost there.”

They—he—moved in perfect synchronicity, guiding her along a narrow path that wound through the dense thicket. Without Ares to guide her, she never would have seen the damn path, but her sure-footed Vradhu acted as her eyes in the darkness, keeping her safe from the vicious sekkhoi thorns.

She no longer thought of Young One and Winged One as two separate entities. They were an extension of the same soul, with the same memories, the same temperament, and the same unique set of skills. After they’d fought over her on the island, Ares’s dual incarnations had reached some sort of silent agreement and fallen into step with one another, their actions and words and thoughts becoming seamless.

It was so terribly uncanny, and she’d had such a hard time explaining the whole thing to Mai and Zahra.

So… you know that silver guy who kicked my ass and abducted me, then had a translator-thing surgically implanted into my brain without my consent? Well, he’s actually a Vradhu who accidentally bonded to the ship and got temporarily transformed into a Drakhin. He wanted to escape the Hythra so badly that he forced the Naaga to clone him. Somehow, his consciousness got divided between both bodies, and… well, here we are.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, he’s a bad-ass called a khefe. A stone-cold kratok killer.

And he’s—well, both of him are—my lovers.

The dense forest of sekkhoi gave way to a clearing.

Calexa stopped dead in her tracks. “Wh-what is this place?” They had stumbled upon a massive structure of stone and metal. Grand archways of decaying grey metal soared into the cloudy sky, intersecting in a geometric style that was distinctly Drakhin. Perhaps glass or some other transparent material had once stretched between them, but now they lay bare, exposed to the elements.

Vines of thorny sekkhoi snaked around the arms of the metal structure, dropping the occasional spray of vivid pink flowers. According to Ares, the fragrant sekkhoi flowers were incredibly toxic.

It seemed everything on this damn planet was toxic, except for the yasoo she’d just eaten.

Concentric circles of black stone made up the foundation of the structure, forming a series of steps that descended toward a collection of oddly shaped stones.

“The Ancient Stones,” Winged One announced. “This is a monument, built by the Drakhin on our territory and abandoned many orbits ago. Everything we know about Vradhu-Drakhin history, about the Naaga, and about the outside, it all comes from here.”

“I wanted to show you the history of our world,” Young One added. “We Vradhu are a secretive people, and as you now know, the Two Clans don’t accept outsiders.”

“They don’t want us going anywhere near them, do they?”

“They are afraid of the outside world, my love. There was a time when our people were almost wiped out by what we call magrel—unnatural things—so we retreated into the Ardu-Sai, naively thinking we would never be disturbed.”

“And yet we humans have magrel in spades,” she said drily. “I’m full of the unnatural, but that clearly doesn’t bother you.”

“Of course not. After all that has happened, we have transcended our fears. By definition, I am also the embodiment of magrel.” Ares raised a wing ironically. “I have been cloned and transformed, and the two clans have no idea. Maki hasn’t told them a thing.”

“So you’re all going to take care of us, until…” Until what? Were they going to have to make their lives on Khira?

“Yes.” He smiled, and a powerful rush of desire caught her by surprise. “There is no safer place on Khira than in the sekkhoi, with not one, but two khefe, and Maki-ku-Rathra’s pack.”

If anyone else claimed such things, Calexa would have thought they were full of shit, but she believed Ares with all her heart.

They were safe.

Torrential rain had brought flooding, driving them from the poisoned waterways of the Ardu-Sai up into the dark clutches of the sekkhoi forests. The journey had been long and difficult, particularly for the women in S’s retinue, but Maki’s pack had been with them every step of the way, guiding and protecting them.

To her surprise, they hadn’t gone directly to the place where Vradhu clans lived. Instead, the Hunters had brought them to a makeshift camp deep within the sekkhoi forest, and aside from the Hunters, they hadn’t seen any other Vradhu.

“The elders refuse to allow aliens into the Clanhome,” Maki had told them after returning from a mysterious liaison in the middle of the night. “I fought bitterly with them as I have been wont to do of late, but our dear clan elders are so set in their ways. Even now, they are livid that we have brought you this close. Feh. They cling to tradition as stubbornly as the roots of a sekkhoi tree—as if secrecy will save us from the change that is sweeping our land. Don’t worry, human. If the Two Clans won’t accept you and you people, then they will just have to do without my pack for the time being. We will not leave your side.”

So they had camped out in the shadowy forest, making their homes in domed huts skillfully woven by the Vradhu out of sekkhoi branches. Aside from being minor architectural marvels, the huts were surprisingly waterproof, sheltering them from the torrential rain.

Ever since they’d left the island, it had rained and rained and rained, turning the lowlands into one vast floodplain. Stars, she’d never experienced rain like this on any of the planets she’d visited.

As if in response to her thoughts, fat droplets of water began to fall. A black wing curved over her head as Wings pulled her into him, his tail curling around her waist. Young One looked up at the skies, his expression full of hope. “Maybe all this rain will flush the poison from the Ardu-Sai.” He didn’t mind as water cascaded down his face and chest, making his skin glisten. His long, wild hair became slick with moisture, flattening against his shoulders. He walked down into the center of the structure, with Calexa and Wings following close behind.

Her boots clicked on the glistening stone, and as Calexa looked down, she saw the intricate jeweled mosaics on the floor.

Drakhin mosaics. The same as the ones in the command room on the Hythra.

Fighting, fucking, killing, soaring, decadent Drakhin splendor stretched out beneath her feet, forever etched in stone and jewels. The floor needed a good polish to bring it back to its former glory, but she could easily imagine what it had once been. She shuddered. According to Ares, the Drakhin had all left Khira thousands of years ago, when their source of vir had dried up.

Thank the stars for that. Drakhin-Ares had been scary enough. She didn’t want to encounter the real thing.

The stones in the center formed a ring. They were about the same height as her chest, and they were inscribed with strange rune-like characters. As Young One stepped into the center, the runes glowed green.

Two menacing Drakhin appeared on either side of him. Calexa drew her gun.

“Relax.” Young One thrust out his arm. His hand went straight through the imposing figures. “They are not real.”

“A hologram,” she gasped in relief.

The two Drakhin stared right through her, their fierce eyes focused on some unseen thing in the distance. Even though they were just imaginary figures, they appeared so realistic and intimidating that the air thickened with a palpable sense of danger.

“The original twins, Imril and Mael. They were the progenitors, the very first generation of Drakhin to appear on our planet.” Young One’s black gaze grew distant as he spoke. Calexa stared at the imaginary twins, entranced by their appearance.

They reminded her of ancient gods, appearing as Ares had on the Hythra, when he’d transformed into a Drakhin. One had eyes of intense gold, and his wings and tail were pure white. In contrast, his brother’s gaze was the color of deep midnight on Earth. Black wings, just like Ares’s, curved from his back.

“Imril was a son of the light. Mael was a child of darkness.” Winged One took over, his words following on seamlessly from his other’s, as if they shared the same train of thought. “They were the result of a union between a Vradhu female and the Dark One. Since their birth, every mating between a Vradhu female and a Drakhin has produced male twins. There is no such thing as a female Drakhin.”

“Wh-what is a Dark One?” Calexa didn’t know whether Ares was describing history or myth. This sounded like a tale of gods and monsters; the kind of fiction people on Earth created to escape the harshness of real life.

“We do not know where he came from, or what his kind was called, but we know he was the last of his race. He appeared in the sky with his dark ships and arcane technologies, seeking to preserve his civilization and his line.”

“And so he impregnated one of our daughters, and the first Drakhin twins were born.”

Calexa was sensing a theme here. “Twins?”

“Vradhu males are always born as twins. One is destined to become a Hunter, the other a Breeder. In the Drakhin, this duality manifested as darkness and light.”

“So you have one…. a twin?” With each and every revelation, Ares’s mysterious world kept blowing her mind. “Your cloned ass has a twin?”

An identical look of disdain crossed Ares’s faces as they spoke in unison. “Anareth is a brother by birth only. Hunters and Breeders can’t exist in the same radius.”

“Let me guess… you’d tear each other apart, or something like that.”

“I have no tolerance for that insufferable idiot.” They paused. “Pompous asshole.”

Well, that answered that. “Are these so-called Breeders… what do they… I mean…” At a loss for words, Calexa shrugged. “The word Breeder doesn’t exactly leave a lot to the imagination.”

“Their biology makes them well suited for reproductive life, and highly desirable to Vradhu females.”

“Huh.” She’d never heard of anything like that before. A species where all males were born as twins? Where one’s role in life was determined by biology? Where the alpha-males were the undesirable ones?

Vradhu culture fascinated her. It was too bad the elders were refusing to allow any contact with the tribe. It put them in a precarious situation. They were practically cut off from all civilization, but she believed—and trusted—Ares and Maki. Maki’s pack had refused to leave them. Ares had been with her every step of the way.

Despite Calexa’s trust issues, that was good enough for her.

Young One grinned. It was like a ray of sunshine punching through the dark rainclouds. “Judging from your expression, you must think we are all mad.”

Sweet stars, he was gorgeous. Her very own rain-soaked, glistening wet-dream.

In duplicate.

“Only your females,” she admitted. “Oh well, it’s their loss.”

My gain.

The hologram images changed, capturing her attention. Mael and Imril faded away, replaced by stunning images of vast cities. Sleek ships flew overhead, vying with fierce winged Drakhin for airspace. The style of the buildings and ships reminded her of the dark splendor of the Hythra.

“Pleased with his offspring, the Dark One gave the secrets of his race’s advanced technology to his sons. Drakhin civilization flourished, but one thing was crucial to its survival.”

“Our females.”

“Vradhu females were the source of their vir, and the mothers of their sons. The Drakhin became greedy, and started to take our females against their will.”

“The Drakhin-Vradhu alliance was broken. Females were no longer courted. They were taken, and treated as little more than slaves. The Vradhu had no choice.”

“We went to war.”

“They had technology and power, but we had Hunters. Even Breeders were enlisted to fight.”

“We had venom, which the Drakhin lacked. There is no antidote for Vradhu poison.”

“The war was short and brutal. Entire Vradhu packs were decimated. We retreated to the Ardu-Sai, where the Drakhin did not dare fly. They thought they had wiped us out. In order to survive, we cut ourselves off from the outside world. Magrel was forbidden. Contact with outsiders was forbidden.”

“We hid from the Drakhin. They lost their females. They lost their source of vir.”

“The Drakhin needed an alternative, so they created the Naaga, a race of slaves.”

“But their vir wasn’t enough, and it grew weaker and weaker with subsequent generations.”

The holograms faded away. There were no images of war or Naaga. Those were left to Calexa’s imagination.

“This is a pre-war structure,” Wings explained. “The only Drakhin structure on our lands. After the war, they never came here again. Too troublesome for their kind. With all their advanced technologies, they still feared the kratok.”

“Their barbs are venomless,” Young One scoffed. “The only living thing that can take down a kratok is a Hunter, and kratok attack all things that enter their airspace, including Drakhin. There were only a few Drakhin powerful enough to take on the kratok and survive. Perhaps Mael or Imril could have killed the beasts, but the progenitors are long gone.”

Calexa’s head swirled with thoughts of war and oppression. This was only the condensed version of Khira’s history, and it was terrifying. “On the Hythra… the Naaga had taken over the ship. Do they control all the Drakhin cities now?”

“When the Drakhin left Khira, they left most of their slaves behind. The Naaga took the cities and the ships and the flyways. They tried to control the Hythra, but they failed. I suspect they fear the return of their masters. They are probably trying to find a way to defend themselves.”

Narrowing her eyes, Calexa pointed at the glowing runes. “If these stones only tell the story up until the war, then how do you know about the Naaga?”

“Hunters occasionally travel beyond the Ardu-Sai. In the early days, the Hunters were sent to spy. Messages were sent back by winged skiril. If we venture beyond the borders of the Ardu-Sai, we observe and report back to the clan. The story continues here.” Young One pointed to the wide steps, where rune-like markings were engraved in the black stone. “The Ancient Stones are a chronicle, a warning to our people.”

“And our time on the Hythra confirmed most of our suspicions. When I was bonded, I eavesdropped,” Winged One admitted. “With the ilverium coursing through my veins, it was not difficult.”

“Do you think the Drakhin will ever return?” Calexa rubbed the goosebumps on her bare arms. As the rain grew heavier, the air became chilly. The darkness grew deeper as daylight faded away.

The Ancient Stones was a spooky place.

Both Vradhu shrugged. Winged One’s tail tightened around her waist. She leaned into his warmth as he put an arm around her shoulders. “Do not worry, my fierce and clever makivari. Khira is vast and full of secrets, and we Vradhu can survive anywhere. No matter what happens, we will not allow any harm to come to you or your people.”

Young One came up behind her. “The story of Khira has always been one of three peoples: Vradhu, Naaga, and Drakhin. Now there are four.”

Five, she thought, if you include the Primeans. If the Drakhin were cousin-people to the Vradhu, then the Primeans were cousin-people to humans.

“Perhaps your arrival here is a catalyst for something greater.” Not an inch of his wet body touched her, but his breath was a tantalizingly warm caress against her ear.

Surrounded by decadent decay and torrential rain and the overwhelming presence of her Vradhu, Calexa closed her eyes and opened the floodgates to her soul, letting inevitability crash down around her. “Or maybe we’ve just found the best of each other in a bad situation,” she whispered. “You’ve brought me back to life, Hunter.”

They might never find a way off this planet. Calexa didn’t mind—after all, she had Ares—but the humans would be distraught. She’d have to break the news gently, gradually, taking each day as it came and looking after them, as was her duty. And if they wanted to leave, she would do her best to help them find a way, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

Together, they would protect one another, and no matter what happened, they would survive, because now that she’d found Ares and the Vradhu Hunters, their odds had dramatically improved.

Winged Ares pulled her into a kiss. She responded with all the ferocity and passion of a woman who’d escaped a bleak greyscale existence by diving into a mysterious, dangerous, beautiful world of vivid color.

Not caring that Young One was soaked from head to toe, she turned and kissed him too, savoring his slick, demanding lips.

They were both Ares.

Both hers.

“My salvation,” Ares whispered, wrapping her up in a sinuous, sinful Vradhu cocoon of tails and wings and wetness and warmth.

His two bodies became one.

Standing in the pouring rain amongst thorns and ruins, Calexa allowed herself to be engulfed by this indomitable Hunter, who had defied the laws of the Universe to be with her.

In this brave new world, the rules of her old Universe didn’t apply.

She was Calexa Acura, former debt-slave, discharged Arena-fighter, semi-honorable mercenary, and now lover to Ares-rai-Sekine, the khefe of the Ardu-Sai…

And she was free.