There had been no time for her people to warn her about how different it was to be on Earth, nor how difficult it would be for her to eventually get acclimated to the climate and the strange single sun in the sky. The air felt thick and heavy with smoke, and she cringed as her psychic senses began to pick up on the overwhelming feeling of fear, anger, and sadness that filled the planet around her.
The people on this planet were sick, and there was nobody out there willing to help them. Maybe the shifters and Lonis of Kaldernon would have been able to manage it, but the unfortunate fact of the matter was that she would be unable to convince anyone in the galaxy to come to Earth after what had happened to her people here. Although they were suffering immensely, they were going to have to bring themselves and each other down in a cloud of smoke and fire before they would ever change anything. And that was something she was going to have to live with.
Was it the planet in general that had been represented by the terrifying beast in her dreams? Was something going to happen with the humans? Some kind of civil war perhaps? A war to end all wars, and all of life on Earth? Probably not, she decided, fingering a wildflower that had managed to maintain a reminder of the beauty of the rest of the universe even though it was stuck in such a miserable globe. No, it was more likely that the danger was personal. Or else their last encounter wouldn’t have been so…erotic.
It had shocked her when Archer had come into her dreams again that night, after Lopu had been alerted and set off to round up the councilmen. She had fallen asleep back in her chambers, a short nap until everybody was assembled. But what started as an innocent need for sleep quickly turned hot and heavy when Archer appeared and somehow, there were no longer any boundaries between them. She had been so overtaken by his powerful body and the deep, sincere love in his eyes that nothing seemed more natural than when they made love. She had never felt anything quite so thrilling before, and doubted she would ever forget the experience. Even though they hadn’t met in person yet, she could feel every single thing that happened as if it had been going on right in the world she was sleeping in. She didn’t even consider herself a virgin anymore after that.
But now she had to find Archer, and quickly. The portal had opened in the same place it always did, and she had received brief instructions and a small map of the area where she was expected to land. From it she was able to find her way with ease to the underground settlement of the Kersh clan. Standing outside were two Lonis, a man and a woman, and a small child playing in the dirt. They seemed shocked to see her.
“Who are you?” the woman asked, rising from her crouched position on the ground with the child. She was hugely pregnant, and Alana rushed to her side to help her steady herself.
“My name is Alana. I come from Kaldernon.”
The Lonis were intrigued and mystified.
“Why have you come? We are not planning to retreat. We will not back down from the evils in this world. We are not weak-willed vermin looking for the easy way out.”
“I don’t want to take you anywhere against your will,” Alana said, smiling tentatively. She didn’t want to make any enemies. She couldn’t afford it. Her time on Earth was limited. “I’m looking for Archer. I have reason to believe he may be in grave danger.”
Saying Archer’s name out loud like that made her feel kind of silly. What if her intuition wasn’t really an intuition at all? What if it was just a bad dream as Lopu had always caused her to suspect? That meant she was chasing an imaginary friend after all. Once she finally saw Archer he would probably look nothing like the man of her dreams.
“What does a young Loni woman plan to do about that?” the man asked skeptically, crossing his hands over his chest. “You know, I’m a parent now and I don’t see the sense in sending a young woman out into the world to protect perfectly strong, bull-headed grown men. You could be risking your life.”
“I suppose you could say I’m a jack of all trades,” Alana said with a wink. “But I don’t have time to explain. I need to reach Archer before anything happens to him.”
“All right, all right. They’re heading to a farmhouse west of here. He found the new lair of the Guardians. Looks like they have a massive collection of them up there. They probably have one of our men in holding now. Tanna.”
“Would be his own fault if they did,” the woman said irritably.
“Shh,” the man said, patting her arm. “I know you’re worried, but he’ll be back. Archer won’t let us down.”
The woman sighed and waddled into the darkness of the underground tunnels.
“You just go west. Come with me to his room so you know what he smells like. If you have any shifter in you, you know what use that’ll be.”
Alana nodded and followed the man into the hidden tunnel. The small child followed them without being told, knowing it would be unsafe to mind herself out in the open.
The immediate darkness and closed off quarters of the tunnels took the breath right from Alana’s lungs. Her people had been reduced to this? It was no wonder that Archer had stayed behind for revenge. She had seen just a small amount of the psychological damage the human had done to her people. And now this? It was too much.
When they made it to Archer’s room, the man pulled back a tattered brown blanket and allowed Alana to duck inside. She was overwhelmed by the scent of the man she had made love to in her dreams. It was enough to restore the confidence in herself that she needed in order to stop second guessing whether or not her relationship with a man in another world was a dream. This was who he was. She was sure of it.
“Thank you,” Alana said.
She ducked out of the room without another word to the Loni man. All she needed to do now was head west.
***
Archer led the small group through the trees, thinking to himself about the best plan of action. Something about the Guardian’s new location made him feel particularly uneasy. Especially knowing that there were so many more Guardians than there were shifter warriors. Although it had been a nice boost of confidence to know that he could tap into his stores of power without fully shifting into dragon form, it still worried him to think that he might not be able to hold his own in a life or death fight for his life and revenge for the torture of his fellow shifters and Lonis. If he let the Kersh clan down, he wasn’t going to be able to live with himself. And that was a fact.
But he didn’t have to worry so much about that. He was going to be okay. All he had to do was figure out a way to be resourceful if he wasn’t able to shift. That was the importance of having both brains and brawn. His friends and family were not as likely to glorify having both of those things, but he knew they could get many a man out of a situation he could live to regret. He would just have to find the willpower he needed for it.
“Should we blow the house up from a distance?” Thom asked, strolling casually beside Archer. “I could shift and we could all just fly up there and let ‘er rip.”
“I’m not sure that’s safe,” Archer said thoughtfully. “It’s a big property. They may have weapons hidden somewhere that could destroy us. They know how to hurt a shifter. That’s the one thing I know for sure. They have a way of taking you by surprise, even if you think you have the upper hand. Sure, you may be stronger, bigger, and more intimidating than they are. You may be better than them at everything, in every possible way. But if they have a weapon they know how to use that we can’t fight, or people looking for us to take us by surprise, they can take us down. And I only saw seven, but that doesn’t mean that whole compound isn’t teeming with these guys. Just because most of the people of Kaldernon have been returned doesn’t mean they’ve stopped looking for us. And maybe there are others they have found who didn’t know anything about their ancestry. We can’t risk that they’re going to be underprepared. We have to think everything through a dozen and a half times before we make any choices.”
Suddenly, out of the bushes behind them, a heavy cracking of branches sounded. It almost seemed as if a tree had been split in half. The noise was that astoundingly ear-splitting.
“What in the hell?” Thom yelled, whipping around with his hands up, clenching a dagger from his waistband.
Before them the narrow face of the biggest dragon any of them had ever seen poked its way through the heavy brush. All the men yelped in fear and confusion.
“Who is that?!” Thom asked, looking wildly at Archer. He had never seen the dragon before, and clearly hoped that his leader would have the answer. Although the dragon seemed familiar to him, Archer was mystified.
“I have absolutely no idea at all,” he said, staring up at the beautiful creature. He could tell by the horns that she was a female, and the tugging of a distant memory was gnawing at him. However, nothing managed to surface. “None. Who are you?! Get back into your human form before you get us all killed! Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”
The dragon frowned, but seemed to register what Archer was saying. Before long, she was shifting back into her human form, and stood before the group of men as naked as the day she was born, staring levelly at Archer.
Archer’s eyes grew wide and he walked forward, feeling as if he was going to throw up. It was the woman from his dream. Her long, blonde hair was covering her breasts, and the rest of the men in the group were staring at her as if they had been starved of beautiful women for far too long. And probably, they had. But still, it struck Archer the wrong way.
“Stop staring at her!” he barked. The men seemed to come to their senses and turned away as Archer removed his tunic and walked toward the woman, holding it out to her with trembling hands. “This is Alana.”
Alana smiled and took the tunic, draping it over herself. It covered most of her, and she dug in a small satchel that had fallen beside her for the rest of her clothes. She dressed slowly as the rest of the men stared into space, silent as mice. Finally, she was done, and shook her hair behind her head and threw it up into a glorious ponytail.
“It’s nice to meet you all,” she said. “Thank you for giving me some privacy.”
And with that, Alana joined the group as if nothing strange had even happened.