Chapter 5:
Athena
I stared at the yellow shifter and nearly laughed out loud. “I’m not getting in that tent with you,” I scowled. “No.”
With an aggravated huff, Vaikrand warned, “The nights are cold, especially by the water.”
He wasn’t wrong. I had learned that my first night out of The Tower. My bones shivered and went frigid in a way that I had never experienced before. As if on cue, a gusty, icy wind traveled by us and carried moisture off the water that hit my skin and seemed to dance around the crevices in my body.
I pulled my cloak closer to my small frame and cursed under my breath. This planet just couldn’t have a happy medium, could it?
I turned my shoulder to him, my answer clear.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shake of his head and he closed the flap of the tent behind me.
The gentlemanly thing to do would be to let me have the tent, I thought. I kicked the rocks beneath my feet and took a seat next to the tent, using it as a shield to block the wind on my left side.
An hour went by and I was still wide awake and freezing cold. I stood from my stubborn spot in the dirt and I began creeping toward the edge of the lake. Trees shrouded the area and stars shone so brightly they seemed to create a path.
While here, I constantly reminded myself, nobody knew me. There was not a sense of me anywhere. Those who used to be my closest confidants were now wiped clean of me. On lonely nights when I wanted to keep fighting, I would try and tell myself they were still looking for me. For our crew who had disappeared.
But then I would remind myself not to fight. I would try to imagine my closest friends talking amongst themselves, starting sentences with: ‘Remember Athena?’
To them, I was already gone.
And that was just fine by me. In fact, there was a peace in it that I couldn’t explain.
I stepped out into the fields of endless black rock, felt the ground beneath me breathe me in. Even the creatures around the strange, endless valleys seemed to stop and stare. It was as if they knew, somehow, that I didn’t belong.
Odd, how I’d been here more than a year and still didn’t know the lay of the land.
I rubbed my hand up the side of my face to warm it and then reached for my laser rifle, gripping it firmly at my side.
The water before me bubbled up and snapped with loud pop, water sprinkling everywhere. I could see creatures in the depths of the blackness: vague shapes that slurped and swished under the base of the lake.
They scared me.
I swallowed and stepped back from the water’s edge as a tentacle crept out of its depths. It slithered on the land in a desperate search and when it didn’t find any sustenance, it retracted back into the watery deep.
I was accustomed to changing environments: as excited to explore a new planet as I was watchful of the enemies that might surround my crew. But all at once, I missed Earth. I missed the ways the trees would bend and grow in the direction of the wind.
I looked up at Dobromia’s trees as if trying to recall my own world, but the vines and branches were all smooth and slick, like oil.
They stood their ground against the breeze: immovable as a hard heart.
My skin shivered at the sight and I quickly walked back to our camp.
To my great annoyance, Vaikrand was awake and standing outside the tent. I walked up close to him with my hands on my hips, my teeth chattering.
“Coming in?” His voice needled in my ear as his hand lazily held open the fabric of the makeshift tent. His hot breath hit the side of my face like it had real weight behind it. So much so that I exhaled as he passed. He stepped into the tent and disappeared out of sight and I narrowed my eyes scornfully.
I would rather freeze.
But then the thought that freezing to death might actually happen to me crept in and I sighed in relent.
“Just for warmth,” I said as a warning as I crawled inside the tent. It was unbelievably warm, as though his body was a personal furnace of heat and sweat.
I curled up on the furs he’d laid out on the floor and reveled in their warmth. Vaikrand curled up behind me, spooning my body against him and wrapping his arms around my breasts. My heart sped up at the touch and I realized I hadn’t been touched in years. Literally.
The closest was the kiss with Aurlauc, and even then… a ‘thank you kiss’ was hardly the same as a full body envelopment.
I could feel Vaikrand’s breath hit my neck like a comforting wave of heat and soon our bodies were basking in an unseen fire that we had created between us.
My eyes drifted and dozed for the rest of the night, waking every so often and grinding my backside against Vaikrand’s body to make sure he was still there.
His hands were splayed across my breasts. I would have been offended if I weren’t so freezing without them there. My nipples hardened against the cold and the strength of his hand and I wondered if he was awake too. If he could feel them there and if he felt any certain way about them.
I could feel his length harden against my backside. I ran my tongue across my teeth and moved further into his body, trying to feel its thick girth. From his breathing, I could tell he was still sleeping: a biological reaction from the warmth and touch to become erect.
I timed my movements to the sounds of his heavy, sticky breaths and slid my hand over his for warmth and then pulled away suddenly, arching my back so the hardness I felt was removed from me. I didn’t want to be that girl.
When I let Marina go, let her leave us all, I thought I’d stayed behind as a savior… but the girls didn’t want saving. They were quick enough to give their identities away all for the chance to be with one of the shifters.
But not me.
It was on that thought that I finally drifted into a restful slumber, free of my thoughts, finally.
I awoke the next morning curled up tight against Vaikrand, my face pressed into his chest and his arms fixed around me. His hands splayed across my back and I could feel him stir as I did. Or, perhaps he was already awake.
I could feel the heat radiating from the outside, the tent now providing shelter from the immense rays instead of shielding us from the cold. The tent had become so warm that sweat was glistening between us, covering every inch of our bodies like we had run through a sprinkler.
Looking up, I caught Vaikrand’s eyes and he looked down at me with a tired gaze, the drain of no sleep showing in small bags under his eyes. I took the silent moment to watch the matte yellow scales as they scrawled across his face.
“Good morning,” I said finally; my voice barely sounding out through the coat of sleep that still sat in my throat, heavy and dry.
The yellow shifter nodded his greeting to me and sat up quickly, peeling me from his chest and then vigorously wiping the sweat from his forehead. He’d probably been waiting hours to move. I could imagine the dots of moisture slipping down his forehead with annoyance, and it made me laugh.
“Off to find your friend, then? Get our partnership started once you see he’s a no-show?”
I scoffed in jest and walked past the yellow shifter. “He’ll be there,” I said certainly. “But sure, let’s go.”
Vaikrand wasted no time informing me he would be flying us both to Westfall within the hour. I protested several times, but of course he got his way. His wings folded out like a yellow and black canvas of splattered paint: so beautiful and strong they looked like they should be housed behind a velvet rope. Something that said they were too special to touch.
We traveled to the edge of Westfall quickly, with me safe in his grasp. And though I would never say it, I preferred flying to walking. We landed in a smooth wind and he set me gently on the ground. Westfall was full of endless rock and orange soil and nothingness: red rock cities abandoned. Its previous inhabitance taken underground, no doubt.
I looked around into the endless shades of orange and red sand and Vaikrand gave me a smug look, as though he’d already won our little bet. My face stayed hard as a stone.
“He’s coming,” I said surely. My tone was so rich with joy and determination that I was almost certain I’d made him doubt himself.
I had no doubt that Aurlauc would come for me. And even after two days of camping out with Vaikrand in the dry, unbearably hot north, I remained vigilant. I would traverse the ground below and he would fly up to the aqua sky and search for any signs of a shifter in the distance.
I began to wonder if it might all have been a trap set up by The Tower guards. Set me free and then kill me in the wilderness. That perhaps my trust was foolishly placed. But I just couldn’t see that from Aurlauc; a funny thought, considering all his people had done to betray us and lie to us.
And then it occurred to me: Aurlauc may not be alive at all anymore. If I was as sought after as Vaikrand claimed, perhaps they’d found out Aurlauc had let me go and then killed him, or locked him up. Maybe they would torture him the way they did the men on our ship back on Ceylara.
Maybe they would break him.
Vaikrand must have read the expression on my face because he approached me sadly and said, “He’s not coming, is he?”
“Yes,” I said surely.
“You sure?” he asked. It was said as more of a statement than a question, but it hung there just the same.
“I am sure,” I enunciated.
“He’s not coming,” he said.
“He’s coming,” I argued, straightening my back against the rock and trying hard not to let the heat of the day wear me to sleep. The smug look on his face sent a tinge of frazzled warmth through my body and I tilted my head back and announced, “It’s not like he gave me a timeline or anything.”
He scoffed. “He probably didn’t think you would live past the boneyard.”
I acknowledged his sentence by giving him a subtle flick of the eyes and then we both waited in a flirtatious silence. “He didn’t set me up,” I argued out of nowhere.
“Either way,” Vaikrand shrugged, tossing a careless palm through his blonde hair, “a deal’s a deal.”
I stared at him, my spit thick and heavy in my mouth as though I was about to eat my words.
“Oh, come on!” he said with annoyed laugher at my defiance. “You’re that sure? You’re that certain that the Weredragon’s aren’t worth your sympathy?”
“They’re not,” I snipped.
“Haven’t you ever stepped back to wonder why we are doing this in the first place? Why the Weredragons went to such great measures to secure your ship?”
The way he phrased my past with such ease, such ignorance, sent an icy first through the center of my stomach. I could feel it spreading outward as I snapped, “I’m assuming when you say secure my ship you actually mean slaughter my people?”
The cocky alpha male shifter spread his palms to me as if to say ‘meh,’ and it was at that moment I forgot why I was ever attracted to him.
“What about your friend then?” Vaikrand asked suddenly. “Doesn’t he warrant your sympathy?”
“My… friend?”
“Yeah,” he sloped his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “The one who let you out of The Tower?”
I matched his shrug and his brows shot up with a bemused, surprised expression.
“What if he died for you?” he continued. “That doesn’t fall under the category of ‘redemption’ for you?”
“He knew what the risks were when he let me out,” I said coldly.
“You’re so sure it makes me insane,” he said with an exasperated sigh. He took his leave from the wall and walked out further into the field. I followed hesitantly behind.
“Care to prove me wrong?” I asked with a slight smile.
“I do, actually,” he said.
I felt a rush of confliction rise up in me as soon as I registered the look on his face. I knew what it was like to be a competitive person, and the fact that his determination seemed to resemble mine left me in no small amount of panic.
“Fine,” I said, toneless.
“Really?” he dared. “In fact, I will prove you wrong. I will take you on a tour,” he said, pantomiming with his hands as though he were displaying an armful of riches to me. “A tour of Dobromia.”
“Oh, you will?” I teased flirtatiously.
“Give me one tour across the provinces and if you’re not the least bit sympathetic…” He paused and gestured with his pointer finger and thumb, squeezing them together as he continued, “Not the least bit moved by the end of it, I will surrender my soul to you and give you my ship.”
“You will?” I repeated incredulously.
“I will make it my life’s mission to get you home,” he grinned.
I raised a brow and considered his offer. He had been yammering on about his ship this whole time, I certainly wasn’t going to question a great offer. Then I asked, “And what if I do? Feel sympathetic, that is.”
He offered me a playful wink and spun on his heel. “Then I can die satisfied.”