Two Solar Rotations later

Xenon perched upon the collection of boulders, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. With the focus of a trained laser, he watched the herd of hooved tundra beasts approach the small patch of grass beneath the rocks. They were nearly within firing range. And with precision timing, he could roast the entire group in a single roar.

“Look me! Look me, Dada!” a voice chirped far beneath him, yelling out in his mother’s strange tongue.

With only that warning, Golden Son shot across the icy expanse beneath Xenon in his shell form, naked as the day he was laid.

“Cease!” Xenon roared down to his son in Drakkon, a language only the two of them used in Zone 7.

But Golden Son had a way of, as Fated Mate put it, “hearing what he wants to hear.”

Before the words could reach his hominid ears, Golden Son shifted into a wolf of such vibrant yellow, his glossy fur threw light back at the sun. Golden Son was much faster in wolf form, at least as far as running was concerned. Also, while in wolf form, he could not understand his father’s words. Which meant he could rapidly cut the distance between him and the hooved tundra beasts without having to deal with his sire’s pesky commands.

However, this form did not last long. The wolf leaped into the air…

And never came down.

Soon after, the tundra beasts issued collective bleats of alarm when a small golden drakkon suddenly appeared above them. However, most of them needn’t have worried. His son’s roar was little more than a torch as this point, and he set but a mere few tails on fire as the herd made a hasty retreat in every direction but the one Xenon had strategized for.

And so was his plan to roast the herd for the Half Moon Feast thwarted. In fact, Xenon barely managed to roast one of the beasts for their evening meal.

If Golden Son felt at all guilty for ruining his father’s efforts, it did not show when he joined him in the air for the flight back to the glacier lab station. His chest burned bright yellow with glee, and Xenon suspected if the boy had still been inside his hominid shell, he would have chortled in the same manner as Fated Mated. In fact…

“Did Great Wolf Mother put you up to this?” he asked his son. Their wings beat at the same time, with a similar primordial instinct for staying in flight. But Xenon lifted his pectoralis major muscles only slightly to remain at the same speed as his much smaller son while he awaited his reply.

“No,” his son answered in Drakkon. “Wolf Mama speak null of you to me now.”

Though his son spoke Drakkon in a confusing patois of Far Traveler, and his mother’s syntax, Xenon understood his meaning. And it blued his fire.

Do you want me to survive? Okay then… let’s go with that option,”

She had survived. Against all the odds, she had survived. Yet since their argument nearly three moons ago, it felt like the outcome had been the same either way.

“Blue Papa, you okay?”

Golden Son’s voice pulled Xenon out of his troubled thoughts.

“I am disappointed we did not have a more successful hunt. We will make a midday meal of this meat with Great Wolf Mother, then try again,” Xenon said. Answering Golden Son, if not his actual question. “We must gather at least ten to fifteen more tundra beasts to feed all of Group 7 at the next Full Moon Feast.”

“Me eat feast, too?”

“No,” he answered, flame darkening at the thought of his son eating the drugged meat. “You will leave with your mother as you always do.”

Another wing beat. Then Golden Son asked, “Me not part of Group 7 because me drakkon?”

Again, his syntax made the question hard to understand. Yet Xenon did understand it. Understand it, and ignore the real question being asked to remind Golden Son, “A father’s duty passes to his son. Thus, must you attend to Great Wolf Mother when I can no longer.”

And Fated Mate never participated in Half Moon Festivals. Unlike the Far Travelers, she’d easily deduced the real reason for his monthly offerings. And she liked it so little that during most feast nights, she took Golden Son to the mountain where the Group 7 pack went to shift on full moon nights, rather than stay in the comfort of the station while he conducted his work.

“But why Great Wolf Mother always leave on Feast Night? Me want feast, too!”

Fortunately, the glacier station came into view before Xenon had to answer. And before Golden Son could ask him any more difficult questions.

As was so often the case when they landed, several small furry wolves ran up to greet Golden Son. As one of her first acts as queen of the Group 7 Lupins, Fated Mate decreed there would be no more multiple matings or matings without consent from any female lupin in heat.

Xenon suspected this would reduce the pack’s number of live births, and it had, but only by a little. Moreover, the decree had brought the number of mating deaths down to zero, while also increasing the number of female lupins who survived birth. And so the Lupin village now had something he had never before seen on this planet or his own: plenty of new pups with living mothers whose flames burned brightly.

In truth did these results make him reconsider the mating practices of his own people. Though drakki were revered eternally by their mates, they had never been allowed to choose their mates. A male drakkon would speak code into a fating portal, and then the drakki would be blinked from wherever she was upon the planet’s surface to whatever portal her fated mate had used to put in his request. The truth was, drakki had very little choice in the matter at all. But after seeing how the Group 7 lupin thrived under his mate’s laws, Xenon couldn’t help but wonder how the low fertility rates on Drakkon would fare if they made a similar rule there.

In any case, the Far Travelers had fared well under monitored birth, and Golden Son enjoyed the company of the increased number of village pups. They danced around Golden Son’s feet now, begging him in barks and yips to return to his wolf form so he might play with them.

“Can I—?” Golden Son started to chirr in their shared language.

“You must give Great Wolf Mother reverence first,” Xenon reminded him before he could finish the question.

Great Wolf Mother might not have adapted to the custom of Reverence, but Xenon had vowed from the beginning that his son, no matter his strange nature, would.

They both reshelled and Xenon shifted the tundra beast to his hominid shoulder, before entering the glacier station tunnel beside his son. They found Fated Mate in the outer room, where she and Xenon now slept, having ceded to their son the furs in the secure inner lab.

She sat upon a pile of furs—not the ones they slept on, but another pile on the opposite side of the stream, which she referred to as “the livingroom.” Her head and back bent over…

Xenon’s flame chilled when he saw she was drawing upon a sheet of replicated animal hide again. A rabbit lay cut open beside her, and she dipped into it with a writing instrument whittled from animal bone.

He did not ask what she did. He could see the rendering of land masses, which yes, he reluctantly admitted, looked an awful lot like the ones he’d spotted from the Great Star Sea when approaching this planet. As if by design, she seemed to be putting the finishing touches on what he could only conclude was some manner of map when they came in. However, her head lifted, and her heart flame turned to bright yellow when she finally noticed them standing there.

Well, not them, precisely. Fated Mate gave Xenon no acknowledgment whatsoever, as she said, “Hey, Baby!” greeting their offspring in her tongue as if the child was the only one who had entered the structure. “Did you have a good hunt?”

“Yeah!” Golden Son answered. “I try cook reindeer but only make tail fire.”

A poor showing, in Xenon’s opinion, yet Fated Mate chortled as she so often did when their son failed to perform up to standard. “Well, you’ve got to start somewhere!”

Unlike Xenon, she cared not in the least that Golden Son was behind his Drakkon milestones in every conceivable way. Too small. Too immature, and seemingly without the ability to take anything seriously—including his father.

But Fated Mate was of a different opinion: “Dude, he’s nearly three times as big as all the other wolf pups in the village—that’s big, even for my day. And he speaks better than most humans twice his age. I’ll take that. And don’t you think you have enough people taking you seriously? I mean, you’re an Alpha King, worshiped as a god. Take your deity status, and leave our son alone.”

She had responded to his worries in that chortling way of hers. Then pressed her lips to his face as she pulled his male works out with the suggestion that they “talk about something else.”

But that had been during happier times. When she still welcomed mating without breeding with him. When she still spoke inside his head.

“What draw you, Wolf Mama?” Golden Son demanded, all thoughts of Reverence seemingly forgotten.

“Golden Son…” Xenon reminded him with a barely contained hiss.

“Ssssorry!” Golden Son dropped his head into a quick bow, rushing out, “Honor onto you, Wolf Mama—what draw you?”

“It’s a map,” Fated Mate answered before Xenon could censure Golden Son again. She held it up so their son could see, and pointed to a land mass labeled S-I-B-E-R-I-A in her civil alphabet. “Here’s where I think we are.” She then pointed to a much narrower mass with the words B-E-R-I-N-G-I-A L-A-N-D B-R-I-D-G-E written above it. “And here’s where we would need to cross to get back to where I came from…” She traced a finger over the narrow strip outlined in dried rabbit’s blood to another land mass labeled N-O-R-T-H A-M-E-R-I-C-A, then down to a symbol with five points, beside which was written the word A-R-I-Z-O-N-A. “And that’s where I’m hoping we’ll eventually end up.”

“We leave?” Golden Son asked excitedly. “When?”

“We honor you with this meat, Fated Mate,” Xenon pushed into her head before Fated Mate could reply. He lay the tundra beast down before her with a reverent bow.

Her eyes flickered up to him. As if just now realizing he had entered the cave. Then she said to Golden Son, “So you burned the tail clean off, huh?”

“Yeah, I did! You should sssseee it. Me go drakkon. Reindeer like…” Golden Son made his hands into antlers, and then proceeded into an extended pantomime of the hooved tundra beasts he and his Great Wolf Mother called “reindeer.”

Often, Xenon enjoyed the interactions between Fated Mate and Golden Son, having never had a relationship with his own mother. But now his fire burned watching her chortle at Golden Son’s antics as if Xenon’s offering meant nothing. As if Xenon meant nothing…

“Blue Papa, why flame so dark?” his son asked.

For the third time that day, Xenon did not give true answer. “You may play with your friends,” he said instead.

Which caused Golden Son to yell, “Yaayyyy!” in his mother’s tongue, before morphing into his lupin form as he ran to the tunnel.

“Fated Mate,” Xenon said with a bow. “With Reverence, these are not ideas to put into Golden Son’s head.”

Her mind remained quiet, with not so much as an image in return. Just as it had remained quiet since she first brought up her land bridge theory, nearly three moons ago.

It made his flame sicken to think of that conversation now. The one that had ended with her yelling inside his mind, “So you’re just going to dismiss what I want? Say no without even considering it? Like you’re my keeper now? And this glacier is my prison…my facility…for the rest of my life?!”

The idea of leaving the many comforts of the glacier lab had seemed patently ludicrous to Xenon. With Reverence, he’d gently explained his word was final, and he’d entertain no further argument on the matter. And even though he could see how her flame darkened at this announcement, he figured this would turn out like every other small disagreement they’d had over the course of their otherwise peaceful mating. A gust of cold wind, easily quelled by a conversation without words upon their mating furs.

But to his surprise and disappointment, there had been no such intimate conversation in the moons that followed. And this day, he could see her anger and resentment still burning inside her flame, nearly as hot as when he’d first forbidden further talk on the subject.

The Second Prince Even-Flamed—this was how he was sometimes referred to in the Drakkon court. But at this moment, he felt very undeserving of that title, so vexed did his flame burn.

“You realize this is not your home,” he tried again, nodding toward her crude map. “It is just a place—on a land mass upon which a very few hominids have settled. Your home, as you knew it, does not yet exist.”

No response.

And he found himself once more at an angry burn, even though her silence and refusal to mate outside breeding should not have affected him thus. He was Drakkon, after all. On his planet, neither mating nor conversation was expected from one’s mate. In fact, his father had built his queen a separate residence. And though he held her in great Reverence until her dying day, never did they congress in such fashion, even after his father’s male works unexpectedly descended a second time.

And yet…

Xenon found he missed their mind talk. And their nightly congress. Greatly. She still lay beside him upon their polar bear furs, but he missed her. The way she used to turn upon her side to receive his male works. The sound of her quick gasps, and sharp mews when she found release. Those times when she closed her mouth around one penis while stroking the other with her hand…

Yes, he missed her greatly. So much so, that in the moons since their argument, his flame had ashed cold with a seemingly infinite case of discontent. Yet at the same time, it continued to simmer longingly for the way it had been between him and Fated Mate before their disagreement.

He could not give in. Of course, he could not leave behind the comforts of the station. Even Reverence didn’t require such foolishness of him. Yet her continued silence sparked him with a desperation he could not ignore.

And anger. So much unreverent anger. “You would really have us abandon the comfort and relative safety of the lab because you have wish of warmth?” he demanded inside her head.

To his surprise, this question was the one that finally compelled her to answer. “Yes,” she replied without reservation or embarrassment. “I don’t want to live in a tundra for the rest of my life, and seeing how rough the wolves have it here, I’m pretty sure they could really thrive in America. Is that so hard for you to understand?”

He gave her words consideration, his flame eating at him to do whatever it took to end this argument. Especially if it meant a return to the way things were before she made her unreasonable request to disrupt their lives and leave the station. “If you wish, Fated Mate, when Golden Son is older, I will carry you to this place in my claws. We will visit for a time, then return to the station after you have warmed your flame.”

Her flame cooled, and she gave visible shudder. Presumably at the thought of being carried anywhere by him in drakkon form.

But inside his head she said, “No, no, Xenon. I don’t need a vacation. I want to leave here. Permanently. I want us all to go. Eos, and the Far Travelers, too, since you’re they’re king and I’m they’re queen. We can’t just leave them behind. We’re responsible for these people.”

Xenon resisted the urge to turn his eyes skyward in irritation, as she so often did. The commitment of Fated Mate to the Group 7 Far Travelers was, at times, vexing. She not only insisted on taking her role of Queen seriously she’d also taken it upon herself to invite the Far Travelers to seek her out for counsel.

They frequently exited the domain to find several Group 7 lupin waiting with problems they wished her to solve. Stolen hides, stolen mates, a daughter who wished not to be given to another wolf by her father. Over all of this did she render judgment, claiming such petty matters were their “responsibility.”

Still, she was his Most Revered, so he struggled to keep both his eyes and his tone the opposite of his flame as he explained, “We cannot simply leave this place, Fated Mate. My lab is here. And I must have my lab to do my work.”

“Oh, you mean the work of drugging our people every month, and running experiments on them like they’re fucking mice?”

He disliked when she used crude language outside their mating furs, but he ignored it to point out, “These experiments are the sole purpose of my mission, Reverence. And more importantly, any data I can collect will help me to prove your species is a viable race. I should not have to remind you of this.”

His uncle, the Royal Overlord, had been particularly demanding as of late, requiring more and more findings and research numbers for his first report back to the Drakkon court.

To be fair, Xenon had managed to use all the extra work as a good excuse for not repairing the “broken” station cameras all these moons. But the fact remained if he failed to deliver the work his uncle tasked him with, and if he did not answer every message and comply with every data request, the Royal Overlord might ignore his Zone 7 ban and come to the glacier station himself. And if that happened…disaster.

“Do you prefer the cease of experimentation on the Far Travelers, or sanctuary for your entire species?”

A good point, he thought. But Fated Mate merely made that sucking sound with her teeth. “First of all, I don’t think—”

DUNH!

A hard sound, muffled but booming, cut Fated Mate off. Xenon went completely still. What was that? he wondered, tongue reflexively flicking into the air, even though whatever it was would be too far away for him to smell. It sounded like something had been dropped into the snow. Right outside the glacier station…

“Another dragon,” Fated Mate whispered inside his head.

And when he turned to look back at her, he found her eyes wide with shock, her flame burning a fearful red. “I can smell him. Also, that’s the same sound you make whenever you come home.”

Was it? He’d never thought how it must sound to have one as large as him in drakkon form land outside the glacier station. But no, the arrival of another drakkon was not possible. He’d declared a solitude ban at the beginning of his trip, just as his father had advised. And he was Prince of Drakkon. No one would dare go against his decree.

“Perhaps your nose deceives you,” he suggested to Fated Mate.

“No, I sleep with a dragon. I know what one smells like.”

He opened his mouth to assure her that even if there were another drakkon outside their abode, said drakkon would not dare enter without Xenon’s permission. But then he cut himself off, realizing…

Golden Son was outside.

Without another word to Fated Mate, he hurtled toward the tunnel, his wings bursting from his back. And by the time he emerged from the glacier station, he was in full drakkon form.

However, things were not as bad as he thought they would be.

They were much, much worse.

His son, having returned to his drakkon form, was now gaping up at a red drakkon. Smaller than Xenon, but much, much bigger than Golden Son.

And now he knew who would break his solitude ban. It was the Mission Therapist, charged with monitoring the mental health of the team members. As such, he was the only one on the team with permission to ignore Xenon’s ban.

And right now, he was staring down at the little golden drakkon as if he were a hallucination.

“Blue Papa! Blue Papa! Look! Another Drakkon. He red. Look!” Golden Son chirred happily in their language.

Look, indeed…

“Go back to the cave,” he commanded, voice as quiet as the Group 7 natives peeking out from inside their mammoth hide and bone tents. “Lock yourself in the lab with Great Wolf Mother.”

“But—”

“Remember my words from this morning. When I cannot, you must.”

Golden Son must have, for once, sensed the seriousness of the moment. Because instead of arguing, he swiftly disappeared into the glacier station tunnel.

Only when he was out of view did Xenon give the red drakkon greeting. “Therapist.”

“Prince,” The Mission Therapist answered with a bow of his great head. But his eyes stayed rooted to the place where Golden Son had been standing. As if still trying to make sense of what he’d just seen.

“Why have you come here, Therapist?”

“He was a lupin young…and then he became drakkon, right before my eyes. He called you father. In our language.”

Only then did the Mission Therapist finally turn his eyes to meet Xenon’s. “This I do not understand.”

“It is not for you to understand,” Xenon answered with an officiousness he had not employed in many rotations. “It is for you to answer. I will query again: why have you come here, Therapist?”

The Mission Therapist was only a thousand years older than Xenon, yet his fire burned as weak and confused as a drakkon in the last flames of his life as he responded with weak chirr, “The Royal Overlord is worried about you. He has decided to declare this species unviable for civilization.”

“What? But I have sent the Royal Overlord report after report proving the viability of this species! How has he reached such decision?”

“The Mission Leader feared you would feel this way about his directive, which is why he sent me to tell you the mission is complete. You must melt your station, and rendezvous with us at the Zone 6 station in two moons time.”

“No!” Xenon answered, no longer chirring, but roaring. “This is unacceptable.”

“Yes, this is why I was sent. To help you manage your flame during this process, but...”

His eyes went back to the spot where Golden Son had stood, then returned his gaze to Xenon. “Why did he call you by fatherly title?”

Xenon didn’t answer. But his flame turned a cold, cold red.

“Is he…?” The red drakkon shook his head as if the possibility were beyond his comprehension. “Are you his sire? What did you do? What kind of experiments have you run to create such a thing?”

Xenon did not answer.

“I must report this to The Royal Overlord. You realize that, yes? How could you done it? Mix drakkon seed with that of the hunting beasts? It is highly unethical. It is si—”

The Therapist never finished his sentence because Xenon threw himself at the red drakkon with an ear-piercing screech.