If not for the high-pitched shrieks, Xenon would have never exited his dwelling.

The Far Travelers Experiment Group 7, though a true feat of bioengineering, had proven irksome in their need to regularly bestow gifts upon him. He had explained to them numerous times that he would only accept gifts of precious metals and gems—aurum, adamas, and any other minerals he could use to power his glacier station lab or replace the worn parts on his conductors. This, he’d told them time and again, was what he considered “good treasure.” And to their credit, they had swiftly begun bringing him regular deliveries of precious metals and gems.

Unfortunately, they also seemed to be under the distinct impression Xenon was in desperate need of female companionship.

A little over five solars ago, he’d come to this planet with a team to investigate an appeal put in by the Royal Geneticist. The older drakkon had been sent here on a mission to develop a tracking beast that would provide ground assistance for the royal hunts. To that end, he’d completed his mission successfully. However, it was not a complete win for the court because upon returning to Drakkon, the Royal Geneticist submitted an official petition to change the planet’s status to that of a protected habitat.

As it turned out, the Royal Geneticist had grown close to his creations during the 10,000 years he’d spent designing and developing the King’s half beast, half hominid hunting companions. Perhaps too close.

He’d not only become a fervent opponent of the Millennial Royal Hunt but went so far as to submit a second petition…this one a request to delay the upcoming hunt meant to celebrate the inauguration of the new King, Xenon’s brother.

As the Royal Geneticist had admitted in his petition, both the anthrohominids and his bio-engineered lupinhominids were primitive and lacked higher intelligence. They were also only slightly more evolved—due to their larger brains and capacity for language—than their primate ancestors. But the lupinhominids, and at least one genus of the anthrohominids, had begun developing tools, language, and rudimentary expressions of art. The Royal Geneticist believed both species had the potential to evolve into two distinct, civilized species, and should therefore no longer be treated by drakkon as mere game or tracking companions.

The petition had proven vexing for both Xenon’s brother, the then Crown Prince, and his cousin, the Royal Huntmaster. For various reasons, a few restrictions were added to the King’s otherwise unchecked power when the Blue Drakkon line took over the throne. Petitions by members of the court could no longer be dismissed out of hand. Or simply ignored because the Crown Prince wished his hunts to continue uninterrupted.

Which was why a hundred drakkon survey team had been sent to this planet for a thousand rotation observational study to determine if the Royal Geneticist’s petition should be granted. As Royal Overlord (and a favored member of the court who would keep the Crown Prince’s wishes in mind), Xenon’s uncle had been appointed as head of the investigation. Xenon’s cousin, the Royal Huntmaster and son of the Royal Overlord, had also been named to the mission and given a security title. But given that he’d immediately started to oversee the training of the new lupin species “just in case,” shortly after they landed, Xenon suspected his cousin’s appointment had more to do with his court title, than with any sincere interest in the mission’s security.

Unlike his cousin, Xenon took his mission title and directives seriously. And like any good scientist, he endeavored to reserve judgment about the Royal Geneticist’s claims while he collected data samples on his assigned group of lupinhominids. However, he was beginning to have his doubts about the lupins’ intellectual capacity. For despite Xenon’s explicit rejection of their first female lupin offering, the Far Travelers Group 7 continued to offer him one of their puny females at least once every moon cycle.

Of course, Group 7 didn’t make these offerings to him out of sheer altruism. Ultimately, they did it for the meat.

Per mission protocol, Xenon had never discussed his reasons for being here with Group 7. Nor had he told them the real purpose of the fresh meat he handed out to them from time to time—a boon for their mostly maritime village. Unfortunately, the Far Travelers, hailing from so nascent a species, had concluded he was a type of god, a deity to be praised with shiny gifts and females. And perhaps even more practically, they hoped for his aid in a new squabble with a hostile anthro tribe who’d recently migrated from the south—or Zone 6 as the Drakkon research group referred to it. And though the Royal Geneticist had reported that this species had the potential to shift without the moon’s solar power, they had yet to figure out how to organize themselves against the much cleverer anthros or give them good fight on shift nights when they became little more than feral, unthinking beasts.

Xenon had been warned before agreeing to this assignment that the Group 7 lupins might eventually begin worshipping him as a deity. Apparently, the species of hominid they’d been cultivated from had a genetic propensity towards theism in all its various forms.

“You can be their god, or you can be your brother’s victim,” Xenon’s father informed him when he commanded Xenon to join the thousand-year planetary research expedition. Whether he wanted to or not. “I would prefer you to be the living god of a wild, primitive species than a dead Prince of Drakkon. And when the thousand-year expedition has completed, perhaps your brother’s flame will be less red towards you.”

So here Xenon was. Stuck on a half iced-over planet. With a species at the bottom of the intelligence scale. Assigned to study an experimental group of hybrids that continued to leave females at his door, in spite of his protests.

In any case, when he first heard the Group 7 leader’s distinctive whistle over the lab’s outside security feed, Xenon’s initial instinct was to ignore it. He had much work to do.

But the scream that soon followed the whistle changed his mind. None of the Group 7 females had ever protested being offered to him before. But that shriek had been one of protest. So now he walked toward the tunnel to investigate, despite his many reservations about fully engaging with the Group 7 wolves on non-experiment days.

As he neared the glacier station’s main entrance, the high-pitched voice shrieked again, this time saying “Lemehgo! Dontfukeengtoshme! Lemehgo!” And Xenon nearly halted in his tracks in shock.

In all his time on this planet, he’d never heard a language like this. Not even on the observational videos the other science teams had uploaded to the shared research database on the group servers. After listening to the high-pitched voice shouting in an unknown tongue, his curiosity urged him to increase his pace until he was nearly running towards the open hatchway that led to the outdoors.

But once outside, Xenon stopped cold at the sight awaiting him.

Four Group 7 males. Tearing the clothes off a screaming…

Xenon tilted his head, barely able to reconcile what he saw. But yes…it was a female. A female hominid with short hair and brown skin, lighter than the homs in the origin lands, but much darker than that of the Group 7 Far Travelers.

And she was nothing like any of the other females Xenon had observed in the wild or watched on the endless amounts of observational footage collected by the various research teams. Why, this female was taller and bigger than any he’d seen before on this ice and water planet. She towered over the Group 7 hunters, and he guessed her to be only a hindfoot shorter than himself. Her frame was broad and robust, with ample thighs and two mounds of flesh protruding from her chest. In fact, those mounds—her nursing glands—were of such unusual heft that he began to wonder if she might be with child—

Xenon’s stunned mental observation of the female stranger was cut abruptly short when she suddenly bolted toward him, stripped completely bare of all but the strange shoes on her feet.

“Ohmygod! Ohmygod! dont jus stan thayr. Help! Help! Pleezhelpme!” Her strangely inflected voice was just a volume level or two above that which the Far Travelers used to communicate while hunting the hooved tundra beasts. A loud whisper—something else he’d never encountered before during his time on this planet.

The large hominid scrambled behind him, the visible whites of her eyes expressing sheer panic as she grabbed onto the back of his replica hide tunic.

“Pleezhelpme!” she cried again.

Xenon started. Something very unexpected had happened inside his shift shell when the female touched him. His male works stirred to life and began to feel heavy with an almost painful ache.

What the mothers was going on!? Why was this unusual looking female hiding behind him? And using him as a shield between her body and the small group of male Far Travelers? Did she not realize she had been brought to him as a gift?

“You keep female, yes?” the Far Traveler Group 7 King asked coming to stand at a respectful distance in front of Xenon. “She gift come from you father.”

As instructed by the Mission Administrators, Xenon spent much time during his first solar in this region learning the Group 7 language, which consisted of clicks, short words, and hand gestures. As a result, he typically had little trouble understanding the Group 7 tongue.

Yet the leader’s current words made little sense to him. Perhaps realizing his confusion, the Group 7 leader explained, “Big sun come, she fall from sun. Big sun go. She on ice. Gift come from you father.”

Big sun…? The Group 7 leader must mean the flash emitted by the fating portal when it delivered a mate, Xenon realized. Meaning this female had come through the fating portal as a match for one of the Group 7 lupins. Which was strange, considering five of the six gates had only just been built. And none of them had been encoded yet. Nor had the bioengineered lupinhominids cleared the thousand sun cycle species viability requirement. In other words, none of the lupins should have known the codes for the match portals.

He looked over his shoulder at the still crouching female.

“Waytaminnut! Arrrthaylykgiveengmetoou?!” she asked him, her flame bright red with shock.

“She good female. God Big like you,” the Group 7 Far Traveler leader pointed out at the same time. “You keep wolf gift come from you father, yes?”