Chapter Two
Caridan
A voice shouted to me in a roar of fire and heat and as I’d plummeted through the sky.
I looked over to see Ikar staring into me as though he wanted to rip my neck out. I saw the spot of a tooth against the white scales of his lip as he smirked. I tried my hardest to have my eyes betray nothing.
I looked back down toward the ground and could still feel the sting of cold of the Earth’s atmosphere washing off my scales. I wasn’t among those who loved Earth like other dragons did. To me, the Earth represented a cold planet that was had to get into a held a whole lot of rules.
Udora’s rules were clear-cut, and there was no red tape to cut through. Not nearly as much, anyway. You were assigned a duty, you bred to continue your people, and you worked hard. Here on the Earth, there were so many things to consider. You used to be able to come and take what you liked. Now to claim a mate you now had to consult with a council of government officials, have special women assigned, and make deals to take a group of them back to your land when all you came for was one.
I breathed out and began to slow my pace as we descended to the space station. We hadn’t transformed yet, but I could sense the ground coming up closer and closer to my periphery. It was almost time.
Transforming was the painful part – at least for those scorned like myself.
Those who displeased the Udora Koth, or council, were punished. Pain, I’d learned, was their favorite curse.
A roar from Targeg gained my attention. He nodded his snout in my direction, and I could already see him transforming. He is the only loyal one among them, and so I nodded in kind.
His snout was stout and pointed, with spines along his jawline and protruding out the back of his small, square head. His scales were a deep black with a blue sheen. Flecks of yellow were scattered amongst the blue and filled out in all his spines and spikes.
The scales of him began to fade as skin formed around his eyes. Always his eyes first. Targeg was always the first to take human form in any given situation. He didn’t like scaring the women, and he didn’t like flying. That’s not to say he wasn’t good at it, but he never made a show of it. He was one of the rare ones who liked legs better than wings.
He swung his wings rapidly. Even when taking on human form, his wings were larger than the rest, making his body seem that much smaller in comparison. Targeg knew my transformation was inevitable and painful and so he looked my way and slowed his descent to match my speed. Others slowed their pace as well, but not as moral support.
I could see the ground below us now; a dull sheen of gray tarmac and faint bodies in the distance. I could feel the fire surrounding my whole body as my scales begin to recede.
Pain shot through my shoulder blades as my wings shrunk down to fit the human form that was sorely making its way through my body. My face cracked and I winced in agony as the spines from my snout withdrew and my eyes centered to the front of my face. Any onlooker would see this transformation as an awe-inspiring scene that would take but a moment. But I felt everything; every bone popping into place, every scale burning into my skin like acid. I felt the throbbing pain in my gums as my teeth accommodated the flesh around them.
Purple scutes ran down my throat and arms, always present, as though to remind me of what I truly was.
I roared in agony and felt the fire leave my throat in a hot flash that weaved pain through my tongue. The men around me stared, and a hush fell over the crowd. I reminded myself that not all dragons could shoot fire, but all wished they could. I looked around the group of us and lifted my head as I set my jaw to everyone who dared to look my way.
Let them stare.
Targeg hit the ground with force and clomped his feet into the Earth, rocks jutting up around his feet as he landed.
“See?” he said jovially and slapped me hard on the wing. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I stared his way and smirked. “Hours and hours of fun.”
“That’a boy,” he said with a nod. “Now, where’s the food?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Nice job, glowstone,” came the low slither of Brenem. He went to slap my wing in the same way Targeg had, but I hopped back and slowly glided back to the ground, now several feet away from him. “Hey, hey!” He put his hands up defensively and laughed. “I was just trying to pay you a compliment.”
“Brenem,” the white Weredragon warned with a stern but unthreatening tone. The white dragon, Ikar, had been assigned our leader for this choosing. We were to follow his orders exclusively.
For being the shortest of the bunch, Brenem had a larger-than-life ego. He fixed himself on perches and never truly seemed to completely leave his dragon form behind. His eyes were wild, and there was a fire that breathed in him always. He prided himself for his deathly red scales and the bright-blue veining that ran through them. He was a red dragon.
For centuries the red dragon was revered for greatness. Our leader was a red dragon, as was the first dragon ever to take a human mate. It was a sign of honor and dignity: two personality traits Brenem was sorely lacking.
Yet, he became Ikar's closest friend and still seemed to revere the white dragon even despite the superbia he showered himself in.
To say Brenem and I weren’t friends would have been an understatement of the highest variety.
The heavy thud of the Iron Gate echoed behind me as I walked toward the front of the Riddell station. The thud of dragons landing behind me no longer jarred me in human form, and I walked with ease into the station where our representative met us.
I’d accompanied the hunt on enough choosing ceremonies to know the drill by now. I wasn’t here to choose, after all. I was here as a guard.
Our Koth, or government back home, had grown weary of the human governments. They’d become skeptical of human interest in Koth matters, especially since the humans had started sending their scientists back to our planet with us.
Now I’d been assigned as security to all Earth missions, including choosings.
“I said ten minutes,” Zaphira snapped to our Koth as she clicked her heels against the metal beneath her in a tapping motion. When on Earth, Koth did not refer to our government, but a rank as leader among a group of Weredragons.
Ikar of Koth was our leader for this mission. A distinction we often had to explain to humans. Their attention span was so bleak sometimes I felt it wasn't even worth it to carry on a conversation.
Zaphira was the exception, I'd decided long ago. She was the only human I spoke to with any regularity.
My eyes followed her before looking to Ikar for permission to speak as representative. He nodded my way and quickly walked to the set of leather couches that sat in the waiting room. I looked back to Zaphira and offered my best smile as I responded: “And I called you unreasonable. I think you’ll find a lot more enjoyment in life if you learn to temper your expectations just a titch.”
“A titch, he says,” she responded with flirtation. She always did, with me anyway. “I’ve no patience for you today, Caridan. Let’s get this over with; I have a lunch date.”
“We wouldn’t want to keep you from that.”
“Hmph,” she snorted out and looked down at her tablet, scrolling through it quickly as though wondering if there was anything worth noting to me about its contents. “All standard girls. All well-read and–”
“Scientifically appealing?” I cut her off. “Scientists, doctors, passive mates all willing to please?” I raised my brows, and she let herself fall into the office chair by the front desk, dropping her tablet onto the counter.
“Hilarious,” she remarked.
“It’s gotten easy to rehearse,” I said passively. “You give me the same speech every time.”
“And yet you keep coming, so I must be doing my job,” she said with a smug raise of her brows.
I shrugged and exhaled heavily in her direction to make sure she could smell the heat on my breath. From my peripheral, I could see the rest of the Weredragons assembling by the window. The hallways that connected the Riddell station were all made of glass, which meant they could catch a glimpse of the hopefuls on their way to meet their mates.
“Are you going to be choosing today, Caridan?” Zaphira asked with a smug smirk on her face. I sneered in her direction and refrained from grabbing her by the neck and holding her up against the wall. That just wouldn’t have been gentlemanly.
“No,” I said pointedly. “Why, Zephira? Are you throwing yourself into the pot?”
“Please,” she scoffed absent-mindedly before finally turning her tablet off in exasperation. “They’re all excellent candidates. We always choose excellent candidates, as you well know.”
I nodded but said little, my eyes flickering over to the window like the rest of the men. I tried to act like I was above the watching process, but something about the women pulled me close.
I could have handled myself better if I didn’t have to watch both Brenem and Ikar attend the choosing. I would have rathered bite myself in the tail than witness any smug shower of happiness from either of them.
“That’s a lot of girls,” I whispered to myself as I saw the women approaching the outside.
“And you brought extra men,” she said simply in return. “We figure it can’t hurt to have a bigger selection is all.”
“Yes, and then we take them all home with us; is that it?”
She said nothing but stood from her chair and walked by me dismissively. “Always a pleasure, Caridan.”
“That’s it?” I’d asked in mild surprise. Usually, the director had more to say to me. “Nothing more to say about your pleasing candidates? No insight? No derisive remark about our expanded army?”
She shrugged. “Would it make a difference?” She watched my eyes carefully and then gave a single nod. “I thought not. I have to go meet the girls. Walk me out.”
Again, I looked to Ikar for permission, and he gave me an approving but uninterested wave.
I walked Zephira to the doors that stood just feet away from us, and she stopped just long enough to give me a pointed frown. She gestured with her hand to the Weredragons that were now nearly pressed against the window, roaring with unbridled lust and excitement at the arrival of their mates. “If they break that window, we take away half our candidates; you got it?”
She stared at me sternly until I finally broke into a smile. “Whatever you say.”
I placed my hand on the small of her tiny back and marveled once more at how frail and alluring human women were. I stepped out into the daylight with her, and she quickly removed my hand from her back. When she turned to me, I grabbed her waist with both my hands and pulled her close to me so I could feel the energy in her body speed up.
I leaned in, and she dug her nails into my scales, causing me to wince ever so slightly.
“Don’t,” she demanded, backing away from me with anger splashed across her features. “I have to meet the girls. Let’s just get this over with.”
Her strength made me feel a fire inside. I respected her enough to remove myself from blocking her way. In fact, she was one of the only ones I respected in those days. She’d been humiliated by a Weredragon just as I’d had a grueling experience with a human. Yet she carried out her duties with dignity and efficiency, just as I did.
She walked away from me briskly, knowing I could catch up to her in a mere second. But I didn’t. I simply watched as she got farther and farther from my sight.
With a long, drawn-out sigh, she turned around. She bit her lip the way she did when she was about to break the rules and narrowed her eyes at me.
“Caridan,” she said with no special emphasis.
With one race of my wings against the wind, I was at her side, slowly lowering myself back onto the ground. “What?”
“I have a girl for you. She’s blonde, with curly hair. Her name is Ariella.”
“What?” I glowered and felt my expression twist to one of confusion.
Her expression hardened. "Choose her or nobody else will. That’s my insight.”