Chapter 2
The metal floor rattled beneath Katryn’s feet. Her stomach pitched as the space shuttle dropped through Harena’s atmosphere. Her knuckles turned white as her fingers bit into the safety straps that held her in place. She wished the nausea churning in her belly was just the unfamiliar change in pressure that made her ears pop, but it wasn’t. This was it. There was no escape for her now. Her fate was sealed. She swallowed a lump that threatened to strangle her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to control her breathing. The spaceship shuddered hard, and she bounced in her seat. She moaned, leaning into the harness. Praying that this landing would be over soon would only bring her mating that much closer.
The ship seemed to jolt sideways and knocked the wind out of her as they bounced on the ground. Metal ground against metal. Were they landing on sand or something man-made? She hadn’t bothered to ask where they would land or how the weight of the ship wouldn’t sink them into the loose sand—she’d been more concerned with what would happen to her after they touched down.
“That was…exciting.” Mahlia’s voice broke the silence, and Katryn opened her eyes to see a gamine grin spreading across her friend’s face. It was so good to see her blue eyes clear of the crippling pain of Jeevan’s loss. The sadness still lurked there, and Katryn suspected it always would, but Mahlia smiled now, and it shone in her eyes. Her friend was happy. Katryn tried to imprint this moment on her memory. This might be the last time she saw her, and that knowledge cut deep. She had so few true friends, so few people she trusted. Mahlia and Varad would hand the trade run over to Varad’s younger brother, Taymullah, when they returned to Vesperi this Turn. One ship made one run each Turn to all four colonized planets. So much of the Earthan technology had been lost. Only Aquatilis maintained any level of technology in order to generate the life-support systems in their underwater cities.
Katryn sighed. “I’m ready to have my feet on solid ground.”
“I confess that I would like that as well.” Mahlia leaned over to unbuckle her son from his carrier. He swung his arms in clumsy circles, kicking his feet and cooing.
“I’ll hold him.” Katryn flicked off the harness straps and scooped up Razak. “It will be the last time.”
“You don’t know that. You can never tell what the future holds, bitter or sweet.”
Tears pressed against Katryn’s eyelids, and she spun toward the door, cradling the baby against her breast. “Then it will be the last time I see him so small.”
“That is the truth. They gain flesh with every day that passes. Soon I won’t be able to carry them.” Mahlia straightened her ceremonial robe, running her hands down the royal-blue saltwater silk. Katryn shrugged to resettle her own lavender robe. It was sleeveless to leave her scales bare. They had all changed into their finery before preparing for landing. A trading party would meet them, goods would be exchanged over several weeks’ time, and then Varad and Mahlia would fly away and leave her behind. What happened to her after that, no one knew. No one knew anything about Harena or the weredragons who populated the world. No one even knew why they kept so much to themselves.
The muscles in Katryn’s shoulders drew into a rigid line. Her breath grew overloud in her ears, her heart thumping in slow throbs. She swallowed hard. Dread knotted in her belly. Her every footstep clanged against the metal flooring, ringing like a death knell. Her ears popped again as wind sucked around the lowering ramp. She squinted against the harsh sunshine that flooded the airlock. Razak fussed against her, and she jiggled him. His rosy lips formed a moue. Sweet affection wrapped around her heart, and she smiled down at him. She wished she could see her friend’s children grow up. Mahlia was as close to family as she had ever really known. Her father had never spared more than a moment for her. And now she was to be left with a planet full of people like her father, married to another man like her father. She ran her finger down Razak’s silky cheek. “We’re here, little prince. Let’s go see, shall we?”
She glanced up and met the intense, dark gaze of a tall, exotic-looking man. Her heart jolted. A weredragon. Her nostrils flared to catch his scent. Hot and masculine. His scales glinted silver in the sun, but it was his eyes that caught her. Something possessive danced in their midnight depths. She took a step toward him, drawn in. Something about the man called to her. She wanted to speak to him, know him. The need shook her to the core. She drew in his scent again. How she knew the scent belonged to him, she didn’t know.
“Katryn?”
Jolted from her reverie, she turned to see Mahlia standing with Varad and a slender woman. The woman’s scent was unusual, though there was something vaguely familiar about it. Katryn’s nose twitched.
“I’d like you to meet Elia, the Aquatilian ambassador on Harena. We’ll be taking her back to her home world and bringing her replacement back next Turn.” Mahlia wore her Amira smile, polite and somehow warm and distant at the same time.
Katryn let a welcoming grin tilt her lips. That explained the familiar scent—this woman smelled similar to the handful of mermen Katryn had met. “Lady Elia. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“It’s ‘Ambassador.’ Aquatilis is a democratic republic—we don’t have lords and ladies. Please, call me Elia.” She tilted her head to the side, and a sheet of flaming orange hair streaked with gold and tipped with red swirled around her shoulders. Katryn had never seen a mermaid. Only the mermen came as ambassadors to Vesperi, but women didn’t have much power among the weretigers. Only through their husbands could they become leaders—like Mahlia, who’d ruled the planet while Varad went on the trade run last Turn. Katryn was uncertain of the practices on other planets. Harenans kept to themselves, and contact with the other planets was so new that there was little anyone knew other than who traded in what. Amir Varad and Ambassador Bretton Hahn of Aquatilis were the only two people to have ever visited all four colonized planets.
Katryn sighed. Adventure had never been one of her longings. Mahlia wanted that. Katryn simply wanted to belong somewhere, to someone. To fit. To be needed.
“I’ve never met a mermaid before.”
“Yes, well. After his first Turn here, Ambassador Hahn believed a woman representative would…achieve better results.”
What was that supposed to mean? She opened her mouth to ask, when the mermaid turned to speak quietly to Varad. Her dragon senses allowed her to hear Elia anyway. “I am anxious to return to Aquatilis, Amir Varad. How long will…”
Then the weredragon’s scent came to her again, closer. She whipped around and found herself staring at the most beautiful male chest she’d ever seen. He wore no shirt, simply a robe that draped from his shoulders. Tight muscles formed ridges over his abdomen and tapered to narrow hips. A wide belt hugged a pair of loose pants to his waist. A silver band of scales stretched across his forehead, and his dark hair fell in a smooth sheet to his shoulders. She’d never been so intensely aware of any man in her life. And she had lain with her fair share of them. This was different, though. Perhaps it was that he was her kind, that he was a dragon. She didn’t know, but she wanted to find out. Desperately.
“Who are you?”
“I am Lord Tarkesh. I am to escort you to the capital. To Lord Nadir.”
To the end of life as she knew it. Depression made her shoulders droop, and she turned away. She walked down the ramp to see what she could of her world. It was late afternoon here, the binary suns dipping toward the horizon. Deep red sand dunes stretched as far as her vision could strain. And she had the enhanced senses of a dragon, so her sight far exceeded those of her human ancestors. The harsh beauty of the land pulled at something deep within her. Some small tug of familiarity settled in her bones. She dragged in a deep breath. The desert wind didn’t have the salty tang of the Dead Sea on Vesperi. It was the clean, dry scent of pure sand. No moisture. In fact, her nose didn’t catch the scent of any bodies of water. That confirmed what she’d seen of the planet from space.
That begged the question: how did dragons survive without water? She sighed. Just one more thing she didn’t know about a world that was supposed to be her home. She choked back a bitter laugh. Home. Of course. She had all manner of experience with that, right?
To her left lay a small town of lavish tents. They spread around the massive landing platform that the ship rested on. Several dragons stood around the platform, and they glanced at her curiously before returning to the work of unloading the goods from the cargo holds. The wild colors of their scales flashed in the sun as they worked. They were beautiful. A strange emotion twisted within her. These people were her kind. She wished more than anything that this place felt like home, that she could be welcomed among weredragons. But she was a stranger, apart.
“Look, little one. Isn’t it gorgeous?” She lifted Razak so he faced the landscape. He gurgled and squealed in delight, his arms windmilling. She laughed, cuddling him close.
“Yes, it is.” Tarkesh’s smooth voice sent a hot shiver down her spine, snapping her back to the present.
She turned around to face him, settling Razak against her shoulder. Clearing her throat, she met his gaze. Her heart seized again, and a flood of moisture gathered in her pussy. She clenched her thighs together and tried to keep her voice calm, even. “So, how far are we from the capital? Is that where Lord Nadir lives with his harim?”
She tried to keep the displeasure from her voice, but some of it must have slipped through, for Lord Tarkesh’s brows arched in surprise. His tone went flat, emotionless. “You are upset by a match with the son of a powerful family?”
“I am not happy to have no say in the man I must mate to.”
“I see.” His face showed no expression, and he folded his hands behind his back. “It is five days to the capital. We travel by Gila caravan with dune-racer outriders as guards.”
“We need guards?” Her stomach dipped.
“I was informed that your father died in a dune-racer accident, and I’m sorry if it upsets you, but the guards are necessary. There are renegade bands that would attack a trade caravan. Especially one as richly stocked as ours will be.”
“I see.” Now it was her turn to keep her face clear of expression. She was the daughter of a politician. Whether she wished it or not, she knew how to hold her tongue and give little away. Her preference was to confront life head-on, but the tigers didn’t care for that kind of bluntness. She very much doubted dragons would be different in that respect. Any people that could keep its secrets so tightly guarded probably preferred subterfuge and guile. Sighing, she sought a more pleasant subject. She waved a hand at the hundred or more tents. “Will everyone accompany us to the capital? And who is Gila, Lord Tarkesh?”
His white teeth flashed against the swarthy complexion common to all weredragons. Dark hair, tanned skin, dark eyes. The only thing that seemed to make weredragons each uniquely colored was their scales. “Call me Tarkesh. Please.”
“And you must call me Katryn.” She offered up a tentative smile.
“Come with me, and I will introduce you to a Gila.” He started down the ramp that led to the landing platform. When she didn’t immediately follow, he turned back with an expectant expression on his face.
“I must ask Amira Mahlia if—”
His eyebrows contracted in a frown. “You do not answer to the weretigers.”
“No, but she is my closest friend, and I am holding her son. It would be rude to walk away without a word.” Her voice cracked a little. She’d soon be walking away from her only friend forever. Blinking rapidly, she tried to keep tears from her eyes. She would save her weeping for when she was alone. Breaking down in front of these strange men who shared her race was not how she wanted to make a first impression.
A quiet sympathy warmed his dark gaze, and he nodded his understanding. “Go then. I await you.”
“Thank you, Lor—Tarkesh. Thank you, Tarkesh.” She swept a small bow, holding Razak firm to her shoulder.
“I’ll take him, if you like.” She turned to see Varad standing behind her. A tiny smile creased his handsome face, and his gold eyes twinkled down at her. Then concern flashed in his gaze as he glanced between her and Tarkesh. He pitched his voice low. “You are attracted to him.”
She nodded, not speaking.
“Have a care. I would hate to see you hurt.”
“I can enjoy my last moments of freedom, can’t I? My choices have been taken away from me about whom I shall mate with, but this time I have left is mine.”
He sighed. “Yours is too kind a heart to be broken.”
Tears welled again, but she blinked them back. “I shall miss you, Varad. Take care of Mahlia.”
“I swear it.” He bent and lifted Razak from her arms. He kissed Katryn’s cheek. “Thank you. For being there for Mahlia last Turn when she needed support. You and my brother saved her when I could not be there. I will never forget that.”
“She would have done the same for me.”
“Yes. She loves you dearly.”
Her throat closed tight. “I love her, too. I—I need to go.”
He nodded and stepped back. “Go.”
She spun around and scurried down the ramp to Tarkesh. He looked over her shoulder to meet Varad’s gaze. Something passed between the two men. Perhaps they spoke telepathically. She didn’t know, but they nodded to each other, and Varad turned away to rejoin his mate and Elia. Then Katryn faced Tarkesh and tried to smile. “Shall we go? I would like to see this Gila.”