^{“GOOD MORNING, FENSA. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”} She woke to the sound of her usually dormant bioware bleating inside her furry head. ^{“You have…ZERO events scheduled for today!”}

By the Fenrir Wolf, was it really her birthday? How old was she now?

26, the answer came back, dark and depressing.

She must have slept way past sunrise because the day was already damp and hot. So warm, she shifted as she sat up and put on the loose hide dress she had tossed aside last night before inviting Xenon to fuck her. Definitely not the Arizona she remembered, she thought as she swung her feet to dangle her long legs over the cave’s small bottom lip.

Lush green vegetation covered the mountains. Mostly inedible, she presumed, but the huge leaves might make for good makeshift umbrellas when it rained. Also, instead of the dry valley floor she remembered, the ground below was snaked through by a generous river. Raging so noisily, she could almost hear it from here. Almost.

Fensa wondered if the people camped out beside it would be able to hear her if she called out to them—

Wait a minute, she thought, a penny dropping through her usual morning fuzz. There were people below. Actual specks moving about! Another tribe? Or were these the Group 7 wolves Xenon had threatened to lead to another mountain?

As if in answer, the air filled with the familiar smell of a burning fire. And then with a suddenness that nearly knocked her onto her back, Xenon’s drakkon appeared in front of her, flapping his insanely large wings to stay aloft.

Fensa’s stomach leaped and curdled at the same time. Leaped because he’d come back to her. Curdled because he’d done it in dragon form.

“Hi,” she pushed into his head carefully. Not knowing what else to say after yesterday’s knockdown, drag out fight.

Silence, during which she could only hear the heavy flap of his wings, treading air. Then, “You will come with me. Turn around.”

Okay, yes, Fensa had her pride, but it wasn’t like she had anything else to do. Plus, she really needed to pee. She did as she was told. Turned her body so Xenon could lift her into the air. At least she didn’t have to look at his dragon during the process.

But after they landed, just out of eyeshot of the Far Traveler’s camp, he didn’t bother to reshell.

Instead, he said, “I have found something resembling the bath of which you once did speak. I will give you escort there.”

Xenon indicated she should move forward by extending one clawed hand in front of them.

Okay, she thought before answering, “I’ve got to pee. Can I at least do that first?”

He seemed to think about it for a moment before giving her a sharp nod of his great dragon head. Then came the really awkward part where she got to feel his eyes burn a hole into her back while she crouched somewhat precariously behind a small bush.

Fensa thought about running but she couldn’t leave Eos—plus, it would be way too easy for Xenon to catch her. Especially in dragon form.

She eyed him warily when she returned from her port-a-bush, and reluctantly began walking in the direction he indicated. He soon fell into step beside her.

It felt like walking next to a building, or a dinosaur, the ground vibrating beneath his enormous feet as he strode purposefully forward. His pace was almost comically slow since it took roughly ten of her steps to equal one of his.

Fensa peeped up at him, then quickly back down at the ground. “Um, don’t you think you’d be better off if you shifted back to your other form?”

“You do honor me with your concern, Fated Mate. However, I prefer to remain unshelled. You may shift if you wish to walk faster.”

She did, but her wolf despised the tropical weather. Not nearly as much as her human had hated the arctic cold, but it was a close second. Which was probably why the richest wolf states in North America were almost always those with real winters. Wolves naturally migrated to colder regions. Almost like they’d been created during an ice age or something, Fensa thought to herself with a wry chuckle.

“I’m fine,” she said over their mate bond. “It was just a suggestion.”

Silence once again enveloped them as they continued to walk in this awkward fashion. Fensa did her best not to appear uncomfortable, to pretend that walking beside a fire-breathing dragon wasn’t completely freaking her out or anything, but she had no doubt her “flame” was giving away all her feelings no matter how hard she attempted to mask them.

“I have failed you,” he said, eventually. “By Drakkon tradition, I should have built you a home of your own shortly after Golden Son was laid. Another glacier where you could have lived without our nightly congress. This is what my father did for my mother. He built her a dome of such grand scale that it could be seen from our ship, long after we set off on the Great Star Sea. And though he was my mother’s most reverent acolyte, he restricted himself to only two visits a day cycle. In truth, I thought of doing the same. I found a glacier a few wingbeats away, and started to make the necessary renovations so you might live there with Golden Son.”

His tone became quieter. “But after two day cycles of work, I found I had not the flame to finish the project. I flew away from the glacier and never returned. In truth, I enjoy sharing furs with you. And sharing a home with you and our son.”

“I, um…enjoyed it, too,” Fensa admitted. “You didn’t ask me, but if you had, I would have told you I didn’t want to live apart from you. The relationship you and Golden Son have is so special. I wouldn’t have wanted you to…”

She trailed off realizing how damning her words must sound in the aftermath of trying to take Eos away.

And into her guilty silence, Xenon said, “Do you know I had plans to fly to the south of our ice land where I’d heard tell of an animal similar to your cow? A true drakkon would have done this for his Most Revered. Would have flown to retrieve such a gift if only to place it upon your altar. But I, as I have so often found over these past three rotations, am incapable of being a true drakkon when it comes to you. For I want too much to be in your presence. I often find myself facing this contradiction. I want to feed you with meat, but I also do not want to be apart from you for longer than a day tide. At times, not even that. I want to please you, and make your flame bright. But I could not bear to do the things that would have been considered the most reverent.”

“I never asked for any of that from you. I never asked you to praise or revere me. I didn’t want a cow…or a pedestal. I just wanted…”

She trailed off again.

“Tell me,” he said.

“How much further?” she asked, instead of answering his question.

“Approximately ten more wingbeats,” he replied.

Whatever that meant.

Fensa tried again, “How is Eos? Is he okay?”

“He fares well. I sent him ahead with the rest of the advanced team to set up a temporary camp for the Far Travelers.”

“That was a good idea. I should have thought of that.”

“You will come to find I am full of good ideas,” he answered. Voice level, but she clearly felt like he’d just issued another threat.

Fensa pondered whether to press him for more news about their son but then decided against it. That subject had way too many minefields. Probably best not to piss him off again. But it gave her comfort to know her son and mate were right below the cave Xenon had imprisoned her in.

“Here we are,” Xenon said after what had to be at least two hours of walking.

Fensa gasped out loud because “here” turned out to be an actual hot spring. Which shouldn’t have surprised her, since wolves also tended to settle next to hot springs. What surprised the hell out of her is she recognized this place from the day trip Koko had insisted they take together, when Fensa and her mom came down to tour the college. At the time, the hot spring had been about eight-by-eight-feet wide and only ankle deep. But in this day and age, it was huge! More like a small lagoon than the wading pool she remembered.

At that moment, all Fensa’s serious concerns about her future and her freedom were overridden by the prospect a hot bath.

But then a voice behind her said, “Remove your clothes.”

And with the suddenness of a light switch, that “Orange is the New Black” feeling flipped right back on. Yup, she was still his prisoner, wasn’t she? His to be commanded now that she’d so blatantly betrayed his trust.

But to hell with all that. She was at a hot spring! An actual hot spring! And it had been years—not months—since her last hot bath. So Fensa ignored the voice in her head telling her not to give in to this dragon, and did as instructed, all the while trying to ignore the feel of his unblinking gaze as she did so.

Fensa pushed words into his head, “You know, if this is the place I think it is, it still exists in my time. Only it’s way smaller.”

A large splash answered her comment. When she looked up, she saw Xenon was already in the water, sunk all the way down, so she could only see his eyes, one scarred, one glowing, above the steaming surface.

“You will join me,” he said, his voice dark and seductive inside her head.

Fensa hesitated, not quite as eager to take her first bath in years as she had been a few moments ago. There was something a little—off-putting—about hopping into a deep pool of water with a known predator. Even if said predator was her fated mate.

“Come, Reverence…join me,” he said again.

She took a few awkward steps forward but stopped just at the spring’s rocky bank.

“It is so difficult for you to look upon me in this form?”

She thought about lying, then decided it was best to stick with the truth. Her flame would give her away, anyway.

“Yes.”

“Tell me why this is.”

“Well, uh, all that stuff I said about dragons being my father’s sworn enemy…you know, because you guys kind of slaughtered his whole family and all his friends. So there’s that.”

“Your father’s enemy. Do you understand I would never hurt you? Even when my flame was at its most heated, as it was the day before, I would never raise claw or tail or roar to you.”

Yes, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Technically—at least not physically. But that didn’t keep her stomach from twisting at the thought of getting in there with him. “Could you… maybe just come back up out of the water a little?” she asked. “You’re giving off some, like, serious lake monster vibes right now. And I’ve seen way too many horror movies to ever be comfortable in this kind of situation. So, yeah…it’s really not helping.”

A beat. Then with a great cascade of water, he granted her request, moving closer to the shore until only his lower half remained submerged. Only to say just a second later, “Your flame has gone even darker now that I have granted your request.”

“Can you please stop tracking my flame?!” she asked, her tone as irritated as she presumed her heat signature was. “Just because you can read me doesn’t mean you should.”

“But it also does not mean I can simply shut it off. It is, after all, how I see.”

“Well, you don’t have to report back on every damn thing you see, do you?”

“No, I do not. I am sensing you now wish to have another child’s argument on this matter, Reverence?”

A child’s argument. That’s what he called it when they got into a back and forth discussion like this. One neither of them could win.

Her defiant eyes rose to meet his—only to find she still couldn’t look at him in this form. She dropped her gaze with a mulish, “I’ll wait until you’re done in the water, and then I’ll get in.”

A long silence followed. Then: “Look at me, Reverence.”

Fensa couldn’t. Instead, she stood with her arms crossed, eyes glued to the ground.

Another long silence. Then a huff of steam from his great nostrils, the dragon’s version of an impatient sigh. “I see. You are…what is the word you used to describe how rose-colored hominids treated brown-colored hominids in your civilization? Racist?”

At that, her gaze shot up, and her eyes narrowed. “I am not a racist.”

“The other lupin respect and honor me in this form, yet you do not.”

“Yes, but the Group 7 wolves weren’t raised by someone whose entire family was slaughtered by your crew!”

His great dragon head turned slightly as if he was giving her response some serious thought. “I see. Your father was racist.”

Then before she could defend Papa, Xenon asked, “What would he think if he knew your mate was drakkon, I wonder?”

Fensa didn’t wonder at all. She knew exactly how her father would respond, and she was frankly glad his grave was so far in the future, that he couldn’t possibly roll over in it. But instead of admitting any of this to the dragon, she said, “Well, I doubt your dad would be happy about you being mated to a wolf.”

“No, he would not,” Xenon answered, his tone thoughtful. “But I am not mated to a wolf. I am mated to a hominid whose long ago ancestor had lupin spliced into it by Drakkon’s Royal Geneticist. This is all to say there is a difference, Reverence. One I fear you do not fully comprehend.”

“I understand my nature. I get what you’re saying,” she answered.

“No, it is not your nature, I speak of, but my own. You misunderstand my nature, and that stops here and now.”

He tilted his head, spearing her with his good eye. “I am drakkon.”

“I know you’re a dragon.”

“Not a dragon. Drakkon. I am not a hybrid, like you. My shell is simply an exoskeleton. Technically biological. But designed specifically for this trip. My shell is not me. It is merely a house for my true self. Because what I am—what I really am—is drakkon. You are not truly a wolf, though you’ve been genetically altered to take the form of one. However, the form you see before you? This is me. My true self. Do you understand, Reverence?”

Fensa did. She didn’t want to. With her father’s backstory, how could she want to? But she did.

“I would have your words so I know you truly understand.”

“You’re a dragon. Not a shifter, like me—but a dragon,” she repeated dully. “That’s the real you.”

“And my shell…the form you prefer?”

“That’s not really you,” she admitted. Less surprised than she wanted to be by this news. But the truth, now she’d been forced to acknowledge it, made it obvious.

Her kind passed for normal every day, with nothing more than a slight alteration of their biochemical signatures—aka scent—to distinguish them from their human counterparts. But Fensa had always been aware of something more foreign, more alien about Xenon than just his scent. Something so other, she’d recognized him as non-human from the very beginning. Assumed he was a robot, way before it occurred to her he might be human—which, as it turned out, he wasn’t either.

“This is the real you,” Fensa conceded.

“I would have your eyes, Reverence.”

She made herself lift her eyes, and tried hard to ignore the way her heart sped up with terror as she gazed up at the great beast. The real Xenon.

Maybe he sensed her fear. Or more likely read it in her heat signature. Because her mate stood as still as a paused video game screen, letting her take him in. Really take him in for the first time since she pulled that spear out of his red eye.

He was… Well, when she removed the admittedly biased filter of her father’s backstory out of the equation—Xenon was incredible. Powerful and muscled, and of such a deep shade of blue, she could almost mistake him for black in some places. Unlike with his human counterpart—no, not counterpart, she reminded herself. Unlike with his humanoid shell, she couldn’t see the slightest evidence of his male works. But she guessed they were tucked safely inside the pale blue vertical scales of his soft underbelly.

A sudden image of the fight her father had described flashed through her head. Olafr’s brother stabbing the blue dragon through its soft neck with a special sword. Then dying a few minutes later, when another blue dragon fire-balled him in a fit of rage.

“Come back to me, Reverence.”

Fensa returned with a blink to find the dragon staring down at her. His expression the same blank screen of Xenon’s usual unemotional mien. “Tell me, where did you go?”

She shook her head.

The air displaced above her, and when she looked back up, the great beast had turned his head to the side, apparently in deep thought.

“Reverence, you realize there is no match portal in this land.”

“I do,” she replied, looking down at her bare feet.

“I know what you know, but I no longer assume what you understand. So now let us review the basics: you will spend the rest of your lifespan with me, your fated mate. Understand you this?”

“Yes,” she said, fighting against the rising tide of grief in her soul.

“I am your final destination. You will never return to your civilization. You will never again see the family you had in that time. Because you are my fated mate. Understand you this?”

She nodded, too overcome with unspeakable grief to push words into his mind.

“I would have your words to assure me you understand this to be true.”

“Why?” she demanded on a choked sob. “Why do you need me to say I understand?”

“Because I thought you understood this before, but you did not. So now I will be assured,” he answered, his voice as remote and cold as the Siberian tundra they’d left behind.

Fensa would not cry again. She would remain Viking strong, Detroit fierce. “Of course I understand I’m never going to see my family again. That all hope I had of ever returning home is gone, along with that damn gate. You’re crazier than I once was if you think I haven’t figured things out by now.”

Fensa hoped to get a rise out of him. To make him feel even a tiny iota as bad as she did right now. But Xenon only continued in his same dispassionate tone. “I am your drakkon. I give you honor for the child you bore me. And even more honor for surviving his birth as you foreswore you would. For these past few rotations, that reverence alone has been enough to keep me inside my shell as you wished. But no longer. You are now aware your portal does not exist in this time. You are now aware you will live out the rest of your life with me, and with our son. We—he and I—are the only family you have left.”

“I know that,” she spat back. “I understand! However you want me to put it, I get it. You don’t have to keep rubbing it in!”

“You misunderstand my intent. I do not speak these words to cause you further pain and suffering. I merely wish to help you understand. We are all you have. Just as you and Golden Son…you are all I have.”

Now that…she didn’t understand. “Wait a second. I mean…I thought you said you brought, like, a one-hundred dragon crew with you.”

“I did say this. And that crew was called back to my home planet more than a rotation ago. We were meant to return, and report that the most advanced species here was unworthy of sanctuary. That they were little more than beasts.”

“But…that’s not true!” Fensa said, her mouth dropping open, even though she spoke no actual words outside the mind link. “We go on to become a civilization! I told you that. You know that!”

“Yes, Fated Mate. This I know, but there was no way to convey any of these details to the Royal Overload without negative consequence.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Reverence. You honored me with a son. However, on my world, this honor is deeply forbidden. I am drakkon. To be specific, I am Prince of Drakkon, second in line to the throne of all Drakkon. This means Golden Son is also now in line for the throne. And in many ways, he is more eligible than I. If my brother fails to produce an heir, the throne will pass on to the next worthy drakkon under the age of 15,000. I am only two-thousand solar rotations younger than my older brother, so it is unlikely I will be eligible for the throne when he dies. This means it would pass on to Golden Son. The throne of Drakkon is his birthright. His due. But…he is only half drakkon.”

“Ok. So what you’re saying is it’s against the law to mate with someone outside your species?”

“Not against our laws. Laws are made for things that can be fathomed. Our mate bond, even our precious son…these are against everything the drakkon know to be true. It is incomprehensible, like mating with food. It will take Drakkon a very long time to understand, and even longer to accept.”

“Are you saying Eos is in danger?”

“No,” he answered decisively. “Our son is safe. I will keep him safe. I vow this to you, Reverence. But keeping him safe means he and I must stay hidden here with you in these unsettled lands where the other drakkon will not so easily locate us. Yet the mission cannot return to Drakkon without me…so like you, I find myself without a civilization, far from my home of origin. Possibly forever. After your heart ceases to beat, I will not return to Drakkon with Golden Son. I will remain here, where I know he will be safe from those in court who would cast their lot against him. Yet despite all this, my fire is not blue.”

“But why not?” Fensa demanded, her heart tearing at the thought of all he’d given up for her, and all he would continue to give up to protect their son, long after she was gone. “You were the prince of an advanced civilization, for god’s sake! And because of me saying some stupid words at the Arizona gate, you’ve lost everything. Your home. Your mission. Everything!”

At that, the dragon turned his giant head to gaze down at her again, his usual expressionless countenance softening as he answered, “Reverence, I would rather spend one hundred solars with you and our son, than another 18,000 as a lonely Royal. I am incapable of the love of which you once described to me, but be that as it may…I am your drakkon, Reverence. Yours. Understand you this?”

It was strangely the most heartfelt, moving thing anyone had ever said to her.

“Understand you this?” Xenon repeated.

“Yes,” she replied. And she truly did.

“Then give me your touch. I would feel your hand upon my true form, as I never have before.”

Fensa really didn’t want to. But she felt she had to. As if this one act, rather than a formal apology, was the truest test of whether their relationship could recover from all that had passed between them.

He was her mate. Not her husband in the technical sense as defined by the social norms and laws of her time. But in this place, in this time…they didn’t need some ceremony or legal documentation to formalize their union. He was also the father of her child. A new kind of hybrid. Half-shifter, half-drakkon.

The best of us both, Fesna thought to herself as she finally stepped into the warm water.

Yet her hand trembled as she lifted it to touch one huge scaled knee gingerly. It felt…impossible to explain. Like a cross between steel and vulcanized rubber. Giving, but impenetrable and cold to the touch. Fensa felt the burning weight of his dragon gaze on her as she moved her hand over his scales. Towards his huge underbelly, which turned out not to be nearly as soft as it looked. Unyielding to sword, she remembered Papa saying when he’d described the battle. And so hot it felt like touching a stove window. To her surprise, Xenon’s stomach rippled, and he let out a rough snort.

She looked up at him sharply.

“Forgive me, Fated Mate,” he said inside her head. “You do honor me with your touch. But that is a very sensitive area of my body. It sits directly above my male works.”

Fensa snatched her hand away as if she’d been burned.

“Have no worry, Reverence. Drakkon are well-evolved. Nothing inappropriate will happen while I am in this form. It is not possible for me to...respond as such with any but a drakki.”

Well, thank the Lord for that, Fensa thought to herself, almost giggling out loud at the combination of sheer relief, and sense of the ridiculous that washed over her. This whole exercise was frightening enough without having to contend with a giant dragon penis. Make that two giant dragon penises, she corrected herself.

“Do you have wish to touch my crown?”

Nope, not really. But Fensa quickly brushed those thoughts aside. She should at least try. And it’s not like she’d have the chance to decline because Xenon’s body was already on the move. Gallons of warm water displaced, sloshing onto the dry ground surrounding the spring, as he stepped back, and back some more, until he was once again nearly submerged.

Turning his head fully to the side, the dragon stretched his neck out with his cheek hovering over the water. Fensa waded forward, one hand outstretched towards his “crown.” The water reached up to her shoulders before she was finally able to rest her palm against the top of Xenon’s huge head.

His crown spikes felt like rough wood, but with the same imperviousness as his skin. Fensa found herself rubbing down one of the spikes, seeking out cracks or splinters with her curious fingers.

Xenon emitted another raspy snort, and the resulting steam hit Fensa’s bare skin with the heat of several Swedish saunas.

“You honor me with your touch,” he began in the overly polite tone he usually employed before issuing a correction or pointing out a mistake. “But my crown is also very sensitive…”

Uh…ok. Wow. And once more, Fensa thanked god Xenon’s huge size, and biological programming made it impossible for him even to attempt to get with her in dragon form.

Fensa was in the process of casually removing her hand from Xenon’s spike when she felt something slide over her naked mound. Something hot and wet—well, more hot and wet than the luxurious waters of the hot spring—and forked. She could feel her eyes go wide with shock. What the—?

Before she could step away from Xenon, or even formulate any of the obvious questions that immediately sprang to mind, he said, “You will allow me to honor you in this way, Reverence. You will prove you understand I am your drakkon.”

Whoa…whoa! Paralyzed with shock, Fensa stood rooted to the spot while her mate’s large forked tongue gently explored her vulva, her slit, and her various openings from front to back. Exploring, she reminded herself. He’s just exploring. He hadn’t done anything like this to her since their very first months together at the glacier station. But no need to freak out. Nothing at all unusual or…or unsettling about having one wide tip of a dragon’s forked tongue probe her pussy. Dragon’s. Tongue. Inside. Her. Pussy.

Fensa closed her eyes against the single red eye that watched her intently, while the long tongue continued to work her below.

“You may close your eyes if you wish, Reverence. Perhaps it will help you to feel more comfortable. But soon I will ask you to gaze upon your drakkon when he honors you in this way.”

Oh, God. As wrong as his tongue felt—nasty, abrasive, way too thick—Fensa could not control the rising tide of her orgasm. Soon her legs trembled. Not with the contempt of natural born enemies, but with an orgasm as huge and as strong as her dragon mate.

By the time she finished, her face was covered in a sheen of sweat that had nothing to do with the hot spring. Only then did Xenon withdraw his tongue tip from her. Warm water rushed in to fill the now-empty space, lapping caressingly against her still pulsing vagina.

“I do honor you with this bath,” Xenon informed her, scooping up water and pouring it over her head like a blessing. Voice formal, but calm. As if he hadn’t just fucked her into an intense orgasm with his dragon tongue. “I will remain unshelled, and we will return here tomorrow. And then every day after until you burn for your drakkon as you do for his shell. Until you believe my solemn vow. Until you come to understand your drakkon as I understand my wolf…”

Understand? She could barely talk after that, much less comprehend how she’d managed to come so hard thanks to the admittedly talented tongue of a fucking dragon! A dragon who could very well slaughter all whom her father held dear.

“Shame,” he observed, voice laced with curiosity.

Fensa stiffened.

“And now…pride.” His tone was more disappointed than curious now.

“Xenon, I can’t help how I feel—” she started to protest.

“Reverence,” he interrupted.

“Yes?” she asked.

“No, Reverence. I address you not. Instead, this is how you shall address me going forward. Not by my name, but by those titles available to you as my mate. My Revered. Reverence. Treasure. Prince. Fated. Fated Mate—any of these titles may you use. But I will not hear my name cross your lips again. You will understand my nature. You will properly address my nature. And you will learn to revere me as I do you.”

“What?” she demanded. “But I thought that was something only males do on your planet!”

A beat passed, and then he reminded her, “Only when our females die in childbirth. If they live, then does a female owe her male Reverence, too. I did not demand such honor from you before because you are not drakki.”

“And I am still not drakki,” she reminded him bluntly.

“No, you are not,” he agreed. “But as you pointed out, Reverence, we are not on my planet. And here will our mateship, unorthodox though it be, adapt to new rules.”