PAST…

I’m fishing by Lake Tuli, sleepy and content, when Belfox walks up. “May I join you?”

Strange. I’m Midborn. Belfox, who is Highborn, has never shown any interest in me until now. Unlike Dariux and Zunix, I don’t have tech.

I don’t want his company. I just want to lean back against a tree trunk, close my eyes, and think of the small human woman who has upended my life in the last three weeks. Felicity Rollins. What I don’t want to do is talk to a Draekon I’ve never had much use for.

Before the human women arrived in camp, I would have told him to go away. But Liorax is trying to get us to cooperate with each other. If not for your own sake, then for your mates, he said sternly.

I incline my head in agreement, and he sits down next to me. “I found something,” he says quietly, looking around to make sure that we’re alone.

If he’s going to talk, he will scare away the fish. There’s a kind that swims only in Lake Tuli, a green and blue creature about the size of my forearm. Felicity adores the taste of its flesh, and even if it involves sitting here all afternoon, I intend to catch one for her.

Perhaps if I pretend to be interested, he’ll go away quickly, and I can get back to fishing. “What was it?”

“A box. A diarmod box. Herrix and I opened it.” He pauses for emphasis. “It has tech.”

So what? Zunix and Dariux have tech. Tech might make our lives slightly easier, but it won’t allow us to escape from here. An asteroid belt surrounds the prison planet, and no ship can get through it unscathed.

“What kind?” I pose the question he obviously wants me to ask.

“There were a lot of parts,” he replies. “It was marked with a number. Seven. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve reached the conclusion that we’re meant to find at least seven of these boxes. But there was one thing you’d be interested in. A communicator.”

My heart stops beating for an instant. A communicator. For the first few years on the prison planet, I would have sold my soul for one. Some way to find out if she’s okay. My little baby, the one I couldn’t find or claim. My daughter Mar’vi.

Her mother was dead, her father exiled. She would have ended up in an orphanage. She would be grown now, just entering the prime of her life.

Felicity’s parents abandoned her, and that wound has stayed with my mate her entire life. Would it be the same with Mar’vi? Does she think that her father didn’t care? That he—I—made a choice to leave her to grow up alone?

I suddenly, desperately want to talk to her. To tell her how sorry I am that I wasn’t there. To explain that I would have come for her if I’d been able to. To tell her that there’s not a day that goes by that I’m not consumed with sorrow and regret.

“It’s not one equipped for a live feed, of course,” Belfox continues. “But you once told me that you’d do anything for a communicator, so naturally, when I found it, I thought of you.”

I don’t remember saying anything to Belfox. “I did?”

“A long time ago,” he replies. “You were drunk.”

I still don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter. “What do you want, Belfox?”

He gives me a sidelong look. “Your mate still lives with the other humans. You haven’t completed the mating bond.”

“There is no hurry.” My dragon disagrees, but the humans have been through enough, and I would never pressure a woman I care about. I want Felicity to choose us freely, because her heart is telling her to.

“In that case, for the moment, all I want is your silence. Nobody hears that I’ve found this.”

I frown. “Every single one of us was torn from our families,” I reply. “A communicator is a miracle, one that will help us reach out to the people we most care about. Why would you hide that you have it?”

“I have my reasons,” he replies. “If you tell anyone, I will destroy it.”

Belfox has been spending too much time around the bitter, poisonous Herrix, and it has changed him. He was always proud, too concerned with blood status, a relic from a world that no longer wanted us, but now, he’s crossed over into malice.

A chance to talk to Mar’vi, to try and make amends for sixty-five years of absence.

The rest of his words sink in. For the moment, all I want is your silence. “What else do you want?”

He gives me a piercing look. “Do I have your word that you’ll keep quiet about this?”

“I have no secrets from Xanthox or Felicity.”

“Xanthox you can tell,” he concedes. “But not the human. If she tells one of the others, who tells one of their mates… No. It’s too risky.”

I don’t like the idea of keeping secrets from her, but I nod reluctantly. “Fine.”

“I want your help finding the other boxes.”

“Of course.”

He rolls his eyes. “The boxes will be scattered all over the desert to the east,” he says. “You won’t be able to walk. You’ll need to fly.”

And in order to do that, Felicity, Xanthox, and I must complete the mating bond.

“You have a mate of your own,” I reply, thinking of the red-haired human that giggles a lot. “Why don’t you woo her?”

“A human?” His expression is disgusted. “I am a Highborn of Zoraht. No matter what the beast inside me insists, I’m not going to rut with her. I will not defile myself.”

For Caeron’s sake. Some of these Highborn are so rigid that they can’t see a miracle if it’s right in front of their faces. We’re Draekons, exiled for the rest of our lives to a prison planet. We’ve been sent to a bitter and hostile world, a world in which there are no women so that there’s no chance we can pass our defective genes on to a future generation. Belfox is clinging onto a past of glory, clinging to the rules of an Empire that has thoroughly rejected him.

A human mate is the best thing that could ever happen to him, and he’s too inflexible, too prejudiced to see it. What a fool.

But this isn’t my problem, and if this is indeed the way he thinks, the human woman would be better off without him. “Fine,” I say again. “When I complete the mating bond, I will help you in your quest.” I take a deep breath. “When can I use the communicator?”

His lips thin into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “When you’ve completed the mating bond, of course,” he says. “Until then, you’re useless to me.”

* * *

PRESENT…

Felicity, Xanthox, and I have eaten so many meals, sitting out here on the roof, under the starry sky. Until that last week, we’d known nothing but happiness here.

I really hope we can recapture that lost magic once again.

I’ve made so many mistakes. I allied with the wrong people. I attacked the Firstborn, and I am grateful beyond measure that he has forgiven me for it. Arax is clearly the leader of his camp, and I don’t want Felicity to be affected in any way by my foolishness.

I bring the cooked detsena, seasoned with the herbs from Felicity’s pouch up to the roof. Xanthox follows with a plate of cooked greens and some pickled vegetables.

Felicity is standing in the middle of the roof, with a cup of tea in her hands, staring at the stars. “Do you think there are going to be more ships?” she asks, her voice quiet.

I can’t lie to her; I’ve done enough of that. “Probably. The Head of the Council of Scientists is searching for his daughter, and the High Emperor is looking for his betrothed. These are powerful men, not used to their will being thwarted.”

If one of those ships has a working communicator, then I can at least get a message to Mar’vi. One final message to try to explain the inexplicable. To tell her how sorry I am about the way things turned out.

She sighs. “So what do we do? Wait to die?”

We were sent here to die. For sixty-five years, we existed without hope. Then the human women crashed here, and my world changed. I found Felicity.

“There’s always hope,” Xanthox tells her softly. “There’s always a way forward, little one, and we’ll find it. After all, Dariux might have already found Raiht’vi. Thrax will eventually succeed in assembling the Cloakship. And when that’s done, maybe Raiht’vi will leave the prison planet of her own free will. Once she’s back in the homeworld, our lives will return to normal.”

“Whatever normal means here,” she replies. She reaches forward for a piece of the crabmeat. “God, this is good. I missed this.”

She’s right. Our lives haven’t been normal for a very long time, so much so that I don’t even know what the word means.

But my heart aches for a sense of companionship, of belonging, of family. I thought I had it with Felicity and Xanthox.

I’ve ruined everything, not just for myself, but for Xanthox too. It was my desire to talk to Mar’vi that started me down a path that has led us to this moment.

It takes all the courage I possess to cling to hope. Felicity agreed to one week. She’s not smiling yet, but she’s here with us, talking and eating.

It’s far more than I deserve. It’s a start.