Alien Dragon's Mate: Braxan (Science Fiction Alien/BBW Romance) (3 page)

But it had never done anything like this.

Who was she? And why
here?
The humans he and the three other princes had attacked on this remote planet was the enemy, his emperor had said. They were evil and inferior. Destroying them would be doing everyone a favor, the old, silvery dragon had scoffed.

Braxan wasn't sure who was evil. Their ugly allies, who called themselves the Pirgks, seemed much more evil to him. This other army – they were humans. The Pirgks were not. Definitely not.

She had stood by a wounded compatriot. Not to loot her belongings while she died, but to heal. Would an evil species do something like that? He had seen enough of the Pirgks' actions to know that none of them would ever have done anything like it. Whenever they took notice of a fallen friend, they would only stop to loot the dying warrior of anything of value.

Flame, she was magnificent. She stood up to him and didn't cower. She looked him right in the eyes as if she was his
equal
. The audacity! Her hair, blown back by the air vortexes created by his wings. Her face, pale with just a little hint of a tan. Her eyes, brown and warm, but with a defiant fire in them that he couldn't remember having seen anywhere else before. Her shape, luxurious and round in a way that had done something to the dragon that he had never felt before, something profound. Her face, so soft and delicate it made his world spin.

He had forgotten all about the battle and had hung in the air, just taking her in and enjoying it. And it had changed him. The dragon he was now was different.

“You are mine,” he had said. “I will come for you.” And it was true. He meant it. The dragon in him had never said anything like that before. It was almost as if ...

No. Impossible. The Mate could not be found among alien beings, no matter how human. A dragon's mate must be a female Ultraco, a dragoness who was able to shift into her dragon form, but rarely did.

No Ultraco female Braxan had ever seen could compete with the attractiveness of this human female.

Could she truly be his Mate?

She had injured him, taken him by surprise. That in itself was staggering. A human surprising a dragon? Unheard of. But his chest was numb where she had shot him.

She had probably felt mesmerized by him. But did she realize that he had also been hypnotized by her? To the point where he had ignored the obvious danger from her gun and let her fire at him? And even hit him?

He was not in control of his own dragon nature. Sometimes it obeyed him, sometimes its dragon instincts took over and he just had to hang on for the ride. He had sometimes tried to fight it, but the most he had ever achieved that way was to aggravate it and make it sulk. It would still do what it wanted, but it wouldn't enjoy it. And neither would he. He had learned during childhood that it was better to let it roam free, to fully inhabit it when it did its thing and enjoy it. That would give him the best thrills of his life – just pure enjoyment that he could feel for days after, untainted by guilt or thoughts of tomorrow. The dragon lived in the here and now and not anywhere else. Exhilaration was not the word. It was much more than that.

He was the dragon, and he was separate from it. It rewarded him when he gave it what it wanted. And now, he knew, it wanted
her
.

And so did he.

The other dragon princes in his flight kept sending him curious glances as they soared, cleared the atmosphere, stretched their wings back so the tips just dipped into the Other and set a course for their spaceship in orbit. He demonstratively didn't meet their gazes.

He had to think, and to do that he had to get back in his human form. The dragon was not a thinker. It was pure instinct and sensation. Killing the Pirgks who had tried to sneak up on the woman was its idea. It was a strange thing to do.

Then, when he had thought, maybe he would check to make sure.

The idea of seeing her again sent a spark of exhilaration through him.

Space was black around them, and the stars were coming out in all their different colors. The dragon saw them as a glittering hoard of gemstones, unclaimed. He saw them as stars – distant suns where he might go someday.

With her. If not, the experience would be empty of meaning.

Yes, he definitely had to see her again.

And soon.

- A
melia -

“You saved her life, no doubt about it.” Carl studied his pad and made a note. “You may be the first to use that burn sheet like that. It worked, too.”

Jean was unconscious in the intensive care unit of the medical dome. She was the only one there. The defenders who had been burned by the dragons had died instantly and there was only charcoal left of them.

Amelia's hands had stopped shaking, finally. But she was still worried. “It was the only thing I had that would cover the wound at all. I just took a chance.”

Carl nodded. “The nanogel sealed it and sucked the toxins out. I had no idea the burn sheet could do that.”

“But is she okay otherwise?”

The chief medic shook his head. “She got rough treatment from the Pirgks. Bruises everywhere. Clear signs of sexual abuse, too. I'll keep her sedated for a little while. Her body needs rest. Her escape must have been extremely hard on her. And that's before she got cut by a blade of some kind.”

A chill ran down Amelia's back. She could only imagine what Jean must have been through since she was kidnapped when the Pirgks attacked the base the first time and took everyone by surprise.

But at least the battle was over for now. The Pirgks had retreated again, even if six of the base defenders had died in the dragon attack. Probably they had been confused that the dragons hadn't finished the job and the golden one had even killed some of them.

Amelia shuddered again. She had a pretty good idea what those six Pirgks might have had in mind. And Jean's fate was not one she was eager to live through.

“I hope she will be okay,” she said simply.. She hadn't known Jean that well before the biologist was kidnapped months before, but they were all in this together. 

Carl checked on the IV rig that was hooked up to the unconscious woman. “She will be. Physically, anyway. Mentally – who knows. But where there's life, there's hope. I would say she has both of those now, and that's because of you. One thing is going out there to get her, which was probably insane. But your creativity with the burn sheet worked just the way it should. Any time you want to switch from Admin to Medic, there's a spare set of scrubs just waiting for you right here.”

Amelia knew it was close to the ultimate compliment, coming from the otherwise aloof chief medic.

“Thanks, doc,” she said. “I'll think about it.”

She left the medical dome and walked through the system of interconnected above-ground tunnels and domes that was Belzon Base. The people she met were all obviously shocked by what had happened. They had all seen video recordings of the dragon attack, and probably they all realized that the base might not survive much longer.

A mother and a little girl came the other way, holding hands. “Hi, Miss Moore,” the girl yelled brightly down the hallway, and her voice reverberated from the curved white walls.

“Hi, Bonnie,” Amelia called right back. “And Mrs. Marcus,” she added.

The girl's eyes were shining up at her. “Did you slay a dragon, Miss Moore?”

Amelia scratched her chin, not sure about how much she should tell the eight-year-old. “Um... I'm not sure...” she said, and glanced at Bonnie's mother. The kids on the base were usually not told about the battles with the Pirgks, so they didn't have to worry. But this thing with the dragons might be hard to hide from them.

“Miss Moore helped the dragons fly away,” Bonnie's mother explained with a significant look at Amelia.

“That's right,” Amelia said. She got it – the kids had somehow been told that there had been dragons, but they didn't know the whole story. “They flew home, I think.”

She was glad she didn't have kids of her own right now. It would be very hard to hide something like the dragon attack from them on a small base like this, where everyone knew everyone else.

Mrs. Marcus obviously wanted to keep this conversation to a minimum. She raised her eyebrows apologetically, gave Amelia a little smile and pulled her daughter with her down the corridor. “Bye bye,” Bonnie said and waved.

Amelia winked and waved back, and then had to support herself with one hand on the wall. If those dragons attacked again, she didn't want to even think about the children on the base. There was only about twenty of them, but they were an important and much loved part of the little society on the base. They made it seem like a real community, introducing life and noise and softness into the social fabric of the base. Each child got a lot of attention from all the adults, and it looked like a pretty good way to grow up.

Her comms unit beeped. Base commander Hanson was calling her into his office.

She sat down in front of his desk. He was never big on ceremony or protocol. No one had time for that on a busy planetary base many light years from Earth.

“Good work,” he said. “You were right about the Pirgks. And you saved Jean's life, Carl tells me. Is that the gun?”

Amelia still had the broken railgun in her hand. She knew it was worth more than she made in two years, and it had seemed wrong to leave it out on the sand. So when the medics had come running to help her get Jean inside, she had brought it back with her.

She placed it on Hanson's desk. “I think I broke it.”

Hanson examined it. “Emergency power will do that. The bolt must have broken the sound barrier while still inside the barrel. But you shot one dragon and probably cut off their attack. One gun broken is a cheap price to pay for that.”

The base commander was a good man, Amelia had long since decided. But he was a civilian like all of them, and not cut out for military command. He was sometimes overwhelmed in even pretty simple battles with the Pirgks. She saw no reason to confront him with what had happened earlier. He knew as well as she did that if he had taken her recommendation, the six dead defenders would probably have survived.

Probably. If the dragons hadn't attacked the base itself. The way they had taken out the gun turrets, it looked like they could probably burn it to the ground in one pass.

Hanson put the gun down on his desk. “You have any idea what happened? I mean, why was that thing so interested in you?”

Amelia shrugged. “I honestly have no idea at all. It was like he ... just saw me and then came swooshing. Or maybe he saw Jean?”

“Maybe. We may never know. You and she were the closest ones to it. Could it have been a drone? Some kind of remote controlled thing? Or even some kind of aircraft?”

You are mine. I will come for you.
Amelia shook her head. “No way. That thing was alive. No doubt about it. You can probably still see the drops of blood where they fell on the sand.”

Hanson nodded. “We'll collect any blood that fell and analyze it. Anything else you saw that may not get picked up by the cameras? Did it make any sounds? Did it smell?”

You challenge me!
Amelia hesitated. For some reason she didn't want to tell Hanson about the things the dragon had said into her thoughts. That felt ... private, like something that was only between her and
him
and no one else. “There was nothing special. No smells. It hung there and looked at me until I shot it. Then it burned those Pirgks that were sneaking up on us.”

Hanson sighed. “That may be the weirdest thing about this whole extremely weird situation. They attacked their own allies. If they were allies. But that's what it looked like.”

The base commander looked out a small window. “I can't even begin to understand what happened today. I'm honestly stunned by the loss of six of our own. Burned instantly. By
dragons
. I've asked HQ for ships to evacuate us immediately, but the closest ship is ten days out. And that's just a small surveying ship. We'll have to try to survive for at least two weeks before we can be rescued.”

Amelia saw the commander's shoulders slump. He saw it as hopeless.

“We still have full stores of food,” she reminded him. “The biodomes are working at full capacity. If we can make enough ammunition to last us for the next Pirgk attacks, we stand a pretty decent chance of making it.”

Hanson kept staring out the window. “The Pirgk attacks we can probably handle. The dragons ... well, you saw what happened. We had two railguns to start with, and now we have one. I doubt any of them will just hang still for a shot the way yours did.”

Amelia got worried. Not so much for the base as for Hanson's negative thinking. “I think we can handle that, too. We know nothing about those dragons. They killed six of ours and five of the Pirgks. We can't be sure they're on the same side.”

Hanson took a deep breath. “I'm not even sure it matters. Okay, I have to set up some plans for how to defend the base against both Pirgks and dragons, it seems. I suppose we can cram everyone into the control center and hope the dome holds against dragon fire.”

Amelia left his office and wandered towards her cabin.

“Oh my
god
, it's the dragon girl!” a voice said behind her, and Amelia brightened as she turned.

“Hi, Daria. I guess news travels fast, huh?”

Daria came in close and gave her a quick hug, like always. She was Amelia's best friend on the base. She worked in the science section, but as part of her conditions for signing up for colonizing duties she had wrangled a part time job in the kitchen.  They had bonded once and for all over their shared love of Italian food and ancient rom-com movies, and Daria's various pasta dishes were all to die for.

And now, her eyes shone in excitement almost like Bonnie's had. “The news that you saved everybody's lives and shot a damn
dragon
out of the sky? Isn't that the kind of news that pretty much
has
to travel at the speed of light?”

Amelia scratched her chin. “I guess. I don't think I shot him out of the sky, though.”