Twin Dragons: Dragon Lords of Valdier Book 7 (3 page)

Calo had an identical missing section.
Carmen had taken his knife from his waist and knocked them both on
their asses. To add insult to injury, Ha’ven Ha’darra, had joined
in. He and Calo had ended up with the Curizan Prince across their
chests, knocking them to the ground again, before Carmen had sat on
the three of them and taken a swath of each of their hair in
victory. Of course, the fact that she was in her dragon form had
helped.

Since that day, both he and Calo had
developed a growing respect for the human female. Her intelligence,
skill, and a haunting sadness pulled at their need to protect her.
The only problem was, it also emphasized the growing emptiness that
their dragons were feeling.

“She is an amazing female,” Cree murmured as
he slid his thumb over the carved dragons on the handle of his
knife. “I wish…”

Calo sighed and rested his hand on his
twin’s shoulder. “I know. We have talked about this,” he said
quietly. “I can feel the darkness as well. My dragon is getting
more difficult to control. He hungers for a mate and refuses to be
satisfied anymore with the females I try to use to slake the
restlessness that is eating at me.”

“Mine is the same,” Cree acknowledged. “It
is getting worse, Calo. I’m not sure how much longer I can control
him. I…” He looked away from his twin, ashamed to admit what he had
come close to doing.

“It almost happened to me as well,” Calo
said. “I came close to fighting Creon for Carmen as well. Each day
gets harder. My dragon knows she is not our true mate, but he is to
the point he doesn’t care anymore. He is attracted to her
fierceness, to the sense of frailty that clings to her even though
she fights to conceal it.”

“Perhaps we should tell Creon, just in
case,” Cree suggested before he ran both of his hands through his
hair and groaned as a shaft of pain swept through him. “Goddess, my
dragon is raking my gut. He needs a mate, Calo.”

Calo closed his eyes as his own dragon
snarled and raked at him as well. A shudder went through him as it
pictured taking Carmen. As a man, he liked Carmen, but he was not
attracted to her in a sexual way.

Want a mate,
his dragon snarled,
pushing against him.
Need mate. Take female.

She is not ours to take,
Calo snapped
back, pushing down on the restless creature buried inside him.

His eyes opened when he felt the soothing
warmth of his symbiot as it pressed against him. He had not even
heard it enter their living quarters. It must have sensed his
distress. He dropped his fingers to the smooth, golden creature. A
strained smile tugged at the corner of his mouth when he realized
it had taken a form very similar to Creon’s that stayed at Carmen’s
side.

“What did she call this form again?” Calo
asked as he looked at Cree’s which had taken an identical
shape.

“A dog,” Cree said gruffly. “When this
mission is over, I am done, Calo. I… It is getting to be too
dangerous. I am sorry, brother. I have reached the end.”

Calo didn’t argue. He had made up his mind
the day before and was just trying to figure out how best to tell
his brother. A wave of relief and sorrow filled him.

“I want to see Mother and Father one last
time,” he said in an emotionless voice. “I promised Mother.”

“Just as I promised Father,” Cree responded.
He held out his hand. “Together.”

“Forever,” Calo murmured, gripping his
brother’s hand and pulling him closer. “We go together,
brother.”

Cree’s throat tightened and he nodded,
embracing Calo before stepping back. “Get some rest. I spoke to
Creon earlier. We will be at the Antrox mining area on the outer
edges of the Cardovus star system in a few hours. He wants both of
us to remain close to Carmen while he and a team search the
asteroid.”

“Perhaps it would be better if we went,”
Calo suggested tiredly. “We could…”

“No, I already suggested it,” Cree
interrupted. “Creon was insistent that we stay with Carmen. He says
he trusts no others.”

Calo gave a short, bitter laugh. “If he only
knew,” he muttered before he pulled off his shirt and started
walking toward the cleansing unit. “I’ll be ready.”

Cree watched as his brother slammed his palm
on the access panel to the door of the cleansing unit. Calo’s
admittance that he was losing control of his dragon was alarming.
His brother had always been the easier-going one out of the two of
them.

He fingered the knife at his waist. When it
came time, he would slit his brother’s throat before Calo knew what
was happening. He knew his twin thought that he could follow
through on their agreement, but he also could feel the
reluctance.

Pushing the dark thoughts to the back of his
mind, he pressed the comlink linking him to Carmen. He sighed when
it showed she was in her and Creon’s living quarters. He hoped she
stayed there for the rest of the evening. He was barely hanging on
and needed to work out. Perhaps he could talk Ha’ven into a match
in the training room.

“We don’t have much left, Mel,” Cal said in
his scratchy voice. “A couple day’s food, a few days longer of
water if we conserve it. The replicator that you found has finally
died.”

Melina looked at the defeated curve of her
grandfather’s shoulders. He had been working on the lone replicator
for the past three days, trying to get it to work again. They were
living on the things that Melina had hidden over the past couple of
months in various nooks and crannies that she had found wandering
the maze of tunnels throughout the asteroid that had been their
home for the past four years.

“It will be alright, Gramps,” she replied,
laying her hand on his shoulder. “I can search again. There has to
be something they left behind.”

Cal looked grimly at his twenty year old
granddaughter. She wasn’t wearing the oversize hat that she
normally wore to hide her rich, dark brown hair. It was growing
longer and showed off how beautiful she was becoming, just like her
mother and grandmother at that age.

For years, he had been forced to cut it
short to hide the fact that Melina was a girl. It helped that she
was small-boned. He knew the last few years she had started binding
her chest to hide her developing figure from the creatures holding
them.

It was dangerous enough with the damn aliens
thinking Melina was a male. It would have been deadly for her if
they had suspected she was a female. She would have been used in
ways that Cal refused to even think about.

His tired eyes swept over the small cave
that had been their living quarters since they had been kidnapped
from Earth. The trader that had taken them had sold him and Melina
to the Antrox, a reptilian species known for their greed for making
profits. They used slave labor to mine the ore from asteroids. Once
the ore ran out, they abandoned the asteroid taking everything of
value with them.

He and a handful of other men had been
considered too old and feeble or too ill to take when they left two
months ago. They had been given a few days of food and water
between them. Cal suspected that was done to speed along their
deaths. The guards who delivered the items knew that those left
behind would fight to the death to secure the small amount of food
and water for themselves.

The guard had been right. Cal watched as the
remaining men attacked each other. He was more worried about
finding Melina. His fear that she had been taken overrode any other
thoughts. He eventually found her hiding in one of the abandoned
tunnels along with an infant Pactor that had been born with a birth
defect.

“They would have killed it, Gramps,” she had
told him as she stroked the beast that would grow to the size of a
small elephant. “Just because its leg isn’t right. She is such a
sweetheart, I couldn’t let them kill her.”

He remembered the pleading look in her eyes.
He had been so relieved that she had managed to escape being taken
away from him, he didn’t have the heart to tell her there wasn’t
any food for them, much less a Pactor that could eat their weight
in food in a week.

She had surprised him with her
resourcefulness, though. She had found an old replicator that had
been tossed aside to be fixed. She had also stashed parts, dried
food, and water and hidden them around the mine. That
resourcefulness had given them the ability to survive longer than
any of the others.

Now, their luck was over. If they killed the
Pactor, they could survive for a few weeks longer. Unfortunately,
he wasn’t sure the environmental system would last that long. The
bastards had left that because there was a chance they could sell
the asteroid to another business. What they didn’t leave were the
parts to clean the filtration system. One by one, he had been
closing off sections as the air became unstable.

A human couldn’t survive long without food,
water, and fresh air. He cleared his throat. He wouldn’t give up
until there was absolutely no hope at all. It was Melina that kept
him going. He was determined to find a way to get her back to Earth
so she could live a normal life.

“I’ll help you,” Cal said, straightening his
shoulders. “We can start in the discard area. We’ll see if there
might be another replicator.”

Melina smiled and nodded. “Then we can move
up. There are miles of tunnels still open. I’m sure we’ll find
something. We always do.”

“Yeah, we always do,” Cal mumbled. “We can
start in the morn….”

Cal broke off and his eyes widened as the
lights flickered. The faint sound of an alarm warning that an outer
door was about to open sounded in the distance. It was the door
leading to the landing bay.

“Gramps?” Melina whispered, her voice filled
with hope and fear. “Do you think they’ve come back?”

“Hide, Melina,” her grandfather ordered.
“Don’t come out unless I call you.”

Melina nodded as she picked up her hat and
slammed it down over her head. She ran her hand under the chin of
the Pactor and tapped the small beast to show she wanted her to
come. She paused at the entrance to their living quarters and bit
her lip.

“Gramps,” she said, turning to look at him
again. “Be careful.”

Cal’s eyes softened as he saw the
vulnerability in Mel’s eyes. It wasn’t right for a beautiful young
woman to have to live like this. She had so much love to give. So
much life ahead of her to live for. If there was a chance, any
chance, of giving her back a normal life, he would risk it.

“Go, child,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

Melina nodded her head again and hurried
down the passageway. There was a section that was long and dark not
far from the landing bay. She scooped up a long metal pipe as she
hurried by. If her grandfather needed her, she would be there.

“You’ll help us too, won’t you, girl?”
Melina asked under her breath. “You’ll show whoever it is not to
mess with us girls or we’ll kick some serious ass.”

The Pactor snorted in agreement as she
hobbled after Melina. Mel couldn’t stop the small giggle that
escaped her. She knew she was small for her age, partly due to
genetics, but mostly due to not having a lot to eat over the last
four years. The image of her and the lame Pactor being any kind of
an adversary was hilarious. Whoever they confronted would more than
likely fall over in a fit of laughter than fear.

*.*.*

“You should have let Cree and Calo come,”
Ha’ven commented as he rolled his shoulder.

Creon glanced at Ha’ven with a raised
eyebrow. He knew that Cree, Calo and Ha’ven had developed an
unusual friendship after the Great War. He paused when he thought
of his own relationship with the Curizan Prince.

Maybe not too unusual,
he thought as
he noticed Ha’ven rolling his left shoulder again.

“You been battling them again?” Creon asked
with a grin.

Ha’ven answered Creon with a grin of his
own. “Cree needed to let off some energy. Your mate has taught him
some new moves.”

Creon’s laughter echoed through the
cavernous landing bay area as the platform on the attack shuttle
lowered. All scans from the
Horizon
showed that there were
no transports on the asteroid and minimal life support systems. He
doubted that Vox, the cat-shifting Sarafin King and a close friend
of his and Ha’ven’s was here. Still, the
Horizon
had picked
up a couple of heat signatures. Whoever was manning the station
might have information that could help them.

“I told you she was incredible,” Creon
responded as his eyes swept the area. He nodded to several other
men to spread out and began searching the mine. “You should see if
you can find a mate like her.”

“Me? A mate?” Ha’ven replied in horror.
“Never! There isn’t a woman alive in the universe that could
capture my heart.”

Creon paused and looked at his friend. There
was more behind his words than the lighthearted joking. He had felt
an increasing restlessness and something else, almost like
suppressed energy about to explode, in his friend.

“Is everything alright?” He asked quietly,
studying Ha’ven closely.

Ha’ven laughed and punched Creon in the arm.
“You aren’t getting soft on me, are you? Mates can do that to you
if you aren’t careful.”

Creon studied his friend for a moment more
before he shook his head. “No, I’m not getting soft,” he replied,
turning his attention back to the empty landing bay. “If I did,
Carmen would kick my ass.”

“I can believe that,” Ha’ven muttered.
“There is someone here.”

Creon nodded. He had smelled the faint odor
as well. He waved his hand and several warriors moved out to fan
the sides of the landing bay as a figure slowly stepped through the
doorway cut into the rock. He relaxed his stance when he saw it was
an older version of a male with features similar to his mate.