Alien Dragon's Spawn (Dragons of Arcturus Book 1) Read online

  Was it weird? Very.

  But part of her actually liked it. A different kind of child from a different kind of daddy. A brutal daddy who was protective beyond measure—her very own dragon protector.

  Kat knew she would love her baby with every fiber of her being, and she knew that Skal felt the same way.

  Her dragon mate’s strong, scaled hand rubbed her rounded tummy affectionately.

  “Long ago, before the oldest recorded history of Arcturus, we dragons evolved to breed with other species. By integrating other creatures’ genes into our own, we have strengthened our bloodlines, become more resistant to mutations and disease.”

  This idea fascinated Katrine. If the dragon’s simply laid their eggs in other creatures parasitically, it could lead to stagnation of their lineage through the accumulation of deleterious mutations over time. But by incorporating other genetic material into their code, their offspring would have a better rate of adaptation to ever-changing environments.

  Her dragon mate was even more impressive than she had first realized.

  Katrine wondered what other secrets he held beneath his scaly exterior.

  “Skal,” she whispered. “Tell me about your homeworld. Tell me about Arcturus.”

  She sensed a sudden tension in the muscles cradling her body.

  “Arcturus was not world,” Skal reminded her. “It was a star.”

  The reason for Skal’s tension began to dawn on Katrine.

  “Was?”

  Skal’s sighed deeply. His rib cage expanded and contracted with his breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Kat said. “We don’t have to talk about it…”

  “No, it’s okay,” Skal answered. “I want to tell you.”

  Outside, the storm still wailed. The fire crackled and muttered on the hearth, casting trembling shadows over the carved dome of the ceiling. Skal took another deep, ragged breath and continued.

  “Arcturus was a giant red star, far away from here, on the other side of this galaxy. Five planets orbited that red star, and they were home to an empire of dragons. My planet was the greatest of these, the fire planet Megatherion…”

  Katrine listened intently as Skal spoke proudly of his home. He told her of the great cities of Megatherion and the other planets of Arcturus. Vast, towering cities of crystal and mirrored chrome that glittered in the sun and reflected the red lakes of fire. As Katrine pictured these shining cities in her mind’s eye, she thought of that hoard of treasure in the chamber below.

  Is that why Skal collected shiny things? Nostalgia for his homeworld?

  As the tale went on, Skal’s voice darkened like smoke in his throat. Katrine sensed the deep sadness emanating from her mate as he told her about the downfall of the Arcturan Empire. The Emperor had died unexpectedly without an heir, and a terrible war had broken out between the five worlds of Arcturus.

  There was a sort of interplanetary arms race as the sorcerers of the five worlds competed to create new and more destructive magical weapons. According to Skal, dragons drew their magical energy from sunlight. In the case of Arcturus, the war was so brutal and the spells of the sorcerers so intense that the red star was sucked dry.

  In the end, all that was left was a black sun, smoldering like a burnt-out ember.

  The kingdoms fell. The empire was broken. The surviving dragons were scattered across the galaxy, seeking other worlds to inhabit.

  “In the aftermath of that war,” Skal concluded somberly, “A covenant was created between all dragons. It is now forbidden for any dragon to pit his magic against another of his kind.”

  He expelled one last bitter, juddering sigh, as if both sad and relieved to conclude his tale.

  “It hardly matters now,” he muttered. “The covenant was too little too late. Our great empire was lost, our kind scattered.”

  Katrine shifted against him. She reached up to stroke his solemn, handsome face.

  “Skal, I’m so sorry. But I’m happy you survived.”

  He smiled sadly.

  “I was very young when the war broke out. I wanted to stay and fight, but my parents sent me away to another star system for safety. I never saw them again. They both died in the war, and later, when I was old enough to fly the cosmos, I migrated here to this world with others of my kind.”

  His yellow, slitted eyes were angled upward at the stone ceiling but seemed to look straight through it. Katrine wondered if his old homeworld lay drifting in that direction.

  “Sometimes, I used to wish I had stayed and died on Megatherion.”

  Survivor’s guilt.

  Skal’s words panged Katrine’s heart like the stab of a needle. She understood about guilt. After all, it was her fault her friends and colleagues had all ended up on this planet.

  A moment later, Skal turned and gazed down at her, embers of a new hope sizzling behind his yellow eyes.

  “But I don’t feel that way anymore.” He stroked her cheek, her neck, her naked breasts, her swollen baby bump. “Not since I met you, my atma. My Kat. It was Fate that brought us both together here in this place. I know it was Fate. Even before I saw you, I dreamed of your scent.”

  Skal’s words and touch heated Katrine’s skin and sped her blood, sending it to her sensitive places—her stiffening nipples, her hungry lips, between her legs.

  Her dragon mate was right. It had to be Fate. Kate had never felt a connection like this before.

  After all, hadn’t she dreamed of him too, on her own distant homeworld so far away?

  And now, here she was, in his arms, in his nest.

  Skal drew her body closer to his, and Katrine glided her hand down his torso, letting her fingertips ripple over the ridges of his abdomen.

  “Um, Skal?”

  “Yes, atma?”

  Her fingers traveled lower. She traced a winding vein that led to his root.

  “Now that you’ve, you know, implanted your egg inside me…does that mean we can’t do it anymore?”

  “Do what?”

  Katrine’s fingers followed the veins of his rapidly swelling member. She circled him, gripped his hardness, stroked him.

  “Fuck…”

  With a pleased growl, Skal rolled his naked body on top of hers again, trapping her beneath his muscled bulk. Katrine’s nose filled with the masculine firewood musk of his body. His heat warmed her.

  “The egg has been implanted, yes. But now it must be nourished.”

  “Nourished?”

  Katrine tugged harder at Skal’s astonishing dick, savoring the way the supple sleeve of his outer skin slipped and shifted over the hot stone of his inner core."

  “That’s right,” Skal purred. “The egg must be bathed in nutrients to grow. I will need to fill you with my protein fluid several times a day.” He rubbed against her, smearing her opening with said fluid. “Will you be able to withstand this, my little atma?”

  “If I must.”

  She raised her hips, humping her swollen parting against his hard, drooling shaft. The dragon grinned and growled, low and throaty. He bent his face to kiss her.

  Just before their lips connected he paused, raised his head.

  “Skal?” Katrine whined. “What are you doing?”

  The dragon man cocked his head, listening.

  “Katrine, do you hear that?”

  She listened too. The only sounds were the sizzle of the fire and the whisper of their breathing.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  “Exactly. The storm has ended.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The fury of the storm had cleansed the world, chasing away the thick layer of smoke that had previously hung over the mountains and plains like a pall. The evening sun, about the same size as Earth’s hung low and ripe in the west, smearing the sky with streaks of vibrant orange and pink and drawing long shadows across the landscape.

  Skal was now in his full dragon form, and Katrine sat straddling the muscles of his back. She was dressed once again in her alien armor
for protection, and she carried her lightning pistol strapped to her hip. The cool, high-altitude wind ghosted softly over her bare legs and arms.

  They were thousands of feet in the air, and Katrine’s stomach tightened with that roller-coaster tension—excitement and fear mixed together.

  Her fingers bit at the meat of the dragon’s neck as she held on for dear life. But she knew that her mate would never let her fall.

  She tried her best to enjoy the incredible view of the alien landscape—black sand plains and craggy mountains hemmed with shadowy forests, all of it gilded with the light of the declining sun.

  In the distance, plumes of smoke caught the light.

  What could that be?

  “The village where you were taken,” Skal answered, as if sensing her question. “Mordragg.”

  It took Katrine a moment to understand what Skal was getting at. Did he mean that the other dragon, Mordragg, had set fire to the village? But why would he do that? Simply out of pure evilness, or was there another reason.

  She wanted to ask, but it was too difficult to converse under these conditions. If she tried to speak, the wind ripped her voice away. She could hear Skal speak only because he was so loud, and his head was positioned upwind.

  Besides, they had more important things to attend to.

  Skal soared over the forest, moving in broad circles like a condor so that Katrine good get a good view. It did not take long for her to find what she was looking for.

  She patted the dragon’s shoulder, and when he turned to look back at her with a yellow eye, she pointed.

  “There!” Katrine shouted.

  She was uncertain if Skal could even hear her over the rush of the wind, but the dragon got the message just the same and set a course for the place Katrine had indicated.

  It was a cluster of giant boulders emerging from the tops of the trees like warts poking through a scraggly beard.

  Even though she had not seen it from the air before, Katrine knew this must be the place where she had first taken shelter with Nora and Blair.

  Skal swooped down and landed atop one of these boulders. Katrine clambered down from his back and pulled her helmet away, dropping it at her feet.

  “Nora!” she yelled as loud as she could. “Blair! Can you hear me?”

  When there was no answer, an icy feeling clutched her heart. She scrambled down the side of the boulder, picking her way among the footholds and crags until she reached the ground.

  “Kat, be careful,” Skal called after her.

  She shouted for them again.

  “Nora! Blair!”

  Skal plucked up Katrine’s dropped helmet and crawled, lizard-like down the side of the boulder. He stood beside Katrine, sniffing the air.

  “I smell…humans.”

  The dragon led the way, snuffling the ground every few yards, until at last they came to a shallow cavity at the base of one particularly large smooth boulder.

  “This is it!” Katrine shouted excitedly.

  But the shelter was empty. Nora and Blair were nowhere to be seen. She tried to keep herself calm. Maybe they had simply ventured out in search of food or water.

  Katrine scanned her eyes around the dirty floor of the little cave. She saw some fruit pits that looked like they came from the same kind darkplums Skal had brought her. That gave her hope.

  She also noticed a crushed out cigarette butt—the one that she had smoked before going out to forage.

  Funny. She hadn’t had a cigarette in a while now, and she didn’t even feel any cravings. That was a silver lining to the situation.

  Then Katrine’s eyes fell upon something else on the ground. A big bright red feather like a macaw’s. She plucked it between her fingers and examined it.

  The priestess.

  “Skal,” Katrine whispered, sensing her mate’s massive presence behind her. “Skal, I’ve seen feathers like this before. There was a woman with the human villagers, some kind of witch or priestess, and she wore feathers like this in her headdress...”

  Katrine noticed other things in the dust as well. Multiple footprints and signs of a struggle. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Oh no,” she muttered. “No, no. Skal, they were taken by the villagers.”

  A renewed sense of guilt surged over her. Her friends had been captured by the primitive villagers, and there was no telling what was happening to them now. No telling if they were even still alive. She felt especially sorry for Nora, imagining the utter fear that the blind woman must have undergone since arriving on this alien planet.

  And it was all her fault.

  Katrine should have stopped Petra when she had the chance. Then she should not have wandered off and left the others alone. And finally, she should not have dallied so long in the mountain with her dragon, storm or no storm.

  Skal nudged her armored shoulder with his red muzzle.

  “Don’t fret, Katrine,” he rumbled. He handed her the alien helmet again. “Come, there may still be time, but we must—“

  His words trailed off. He cocked his head, listening again.

  “Skal, what is it?”

  For a moment all Katrine could hear was the soughing of the wind in the trees, the rustle and clatter of the nodding limbs, the distant birdlike warble of some small creature.

  She listened more closely, and then she heard it. A different, unnatural rhythm throbbing behind the sounds of the forest.

  The drums had started again.

  CHAPTER 27

  The sun had dropped lower. It glowed like a molten copper coin on the horizon.

  Skal swoop so low over the village, the wind from his wings ruffled the thatched roofs and spiraled the wisps of smoke that still drifted from the blackened frames of some destroyed huts that had some not been entirely extinguished by the storm. The conflagration must have been intense.

  The smell of burnt wood filled Katrine’s nose. Frightened villagers fled shouting.

  She felt a pulse of sympathy for the people whose homes had been destroyed in the blaze. Yes, these people had offered her up as dragon food, but she was beginning to understand that they had little choice in the matter. It was her or them.

  But her attitude changed as she thought about her friends, Nora and Blair.

  There was no way in hell she was going to let them get sacrificed and eaten alive. She would burn a hundred villages to the ground if that’s what it took to save them.

  Leaving the smoking village behind, the black sands now rushed past in a blur beneath Skal and Katrine. The sensation of speed was thrilling, the way the breeze flowed across her skin.

  Squinting against the wind and low sun, focusing her vision between the dragon’s horns, Katrine spied a crowd gathered on the plain ahead of them.

  It was a throng of villagers, mostly men, surrounding the dais where Katrine herself had been offered just days before. But this time, there were two figures chained to the thick pillars of dark wood.

  It was Nora and Blair.

  They were still alive!

  And Skal was heading right for them. He was flying low, not flapping his wings but just gliding like a fighter jet. They were so close to the ground that he left a cloud trail of stirred sand in his wake.

  He let loose an earth-rumbling roar.

  The drumming abruptly stopped.

  Skal swerved before he hit the pillars and flew in a circle around the dais. He exhaled a stream of orange fire, drawing a curved wall of flame that drove the villagers back in a screaming, terrified flock, abandoning their musical instruments and primitive weapons.

  He curved around one last time, slowed, and came to rest on all fours.

  Katrine leaped from his back. The warm, coarse sand crunched beneath her bare feet.

  “Nora! Blair!”

  Her voice was muffled by her helmet, so she tore it off and tossed it to the sand with a clunk.

  The two chained women were both dressed in the same primitive grass skirts and bone jewelry that Katrine had receive
d when she had been in their position. Nora’s ankle was still swollen, and she was balancing all of her weight on her good leg. Her ever-present sunglasses had been taken from her, and now her unseeing eyes were open wide with fright. So were Blair’s, but as soon as she saw Katrine’s face, her expression shifted to surprise.

  “It’s Katrine!” Blair gasped.

  “It’s Katrine?” Nora echoed.

  “It’s me!” Katrine affirmed, running toward them.

  Her bare soles slapped on the stone as she rushed up the stairs of the dais and threw her arms around her friends, first Nora and then Blair.

  Both women’s faces relaxed as relief washed over them. Their captors had fled, and their friend was here to save them. But Blair’s expression tightened again as she looked over Katrine’s shoulder.

  “Katrine,” she whispered. “Is that a freaking dragon?”

  “A dragon?” Nora blurted.

  Katrine wasn’t sure who was more confused. The woman who could see or the one who couldn’t. Either way, there would be plenty of time for explanations later. For now, Katrine just wanted to let her friends know that they had nothing to fear.

  “Yes, it’s a dragon,” she said hurriedly. “His name his Skal. Skal, change to your less scary form and introduce yourself, please.”

  The dragon had already started to shift, and within a matter of seconds, he had changed into his humanoid form and was climbing the steps of the dais.

  “Oh wow…” Blair muttered.

  “What’s going on?” asked Nora.

  “Katrine just flew in on a fucking giant red dragon, and now the dragon has turned into a big man with horns and wings and scales and...”

  Her gaze accidentally wandered to Skal’s naked lower body, and her eyes went so wide they nearly popped from her head. She gulped.

  “A big man?” Nora asked.

  “Extremely big.”

  Feeling a scorch of jealousy, Katrine loudly cleared her throat, and Blair immediately raised her eyes as her face flushed with embarrassment. Almost as quickly as it had come, Katrine’s jealousy disappeared, and she almost laughed out loud. She could hardly blame Blair for looking—the monster dangling between Skal’s thighs was hard to miss.