Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet 1)

But that hope dies a quicker than quick death. “For the same reasons you would, if your meat sources not only outnumbered you but had taught themselves to build and wield nuclear weapons. It was a decision both practical and tactical.”

“Yet, you’re here with me,” I point out. “Expecting a baby with me…what did you call us? Dogs?”

I like the irritation that ripples over our mate bond from his end. I also like that we’re arguing. It’s a much-needed reminder that I’m absolutely within my rights to do what I’ve got planned.

But then his expression sobers. “Yes, I did at a time call you that. What a fool I was.”

He lets out a steaming sigh. “For too long I clung to the old hierarchy and dismissed your kind as idiot animals not deserving of your planet. You see, if I hadn’t done that, I would have been required to make certain admissions to myself.”

He trails off, but obviously I’m not going to let him stop there. “What didn’t you want to admit to yourself?”

“That my most reverent father was wrong, and The Royal Geneticist was correct,” he answers, his tone plain and simple. “Our mission to this planet was supposed to be an investigation of his claim, but it was corrupted from the start.”

He turns his glowing eyes to the distance as if watching a memory play out. “We brought along the then Second Prince of Drakkon to construct more fertility matching devices—what we called fating portals—since The Royal Geneticist had stopped making wolves after breeding just a few dozen test groups in Zone 4. Much of our mission revolved around establishing humans on every continent so that the then drakkon king would be able to hunt in any clime. And it was my job as Royal Huntmaster to train the wolves so that they could assist us in our hunts. The decision to send the prince and me along with the team of surveyors made it clear to everyone, including The Royal Geneticist, that the only way he would be able to save the humans and the wolves he believed would evolve into a worthy species would be by destroying us.”

Damianos shakes his head, and I can feel his real regret flowing over our mate bond as he tells me, “So, you see, Reverence, giving up my prejudices against humans and wolves would have been admitting that truth. That the Royal Geneticist was right, and that my father was wrong to send back recommendations that your races had no potential at all. Drakkon must honor their parents and show them reverence. But if not for my father’s biased report, the Royal Geneticist wouldn’t have destroyed our planet, setting off the series of events that led to his death.”

I pause the World War II doc in the middle of its intro. Wow, I thought I was poking at the elephant in the room when I brought this subject up. But here Damianos is, kicking it all the way awake.

And that makes me want to ask even more direct questions. “I always wondered, why did you show up out of the blue like that in my father’s village?”

Again, Damianos doesn’t hesitate before answering. It’s almost as if he’s been waiting for the chance to explain himself. “Back then, the Betrayer King you call Xenon, came up with a theory. That if we found Fenrir’s original fating portal and said the code into it, then we would all be transported to our perfect matches—which at the time we believed could certainly only be one of the extinct drakki. However, it would take us much time to find the fating portal since Fenris’s original gates were sculpted on a quantum field only canine can perceive. Also, if the plan worked, there was a good chance we would land in a time period when drakki were much more fertile, and that would be too early for us to save our planet—this time period might even be before our drakkon civilization’s quantum leap. However, after living so long here on this then technology-free world, we decided that was a sacrifice we were willing to make if it meant we would be able to live out the rest of our millennia on the planet your people refer to as Mercury.

“So the idea was to ransack a bunch of villages, while you were looking for the original gate?” I summarize. “Why didn’t you just get a wolf to lead you to the gate? Hypnotize them like you do everyone else.”

“It is difficult to control more than two or three thralls at the same time with god speech. Also, even with the aid we presumed we would have from the Betrayer King, it would have taken him some time to configure the fating portal. That is why I have used an intricate system of bribes and god spoken human emissaries to gain access to the fating portals we studied to finally realize the Betrayer King’s broken promise.”