Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet 2)

He led them to the same bridge he’d been dreaming of since the night before the fertility portal time jump project was shut down. He’d had the dream twice more since returning to his palace. And each time he’d woken up from it with a small itch inside his belly. One that didn’t fade until after many hours spent in the waking world.

Whatever could it mean? he wondered, even as he turned to talk to his guests underneath the covered garden bridge.

Neither of these drakkon resided in Zone 5, or else they would have known it was uncustomary—some might say out-and-out rude—to raise such a weighty subject in a tea house. Hwedo kept a modest home in Zone 1, the original birthplace of the human species, and Amaru had chosen to reside in Zone 9 even before any of the anthros established a presence there.

Yet Ao Quong understood why these two drakkon, in particular, chose to approach him. Hwedo, originally their mission’s Lead Researcher, was a consummate intellectual, who still could not reconcile that a brute like the former Huntmaster had been allowed to appoint himself king. And Amaru, the mission’s Lead Agriculturalist could be quite unorthodox. Despite his title, it was rumored he refused to eat their former livestock even before Damianos decreed the practice must stop. Why else would he have chosen the formerly anthro-free Zone now called South America to live after they were all exiled here?

Also, both drakkon lived rather far away from the Zone 5 region called Russia, which had been the home of Chudu, the last drakkon who tried to usurp their current king. So perhaps they did not know that formerly prideful drakkon had not been seen since undergoing a torture by Damianos that had supposedly destroyed his mind.

“You are unhappy about the king shutting down the fating portal project,” Ao Quong guessed now, turning to look down at the colorful fish in the palace pond underneath the bridge.

“Are you not unhappy?” Hwedo asked. “For centuries we have all supported this project, knowing it was our only chance to find suitable mates before we died. And he shut it down without even a word of explanation?”

Ah, here was the reason, Hwedo and Amaru had come to him in particular. Drakkon lived to be about twenty thousand of this planet’s rotations around the sun. Most of the drakkon who had been sent on the mission a little over fifteen thousand rotations ago were very young, between five hundred and two-thousand years old. However, the mission leads, which he, Hwedo, and Amaru all were, had been quite a bit older. Between four and six thousand, which meant they only had anywhere from a couple of hundred years to a millennia or two to secure progeny.

However…

“While it was our only chance, it was also a highly theoretical one,” Ao Quong pointed out. “We have no way of knowing if it would have worked.”

“We have no way of knowing it would not have either!” Amaru replied. “I have heard tale of the wolf mutations using the gates to find their matches for millennia. Why not us as well? After all, I was the one who came up with the idea.”

Technically, the Betrayer King was the one who came up with the idea. Amaru was the one who insisted to Damianos that the project could still be completed after their former leader’s stunning betrayal.

“I know you are disappointed,” Ao Quong started to say.

“And you are not?” Hwedo asked, snorting steam.

“I am…” Ao Quong hesitated.

It would be unwise to tell them the real reason he was taking the shutdown of the project with such equanimity after having worked on it for hundreds of years. It was doubtful they would understand his dream. For he barely did.

He did not know much about the female in the dream. In truth, he could not fully make out her face. But he had come to understand one important piece of datum after the last one.

“It doesn’t upset you that he is only three-quarters drakkon?” she’d asked after their son showed them his trick. Three spins in the air.

“No, it does not upset me, Reverence,” he’d answered. “You have made me happy beyond all measure. How could he be any more perfect? How could you?”

Three-quarters. Their son had been only three-quarters a drakkon. Which meant the female in his dreams was something unheard of… only half-drakki. But how?

His curiosity burned so bright upon this question that he found himself asking his guests, “Before the Royal Huntsmaster took the crown, why do you suppose there were so many tales of drakkon kidnapping maidens? Do you believe it’s possible that a few of these drakkon were mating outside of our race?”

Hwedo furrows his brow. “That is not possible. If it was, we would have heard tale of it.”