“I mean, maybe…” I answer. “I think most of my cousins would be intrigued by the prospect. Including Sarah, who’s skinny but strong, like you guessed. Though fair warning, Koko’s super cool, but Sarah can be a know-it-all and she’s a huge grammar nazi.”
“She speaks with perfect grammar?” African Robes says, his eyes widening with delight. “You must introduce her to me first! I am the Lead Researcher and the one most deserving of such treasure. Also, I only have a couple of centuries until I return to our Great Designer.”
Before I can answer him, more questions come flying at me. Would it be possible to meet my hatchling? Did I have a terrible time with the birth? Were there any problems with the egg?
When I tell them I ahem…laid Bazzi in under an hour and that there had been no egg to accidentally crack inside me, they all gasp and even more questions come zooming in. Did I think I could go into heat again and bear even more progeny for their king? How about twins? Would it be possible for your species to carry twins?
Luckily, I don’t have to come up with answers for that question. Damianos stands up beside me and raises his hand, abruptly cutting them off. “You would put questions to your queen with expectation of answer. Yet you have not completed the most important part of her coronation ceremony.”
African Robes bows his head. “Forgive us, King of Drakkon.”
Then he and everybody else begin to strip.
“Um, what’s going on?” I push into Damianos head as all the dragons get Ken Doll naked. “Is this some kind of weird ritual gangbang. Oh Fenrir Wolf, Please tell me it wasn’t you guys who created the orgies.”
“Of course, it was not us,” he answers, his voice sounding somewhat amused.
“Then why…?”
Before I can finish asking that question, all the dragons transform, and suddenly the Ken Dolls are replaced by a colorful array of huge beasts.
African Robes, as it turned out, is red. And he lets out several screeches, seeming to speak for him and his multi-colored friends.
Finally, Damianos bothers to translate. “They ask for forgiveness. It is impossible for them to speak in your species’ language when they are unshelled,” he pushes into my head. “They are swearing loyal oath to you and vowing their fealty and protection.”
Whoa. I’d thought they’d hated me, but on the contrary.
My eyes widen when all the beasts lower their heads, bowing in unison. Save for one.
A dragon comes forward from the back of the crowd. His skin is deep black, I notice. The product of so much mixing. Proof of a quantum leap.
He stops directly in front of our raised dais and extends both arms with his palm turned upwards. In each hand there’s a crown. One has dark horns and rows of sapphire fashioned to look exactly like the forehead crest I clocked when Damianos went beast back in North Dakota. The other is a silver halo with eight moons on top. The moons represent all phases from waxing to full and finally waning, and each moon has a spike sticking out of it, gold swirled with silver.
No, not silver, I guess, even though I cannot smell it in a room full of dragons. An alloy. Something that looks bad-ass but won’t hurt me.
“If you accept me as your king, place the drakkon crown upon my head,” Damianos pushes into my mind. And my heart beats even faster when he hunches over at the shoulders to bow his head.
Like I said, this place feels beyond powerful. As does this moment. With trembling hands I pick up the crown and place it on my dragon mate’s large head.
“Now you must bow to me.”
I do as he says, bowing my head like he did, and he takes the other crown and does the same for me.
It’s heavier than I was expecting. Real gold, not the much lighter nanite version. But it doesn’t burn when he settles it over the braids. And when I raise my head, I truly feel like a dragon queen. There’s a new energy flowing through me, dark, ancient, and otherworldly. Just like my king.
“Do you accept your role as our queen?” Damianos ask out loud for all to hear. “Do you accept these drakkon as your subjects?”
I haven’t heard my uncle’s voice in a while. But now it once again rings in my head. “Remember, Ola, they’re all our subjects, even the ones we don’t like. We have to figure out what each and every one of them needs. Figure out how to help them. That’s what real kings and queens do.”
“Yes, I accept them as my subjects,” I answer Damianos without any hesitation at all.
Then I turn to face the group of dragons, addressing them just as I would my own subjects back in North Dakota. “I also pledge to do everything I can to find you fated mates of your own. I don’t want to rewrite our history, but I also don’t want this to be the end of the line for you guys. So whatever it takes, I’ll get as many of you as possible mated. Drakkon will live on and both our species will guide this planet into its quantum future!”