Page 6 of Consorting with Dragons

“Excuse me, Your Highness,” he said from the aisle beside me. “The captain wanted me to let you know we’ll be landing in an hour or so. We’re coming across Lycanus 1 now, and we’ll be on the surface of Lycanus 3 fairly soon after that.”

I nodded my thanks and settled back in my seat. My father had sent more than the usual number of guards with me, though our ship wasn’t all that large. He was being careful, and not just to guard my virtue with old, randy kings.

We’d had kidnappings of some of our royal family members recently. It hadn’t been long since my uncle Rakkur and my first cousin Jago were attacked and taken captive. The kidnappings hadn’t been in this part of the galaxy, but King Davos insistedon taking extra precautions now, with all his children and grandchildren, so that none of us would be taken hostage again. He actually wouldn’t like the small size of this ship, if he’d known about it, considering there were pirates said to operate around the three Lycan planets and their moons because of all the trading that went on there. But King Stefan didn’t like to be told what to do with his family or much of anything else, for that matter.

My family’s drama earlier in the year had all worked out in the end, and my relatives had been recovered, but it had scared everybody. This part of the galaxy should be safe enough, I thought, but it was still a little wild and wooly, as my omak would say. Like I said, from time to time, some pretty vicious pirates were known to still operate in this area. I felt a little shudder go down my spine but soon went back to gazing out the large porthole beside me and having a glass of Rother and visu punch as a little pick me up, as we soared past the largest of the three planets of Lycanus.

I was a bit nervous, because I wanted to please my father—all I had to do, he’d told me, was go to the Lycan trading offices and King Travon would be there to meet me and transfer the egg But I just didn’t want to fuck this up. My father told me all the time that I was like my omak, by which he meant pretty but not too bright. He denied it, of course, but I knew, just like my omak did, and we both resented it.

It didn’t mean that my father wasn’t crazy about my omak—about both of us. We all knew that he was. Maybe the difference in their royal status bothered him more than he liked to let on. After all, my omak, Prince Vannos, was the beloved son of King Davos, the head of the entire Axis Command. He was powerful because of that and maybe my father was a bit jealous.

The long, terrible war had ended way before I’d even been born, but it had been so devastating that no one was even closeto forgetting it, from what I’d seen, even after all these years. Moravia had stayed neutral at first, though, but strongly Axis leaning and eventually agreed to join the empire, largely because of my omak.

Earth had been occupied only up until recently and strong resentments lingered both there and on the Lycan planets. Others in this region felt the same way. The Axis had briefly considered martial law on the Lycanus planets and moons, but quickly decided they’d simply be fighting the Lycans all the time and another war might even break out. The Lycans didn’t like to admit they’d been on the losing side, as they didn’t admit defeat easily. In fact, they still maintained that they had never officially surrendered. Surrendering was what made things permanent—and official, I guess. At least in their minds.

Moravia was friendly enough with Lycanus, but we were too closely associated with the Tygerians for a close alliance, again because of my omak, Vannos. This task my father had set for me certainly wasn’t hard, but any transactions with the Lycans could be tricky. I wanted to do well and not screw any of this up.

My guards were all mostly my friends that I’d been in school and training with, and they thought it might be better if no one knew exactly who I was when we went for pickup of the vetami egg, because of the whole Tygerian thing. I had agreed to dress in similar clothing to what they all wore, and I’d tied back my hair and wore a hooded jacket to help disguise the red-gold color, which was also closely associated with Tygerians. I told everyone not to address me as “Your Highness,” which they rarely did anyway, to be honest. I wanted to remain as low-key and unrecognizable as possible. That was the plan anyway.

We were supposed to be meeting King Travon on the docks for the transfer of the egg, and I dreaded that. I was ready to go meet him, be as nice as I possibly could to him, while not expressing any undue interest, and then get out of there.My father had advised me not to go onboard his ship alone and without guards under any circumstances, though, which I thought was odd. I still think everything would have been fine if not for what happened when we got to the warehouse.

I still think it wasn’t my fault that almost the first thing I did after we arrived was to get myself involved in a huge brawl.

It all began because as luck would have it, King Travon wasn’t the only other interested party there to meet us on Lycanus 3. I was there at the agreed-upon time, and we had followed the directions my father had given me to the letter. We saw the crate containing the egg on the floor inside the warehouse, with a group of men wearing green uniforms standing beside it. I figured that the one standing in front of the men and gazing at me so intensely must be the king of Thalios, King Travon himself.

My first impression was that he was a handsome man. Not exactly my type, but still not too bad. He was regally and expensively dressed and had many badges and medals on his uniform. He gave me a little smile and inclined his head when he saw me. So far so good, or so I thought.

The crate was beside the group, and it was huge. It was some ten feet wide, and about that tall. I could hear my men behind me, discussing the best way to get the thing loaded when Kareb suddenly nudged me hard in the side. I turned to see what he wanted and saw him looking across the big warehouse at another, even larger group of men. They were also in uniform, though theirs consisted of red capes over leather armor. They had been standing around at the back of the huge warehouse when we arrived, and they were now beginning to advance quickly on our group. Their leader had a determined expression.

He was big and blond and intimidating, and he looked military too. The cape was what was called Alliance red after the uniforms of the old Alliance. He had insignia on his uniform,along with patches on his sleeves that I didn’t recognize. As he came closer, I could see they featured some kind of lizard looking creature that had wings—the dragons, I supposed. He looked like a Lycan, except for the blond hair.

He was seriously good-looking, though, and he had the arrogant expression on his face that often went along with that.

He gave all of us, both my group and King Travon’s, a deeply unfriendly look out of eyes that were jade green. He resembled many of the other inhabitants of this part of the galaxy, in his size, and muscular build, but that hair and those eyes were unique. Did I mention how good looking he was? It was worth mentioning a few times. Even if he was staring at me like he wanted to eat me. Or maybe because of that, come to think of it.

The Lycans, the Tygerians and even the Moravians resembled each other in a few significant ways in this area of the galaxy, and this tall, muscular build they all had was one of those ways. Some ancient astronauts must have visited each of their planets, in turn, which were fairly close together in galactic terms and there they’d spread their seed around liberally.

This man was even taller and bigger than some Lycans and maybe even the Tygerians. Not that it mattered—my training instructors had assured me that big men were often slow and didn’t know proper fighting techniques, because they relied on all that brute strength. Somehow, I didn’t think that would be the case with this one, however.

I still wasn’t all that alarmed. After all, I didn’t know any of them and hadn’t had time to make any enemies on Lycanus 3—not yet anyway. I hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I knew, and I had no reason to think they were angry at us in particular, though they certainly looked as if they were furious about something.

“Which of you is in charge here?” the handsome man in the red cape demanded as he came up to my group. He looked straight at my friend, Kareb, as he said it.

I spoke up instead and stepped out to confront him. “I’m in charge. Who wants to know?”

“My name is General Fortina, of Horvath,” the tall, blond officer said in a surprised voice. “Did you sayyou’rethe buyer of this vetami egg? How old are you anyway?”

“I’m old enough. Why? Who are you?”

“I’ve already told you my name. Now answer me! Are you the buyer of this egg?”

“Now see here,” King Travon said stepping over to us and interrupting. “Don’t speak to him that way. His Highness, Prince Rylan and I, are here conducting a private business transaction which is none of your concern.”

“I disagree,” Fortina said. “This is an illegal transaction and it’s very much my concern. You could both be arrested for this, in fact.”

“I beg your pardon!” King Travon said in a cold, imperious tone. “How dare you? Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I am King Travon of Thalios and this young man is Prince Rylan of Moravia.”

Fortina glared at him, and the king’s guards drew closer. I decided maybe I should speak up before anything got any more intense. “Listen, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot here. I’m a buyer for this vetami egg that King Travon has so graciously consented to sell us. I’m here to pick up the crate containing the egg, and this is a perfectly legal transaction and frankly, none of your damn business.”

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