Page 39 of Meet Me in the Stars

“Clarence is your flight leader, right?” I double checked.

“Yeah. That’s him. Sunny the one who matches you, is his second born. Medwin, his mate and the dragon who I named the ship after, is pressing him for a third kid, but we’ll see how that goes. Your Uncle Hush visited yesterday but didn’t seem very keen on talking to him or anyone else. He mostly sniffed down the hall to make sure you were there and left after a cup of coffee. We put extra sugar in his. He drank it without complaining, but you could tell he didn’t enjoy it.”

I laughed and patted Castor on the shoulder. He caught onto things quickly. Uncle Hush wasn’t a bad guy, but he was an annoying old fucker at times. Maybe all leaders were, but since all three of ours had their true-mates they didn’t care much if the rest of us found ours or not.

“Good luck today,” Castor clapped me on the shoulder. “I don’t know the whole story, but from what you told me I know enough. To get some of these alphas to believe anything that’s not literally dancing on the tips of their noses. They’re all good guys on the ship, but they’re dense.”

“Which of them are your ex?” I arched a brow.

“None of them. All my exes I’d have pushed off the ship halfway through the trip,” Castor smirked, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

“Should I check the ship’s charter for their names?” I teased him.

“You can. It’s all over the Earthside news. I don’t know why everyone’s so surprised we actually made it. You all made it by flapping your wings and stopping to stay with other groups. It was never impossible,” Castor sighed. “They’re calling me the first omega in space.”

“But you’re not!” I crinkled my nose.

“I know, but the media has always had some loose screws. I’ve mostly ignored it. Everyone wants an interview, but I’m not talking to them. If they want an interview, they get all of us. I designed the ship. I flew the ship most of the way here with my cousin’s help, but I’m not the only one on the ship. I’m a little tired of being dubbed the omega of the crew or in space or whatever. That’s why I bunked up with your guy,” he nodded at Fred. “Obviously, he knows I’m an omega, but he was never weird about it.”

“A lot of people probably look up to you,” I said, finishing off my coffee. “I thought it was all pretty cool when I heard about it.”

“The Alpha/omega gene had nothing to do with getting me here or not getting me here. I built the damn ship!” Castor tossed his mugless hand in the air. “They weren’t going to space on it without me.”

“That’s why it’s so awesome,” I grinned.

“If you say so,” Castor shrugged.

“I do. I’m sorry they’re making a big deal about it, but you should be proud. I’m in awe, but I don’t know if that’s about the ship or you bringing him to me,” I said and nodded in the direction where Fred was talking to the others.

“Eh, he was an easy passenger. Slept almost the whole flight and waited to blow all his bluster off the ship,” Castor chuckled.

***

An hour later, I led my true-mate down Bashi Street hand-in-hand. That was something I thought would never happen in a million years. Yet there we were. I squeezed Fred’s hand as he looked this way and that as if his head were on a swivel. The buildings in this part of town towered above us. All of them had wide flat roofs for landing. The streets were wide enough for even the oldest dragons to wander down in dragon form, if the need arose. This was home with its purple and blue flowers and its streets of different colors. They were white downtown and only stayed really clean in the winter. It snowed here as it did on Earthside, but it fell in big white and purple-ish flakes. It was still cold and the hatchlings still played in it and built snow animals from it. It melted to clear, healthy water when all was said and done.

“Where are we going?” Fred asked when we came to a crossroads.

I opened my mouth to say the Star Room but realized he had no idea where that was. The claiming vows didn’t show him and I wasn’t sure why.

“Probably because his scale hadn’t come in yet,” my dragon chimed in.

“We’re going out of the city. We call it a room, but it’s really more like a temple from the old Earthside books. Only it’s not about Frost and Juda. We know who they are. They were good people, but they’re not who we descended from.”

“Who’s this temple dedicated to?” Fred asked, stopping to let a big-bellied carrier and three hatchlings hanging onto his tail pass us by.

“Everyone,” I shrugged. “Technically the ancestors, but who they are changes all the time. When I sent my memories back to my star, I was technically an ancestor, but I’m not now. It’s a bit of a walk. We could fly out, but I thought you might want to see some things from the ground. Plus, we’d get to spend more time alone.”

“Lead the way,” Fred nodded to me once the path was clear.

The longer we walked the more Fred relaxed. While the ship’s doctor, Izora, had questions about air composition and the like, I had done my research ahead of time. During the age my ancestors left Earthside, we and the Moonscale dragons still had the same breathing needs. Fortunately, our evolution hadn’t separated us that much. The biggest differences I noticed were that the Moonscales lost their crescent scale and that they didn’t often bring out their tails or horns in human form. It was more common with us, apparently, or maybe our society just deemed it more normal.

As we left the well paved paths behind, I brought out my long orange tail for balance. Sensing my intentions over our mating link, Fred put a warm hand on the small of my back. I didn’t need his help but reveled in the intention behind the touch. It was nice to have someone to watch my back. The walk wasn’t particularly treacherous. I’d walked it alone more times than I could count. Still, having Fred for company was nice.

“Do you prefer to fly this part?” he asked, his hand still resting against the small of my back.

“Sometimes, but not always,” I shrugged and leaned into him.

Together we walked the steep uphill trail that led to the Star Room. Some dragons once called it the Temple of Ancestors, but the word temple had gone out of use. We didn’t worship our ancestors. We didn’t treat them all that differently than living members of the flight. We recorded what they needed us to and if we could help them between lives we did. It was the right of every flight member to have such assistance in life and death. That fact was never voted on. All the rights and responsibilities we had as flight members hadn’t changed since before we left the Other World. No matter where our members were, we tried to help them and keep them well to the best of our abilities.

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