Page 85 of Heir of Draga

Chapter Twenty-Three

Adelina

The Royal Eyrie

Planet Hai Delta

The shreve Kaiden had left her was a bit different than the ones she was used to, but Adelina was able to navigate her way through the information relatively quickly. There wasn’t good news on it either. Not that she had suspected the Drakesthai of lying to her about such a sensitive issue, but she had hoped her people hadn’t been so cruel.

Adelina read the reports from over two hundred cycles ago and shook her head. Every so often she had to set the shreve down and stare out at the wasteland before her. It was beautiful almost with the red clouds that swirled above, the occasional lightning bringing sudden light before plunging them back into the perpetual gloom.

Two hundred cycles ago the Drakesthai had answered her great-grandfather’s call and helped Draga push the Neprijat back in their brief alliance. There were pics and vids and battle reports to prove it. So much detail and proof – why did they not possess any of it in the Draga Galaxy?

After the war was won and the shield had been erected around Draga, their contact with the Drakesthai dwindled to nothing. The shield kept them separate from everyone else and the one Drakesthai envoy that came requesting help was denied as King Beo didn’t believe any of his people could have poisoned the Drakesthai. He blamed the Neprijat who certainly had the tech for it.

That request for help wasn’t in her own textbooks either, or anything she’d ever read in her studies over the cycles. Not even Varan’s minimal intel had said anything about the cause or source of the dragon’s infertility or medical issues. None of his spies had ever gotten close enough to a royal dragon to find out the truth.

After the initial war with the Neprijat it took almost ten cycles for the Drakesthai physicians to even consider a targeted disease, a biological weapon.

Females started dying in droves during childbirth, and the infants didn’t survive either. Female babes were increasingly rare until there wasn’t more than one female child per Drakesthai mother – those that survived the process.

And that was if they could even conceive.

It was how the multiple mates had come about. She’d read about how they tweaked their genetics again to mate one female to more than one male so as to increase the odds for offspring. Only one out of every three males were fertile and that was being generous per the shreve Kaiden had given her.

Oddly enough the genetic tweaks didn’t always hold true which was why they occasionally mated to an Unchanged Human female and were able to bear offspring, but the babes were almost always born without wings, and almost always male. There was one report of a female being born a hundred cycles ago to an Unchanged, but the female didn’t bear any winged Drakesthai. All her children were Unchanged and un-winged, male and female alike. Apparently she’d successfully borne two sets of twins which was a miracle in itself and then survived both pregnancies and deliveries.

Now there were only three Drakesthai females and all attempts at reversing the infertility and lack of females were failures. If they tried to ensure a female was borne the miscarriage killed the mother.

It was a vicious, effective disease that had planned for the long-term, for a species unable to match their own medical prowess.

And that was why Adelina believed it was her people and not the Neprijat, though she supposed with how little she knew about the Neprijat it was possible they could be the ones. They knew next to nothing about their culture and way of life. They didn’t even know where their home system was. But why come and conquer them two hundred cycles later? Was it another way for them to soften the battlefield? The Drakesthai hadn’t even put up a fight, simply conceded their way of life to the monsters.

Adelina couldn’t know anything for sure until details of the situation came to light.

She studied the wasteland again, noting the red glow in the distance and she wondered if that was lava. Draga Terra didn’t have aboveground volcanoes but Deytis did. They were quite a wonder and the sulphur did amazing things to soil. Though the wind whipped through her hair and brought a strange barrage of smells…Adelina still felt better with so much space around her instead of all that heavy rock above her after the incident with the Council, and then with Nash.

The shreve had so much data on it; it would take her hours if not days to sift through it all. The medical studies on the infertility were detailed and difficult to read. They were something she’d have to have Ian look at.

Adelina sighed and pulled out her own shreve. She added to her ever-growing to-do list and then went to check on her files. The recordings she’d had done were edited and ready to be sent off to the livestream.

When she came down off the platform and onto Hai Delta…it was frightening and dramatic with the way Kaiden stood before her, wings spread wide, but the kiss on her knuckles softened him into something relatable. Adelina approved the footage. The outer rim would see it first for once, and then it would reach the core within a few hours.

With that done she sent a request to Ian, and then encrypted the files from Kaiden’s shreve before sending those off as well.

Adelina tapped her bottom lip as she thought about what else she had to do.

“I apologize for interrupting, Princess. But would you mind some company?”

She looked up at the massively tall male before her and smiled. “No, I don’t mind Prince Kaiden.”

He bowed slightly and then leaned against the balcony with her. “I hope everything is all right, Princess.”

Adelina waved her hand in dismissal. “Please, just call me Adelina.” Goodness, the Drakesthai were attractive. Well…this one certainly was.

Kaiden smiled and she noticed he had slightly pointed canines similar to her own. “Adelina,” he murmured in that strange and beautiful accent of his – as if he tasted her name.

Her cheeks flushed. It was unlikely he was trying to flirt with her, but the way he spoke was strangely seductive. Adelina cleared her throat and turned back to inspect her starships in the distance. “I appreciate you getting me the information about the disease as quickly as you did. I’ve already sent it off to one of the most trusted physicians in Draga.”

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