Page 50 of Fated to the Dragon Warlord

“I’m not sure it works exactly like that, but I am hungry,” I reply.

Which means I get offered even more food, eating until I cannot eat any more, and neither can Darax. He wasn’t wrong. I have a food baby, and I’m not sure I can move. I pat myself, and the rumble I get from him suggests it might not have been the best thing to do. A huge hand slides over mine, cupping my stomach.

“I wish for you to carry my sarkarnling, my Kerra.”

“Will that help your rut?” I ask. “Because I’m not sure how I feel about any of this.”

“My rut will end once you are filled. In the meantime, it will do what it will do,” Darax replies.

“And if it doesn’t end? If we aren’t compatible?”

He fires out a long stream of smoke into the air.

“Fate found you for me. I believe fate will make this right.”

DARAX

Ican’t exactly describe what it’s like to have a mate who could ask me to cut my wings off and I’d gladly do it, because I’ve never had a mate.

Until Kerra. The tiny female hoo-man I’d do anything…absolutely anything for. It means I can’t stop growling as I stride through my ship to the control room. Warriors scatter from me. I’m dimly aware that, although I am not shifting, I am larger than I was. My tail is somehow even more present, although the nevving thing hasn’t shifted back since we came through the wormhole.

The control room is busy, which somewhat assuages the simmering anger inside me. I release as much smoke as I can from my lungs in an effort to have some control.

The mating gland responds by pumping yet more mix into my veins. I simply cannot win.

“Any further anomalies reported?” I fire at the warrior on the comm.

“Not from our patrols or any of the supply ships,” he says.

I debate whether this is good or bad, given it’s a mixture of both. “Keep looking. Anything appears, I want to know about it.”

I turn to my missions director. “I need a cohort of warriors to return to the area where the females were found. They should search the area for any other devices or evidence of who planted it.”

“What about the escape pod, Lord?” he asks.

“It’s in Dalox’s sector. I won’t risk war by retrieving it.”

Things are on a dagger edge as it is with the other warlords.

“Lord Darax, there is a comm from Lord Dexx.”

The mysterious nevver finally puts in an appearance.

I hold out my hand for the vid-screen, and he gives it to me.

Dexx looks particularly dirty, as if he’s been digging, which, given his sector contains our only source of star cruiser fuel, is entirely possible.

“Dalox says you have females,”he growls, his one good eye glaring at me, the other obscured by the scar which runs over his face.

“Dalox is mistaken. I have one female, from a species called hoo-man, and she is my mate,” I respond with a snarl.

Dexx twists his face, turning away from the comm, I hear the voice of one of his crew.

“There was an escape pod in his sector and our sensors show DNA different to Sarkarnii.”

“Since when did you have permission to scan my ship or violate the accords of Vorostor Central?” I respond, attempting to keep my anger in check.

Because I’m a nova-second from shifting and flying into his sector to take off his head for even thinking about Kerra.

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