Page 34 of Captured By the Dragon Warlord
“Shed?”
“Our skin. Since the wormhole, we need to shed more often.”
I finally get what he’s talking about. He needs to shed his skin like a lizard. I am not entirely sure how I feel about it either.
“Do you…shed in your current form or your Sarkarnii form?” I ask tentatively.
Dexx barks out a laugh. It’s so unexpected I lift up from his body to look at him.
“You have seen a Sarkarnii,” he says, a lopsided smile on his face. “Can you imagine having to deal with a shed from multiple Sarkarnii? We’d never recycle it all.” He rumbles something which might be a chuckle.
Dexx is having a laugh at my expense.
It warms my heart in a way I didn’t think was possible. My huge, dark, dangerous dragon finds something funny. He findsmefunny.
“I’m pleased about that. I didn’t want to imagine what a shed skin from a Sarkarnii looked like.”
Dexx dips his head into my neck and nibbles at my skin, sending heat running through me.
“When my time comes, will you help me with my shed?” he asks.
I guess shedding your skin is probably a pretty intimate thing to do, something you don’t always share. It is part of him letting me in, letting me have some control.
I appreciate it, even if I’m not entirely sure about it.
“Yes, Dexx, I will help you.”
The purr returns with a vengeance, and I let it wash over me, like the water, like everything which has happened to me. I let the moment do what it must do.
And when I wake, I find I’m alone again, covered in a blanket in the bottom of the pit. There is no Dexx and no more purr. But I don’t feel lonely.
I feel like everything is right, for the first time in a long time, possibly even before I was abducted from Earth. I am centered. I might not know what the future holds but it has potential.
I crawl out of the pit and find my comm device. There’s a whole load of messages waiting for me, mostly trying to get a response. Some of them are lewd, the ones from Maggie anyway. Not a surprise.
I send a quick reply saying I’m okay and I’m going to ask Dexx about coming to visit soon before I use the bathroom and come back in to get dressed.
My shredded clothes are where Dexx left them, and I find myself smiling and my cheeks warming as I pick them up, shoving the ruined fabric into one of the many hidden drawers.
I don’t have a watch anymore (because: alien abduction) and I’ve found I don’t miss it, but if Dexx has to spend twelve hours in his Sarkarnii form, I would like to know when that is. After all,he’s currently missing from here, so I won’t bother going looking for him if he’s in the mines.
Otherwise, I will most definitely go looking for him. I’m dying to explore another Sarkarnii ship again, especially as this one is different to Darax’s and somewhere there is an opening into the bowels of Vorostor.
What can I say, I’m nosy!
I approach the doors to Dexx’s quarters and get a small fright as they snap open at my approach. I guess it must mean Dexx trusts me not to run.
Perhaps the rules go both ways.
DEXX
Ilook down at the faces of my two crew members, Dorok and Dahal. Good strong warriors both. Their shift did not save them, and in death, they have returned to their biped forms.
I slam my fist against the bulkhead, allowing my claws to cut into the flesh as the thoughts of my clan surround me.
They want answers.
They want blood.
