Chapter 27
ELENA
I expected Ardruc to refuse—to tell me it wasn’t safe, he wasn’t used to flying with me yet, I was too precious to him to risk it. And I was prepared to argue until I got my way.
Instead, he scooped me up, rose from our mossy bed, and took me outside the shelter. The curtain of vines over the doorway drew aside for us.
When we looked skyward, the canopy of leaves parted with a shiver and a sigh to reveal a breathtakingly beautiful late afternoon sky.
“Arms around my neck and legs around my waist,” Ardruc said, his lips pressed to my ear. “And whatever you do, do not let go.”
My heart pounded so loudly he could have heard it all the way back at the station. “Never,” I promised.
He spread his beautiful wings, wrapped his tail around my left thigh and his arms around my back, and leapt into the air.
We rose above the forest canopy in just a few flaps of his powerful wings.
Instead of flying toward Nova Cal, he flew away from the station along the mountain’s slope, staying a few meters above the treetops.
I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply to let the fresh, clean air fill my lungs and soul.
When we were around the mountain and out of sight of the station, Ardruc banked, turned, and flew out over the valley. The treetops fell away, and suddenly I found myself soaring through nothingness, surrounded by only fresh mountain air and Ardruc’s arms.
My cry of wonder and amazement ended abruptly when he kissed me. “Ardruc. My dragon.” I gasped the words into his mouth.
As he rumbled, I wrapped one hand around his dripping cock between us and stroked. His beautiful wings didn’t miss a beat, but a shiver ran through his body.
“Take my cock, little mate,” he said into my ear, his arms and tail so strong around me. “Claim your dragon in the sky.”
Whimpering and gasping, I rubbed the head of his cock against my clit and my slit, coating it in my slickness and driving myself closer to a climax. Smoke swirled from his nose and his eyes glowed.
I positioned his cock at my entrance just as his teeth closed on the side of my neck near my shoulder. I moaned. “Dragon…”
He gripped me tightly with his arms and tail and thrust, burying himself halfway in a single movement. My wail echoed through the valley.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, take my cock, Elena. Take it all.”
I moved against his grip, crying out as I worked to take him deeper. At this angle, the ridges of his cock stroked over my G-spot each time he thrust. And his knot bumped against me, a promise of the pleasures still awaiting me.
We were terrifyingly far above the treetops, and yet I trusted Ardruc with my life. The rush was beyond anything I could have imagined, and it drove me toward bliss as much as his cock. I gasped against Ardruc’s shoulder and sank my teeth into his bicep.
Ardruc groaned into my ear. “Come for me, little mate. Squeeze my cock.”
He changed his angle just slightly, pulling out farther and driving deeper once, twice…
I climaxed with a scream. He held me against his chest, rumbling and puffing smoke from his nostrils as I shook and wailed and gushed on his thick dragon cock.
“Yes, like that,” he murmured. “Just like that.”
An enormous korae burst across the sky in a dozen colors. A coincidence? Or did was the planet joining in with our lovemaking again?
More bursts of color and power blossomed far above us in the atmosphere, but Ardruc the atmospheric scientist had eyes only for me.
“You come so beautifully for your dragon, little mate,” he said in my ear. “You have claimed me in the sky. And now it is my turn.”
His knot pushed against me—so big, so impossibly big. I wailed.
“I am going to give this to you now,” he said, his hand twisted into my hair in the way that made me gush for him. “I am going to knot my beautiful little Elena and pump her full of cum. And you will keep every drop of it inside you until we are back on the ground and I can watch it drip from you.”
“Yes.” Gasping, I held him more tightly. “Please give me your knot, dragon. I need it so badly.”
“Yes, you do.” His teeth grazed my ear. “You need to take your dragon into your sweet pussy all the way to his balls.”
He cooed. Even in the sky, he had to for me to take his knot. And that meant my body went soft and pliant.
I managed to lace my fingers together to keep my arms around his neck, but my strength was a fraction of what it had been moments ago. If it were not for his iron grip and my trust in him, I would have been afraid of falling.
Even after his coo, his knot was so big that every thrust stole my breath away. But I took it all, because he was my dragon and his body was made to fit to mine. And nothing felt as good as when he was fully inside me and he was mine.
His knot swelled, locking us together. His breathing turned heavy and fast, and his eyes glowed as he looked deeply into mine. And just like the first time I’d taken his knot, I felt the full, overwhelming force of his love and devotion.
Growling and rumbling, he came powerfully but not as roughly as he had in bed last night. With his arms wrapped around me and his hips jerking and thrusting, he drove me back over the edge with him. His shouts and my cries rolled through the valley.
“My mate,” he rasped into my ear as he shuddered with the last of his releases. “My beautiful mate. My Elena.”
Gasping and trembling and so wonderfully full of him, I rested my head against his chest.
He banked and soared over the treetops, following the course of a narrow river that wound through the mountains before plunging over a waterfall about six kilometers from Nova Cal.
I had traveled this route in a transport coming and going from foraging trips and hiked to the waterfall with Forux a half-dozen times, and never once imagined flying it with Ardruc—much less with his cock and knot inside me.
I couldn’t help it; I laughed.
He kissed my temple. “Share the joke, my love?”
When I explained, he chuckled and nuzzled my windblown hair. “If you see any fungi you feel you must collect, tell your dragon and I will land.”
“I’m facing the wrong direction, and I can’t see much from up here,” I pointed out. “We’ll have to do this again when I’m facing the ground.”
He chuckled again, this time in a much lower register. “Yes, we will, little mate.” He kissed me. “I will take you quite happily from behind.”
I quivered at the thought. Oh, yes—I wanted that too. Repeatedly.
We had a lot to think about: how to approach the Alliance about the Vorsa and the Nyvorans’ illegal removal of natural resources, whether to accept the Vorsa’s request for us to become caretaker-listeners for their world, whether to accept and keep their tattoos that granted full sensation of this miraculous world…
and so much more. The future of this world and our role in it was not at all certain.
I wasn’t even sure yet what our first step should be.
But whatever we did, we would do it together.
Ardruc banked one last time in a wide circle and headed in the direction of Nova Cal—or rather in the direction of our forest shelter.
I still wasn’t ready to walk back into the station and face the grim reality of the decisions before us, but I might be once Ardruc and I enjoyed a bit more time away.
In the meantime, I held on to my dragon and let him fly us home.
Home. I wanted this world to be our home more than ever, if only we could figure out how to protect it.
As we rounded the last mountain slope and the station and clearing came into view, I peered up over Ardruc’s shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of another korae.
Instead, I spotted a small, dark gray ship slicing through the sky directly at us. A Nyvoran transport? No, the shape and markings were all wrong.
Fear turned me cold. “Ship!” I shouted. “Ardruc, a ship!”
Hissing, he whipped his head around to look.
Then he crushed me against his body, folded his wings, and dove toward the forest canopy. I screamed, the sound muffled by his chest and the wind.
With a high-pitched engine sound, the ship pursued. Weapons fired behind us—a strange, dull noise that sounded nothing like any plasma cannon or ballistic weapon I knew. Something whizzed past that looked like a black cloud full of blue sparks. What the hells was that?
Ardruc twisted in midair and dove to his right, away from the cloud. This time I was too breathless to scream.
The treetops approached at a horrifying speed, but Ardruc didn’t slow down at all. If he didn’t pull up, we were going to crash right into the branches.
A second blast came from behind us. I watched over Ardruc’s shoulder as another black cloud—this one on a long tether—came right at us. And this time, they didn’t miss.
A crackling net closed around us and cinched tight.
The give in the tether was so minimal that when it went taut, we hit the webbing almost as hard as if we’d hit the ground.
My right elbow and knee gave with a nauseating crunch. Agony whited out my vision right before my body went numb. I felt a wrench and dull pain as if the force of the impact had yanked Ardruc free of my body, but everything was gray and hazy so I couldn’t tell what had happened.
Something jolted through me—a sizzle of power that stole the breath out of my lungs and made my body seize. The heavy weight next to me must be Ardruc. I tried to reach for him but couldn’t open my eyes or get my arms to move.
I only knew we were swaying in midair because my stomach lurched in a way I recognized. I moaned.
Another sickening lurch, and now I felt pressure against the webbing beneath me. We were being hoisted.
My eyelids weighed a thousand kilograms each, but I got them open.
Far above us, a dark shape—the ship—was silhouetted against the sky. The black netting we lay in sparked and pulsed every few seconds. A stun net. That explained the shocks and partial paralysis.
Ardruc’s face appeared above mine. It was swollen and discolored on one side and violet blood dripped from his nose. Oh, my dragon.
“Elena,” he rasped. The sound of his voice was barely audible over the ringing in my ears, but it was enough to help clear my head.
I had no idea who was trying to capture us or why, but whatever was happening, I was not going to let them get away with this any more than I was going to give up and die on the ice of Aloris when everything went to shit.
I just had to give myself a chance. I had to give us a chance. And we did not have to fight alone.
I closed my eyes and reached for the threads that had shared warmth and welcome, anger and grief, and even pleasure and need with us. And I pulled with all my might.
My senses widened, and even with my eyes closed I saw all of the living, breathing Vorsa World and the beautiful silver-blue threads pulsing around and through us.
Help us, I willed into the web of threads.
A blast of icy wind rolled over us from above. The ship’s engine raised in pitch. We lurched and swayed violently. My stomach threatened to rebel.
When I opened my eyes, it was just in time to see a dozen Vorsa converging on the tether and net from all directions.
Ardruc followed my gaze and stared in amazement. And then horror. With a guttural sound, he wrapped me in his arms. It hurt, but I had no time and no energy to gasp, much less scream.
A green Vorsa—maybe Ka, but I couldn’t say for sure—blazed brightly and sliced through the net where it dangled from the tether.
The net opened, and we fell.