7. Doran
DORAN
“Doran!” my brother Kaelor shouted. “My office, now!”
I sighed. Ever since arriving two weeks ago, he’d been all over my case. If he wasn’t reminding me that as the younger brother of the spaceport administrator, I needed to go above and beyond to provide an example for the other workers to follow, it was to try to get me more involved socially.
“I better go see what he wants,” I said glumly. Jornik, the Algonian who I’d been helping unload cargo with, nodded.
“I’ve got this. We were almost done anyway.”
“Bob, any idea what I’ve done this time?”
“Oh, it’s nothing bad,” came the perky reply through my wrist comm.
“Oh, so you’re not going to chat with me through the overhead speakers like usual, huh?”
“No. Kaelor was quite clear that no one else knows the nature of the reason he’s called you until you hear it from him first.”
My tail thrashed in agitation. Something private, and not unpleasant.
It had to be another dinner at Johree and Jesse's house. Kaelor was close buddies with the governor and his mate and had taken me over there for dinner twice now. No doubt he was letting me know that we were going to join them for Sunday dinner again at the end of this week, just as we had the day after I’d arrived and the mid-week “get together” after that.
He didn’t like flaunting his friendship, so anything to do with those two that was personal, he spoke to me about in private.
“Maybe they’ll have Rosie make that pot roast thing again.” I licked my lips remembering it. It had been made from some earth beast called a cow.
I reached his office and knocked.
“Come in!” he called out.
I opened the door and threw a hand up over my eyes as bright lights began to strobe around the room, as a song began to warble congratulations and salutations.
“What the zark!”
“That’s enough, Bob,” Kaelor called out, and the visual and auditory onslaught stopped. I lowered my arm and blinked. “It’s true, though. Congratulations are in order! You’ve been matched! I wanted to be the first to tell you the good news!”
I stared at him dumbly. “I’ve been matched? Truly?”
Kaelor’s grin grew almost impossibly wider, his tail dancing in the air behind him.
“Yes! Isn’t it wonderful! After all these years and all those mating parties with everyone hoping to find their scent match, one of us has at last been star blessed!
See, I told you that you coming here and agreeing to participate in the Mylos’s testing program would be the answer! ”
It was true. My older brother had become obsessed with the testing program ever since we signed that three way mate treaty with the Mylos and humans of Earth.
And once Prince Johree signed up and was matched shortly after being appointed governor of the colony he’d moved to, he’d been adamant that it was a sign from the cosmos.
I’d caved in and made the move here myself just two weeks ago, simply on the off chance.
That, and I really wanted a change of scenery.
Working on freighters and space docks on various remote space stations had grown old. I wanted ground beneath my feet.
“Her profile has been sent to your datapad, Pata.”
“Pata? My mate already has a kit?” Excitement filled me. I’d always wanted to be a father. I adored kits of all species. Their inquisitiveness, their adorable little faces, just everything about them. And now I was to get one of my own, as well as a mate? The stars had indeed blessed me.
“Not one, not two, but three of them,” Bob replied in a sing-song voice. “Their ages are five, eight, and thirteen. Their biological male parent has been no contact for quite a while.”
Outrage filled me. How could anyone walk away from their offspring? Had he not valued their love?
“Easy now, brother,” Kaelor said soothingly. “I am as indignant as you to hear this, but surely this is merely proof that these are meant to be yours. And mine! I get to be an uncle!” he danced a little jig at the thought.
“True,” I agreed grudgingly. “There will be no other male jealous of my claim to them.” If their other male parent had been involved, I would have tried my best to be friendly and cooperative, no matter what my Dragonii nature preferred by default.
After all, a good father put his kits’ well-being and happiness first, not his own.
“Well, aren’t you going to look? See what your mate looks like, and your kits?”
“I left my datapad in my locker,” I replied. “I’m going to go get it.”
The bank of lockers for dockworkers were across the hall from the office.
Kaelor had them installed that way so he could keep a closer eye on what was going in and coming out of them.
It discouraged pilfering, something that unfortunately was known to happen every now and again, no matter how diligent one was about background checks.
I returned moments later and settled down in a chair before touching the screen to activate it. I found the file quickly as it was flashing and had fireworks streaking out from its icon. I tapped it and forgot to breathe.
She was gorgeous. There was simply no other word for it.
She wore her hair short, with a fall of longer hair across her forehead.
The hair was a lighter brown than mine, and her eyes were an even darker shade of brown.
She looked anxious in her photo, and I wondered what had prompted the tired lines around her eyes, with the dark circles she tried so hard to hide with cosmetics.
I went to read her profile. She worked a demanding job with long hours on her feet.
Xeranos had provided a note that her former mate had taken another in secret, starting a second family, and had been summoned to court for not providing for the kits my mate and he had created together.
She had to rely on assistance from the state in order to feed herself and the kits, something that, where she lived on her planet, was only provided for those in poverty.
Her ex-mate was not a poor man and lived a very comfortable life with his new mate and kit.
I understood her strain now and made a vow: they would never know want again, nor know what it was to be unloved.
My hearts were already theirs, and I hadn’t even looked at the next page to see what our kits looked like.
It was enough to know they were mine, and my feelings of possession and the swell of affection I was starting to experience would only become encompassing once I had them before me.
As for that male - he’d better hope to never run into me.
I’d show him the error of his ways. Or Kaelor, for that matter.
To a Dragonii, family was everything. He’d be lucky to not end up taking a short glide off a very tall cliff.