29. Elio

Aria was scared of her own shadow. I needed to thank Tarek for taking his mate away, because Aria seemed to hide behind that female. I needed to get closer to her. My dragon was about ready to pull the embassy apart brick by brick to stop the hiding.

Instead, here I was, on a ship back to the Federation to rip someone a new hole. Or perhaps I'd just burn down the ship.

"Brother, you need to find your calm. With Tarek taking time with his mate, we are the ones who must deal with this new mess," Akio said.

I glared.

"Yeah, I'd rather be digging those trenches up and filling in those goddess-cursed tunnels. Who knew humans could be so much trouble?"

We both sighed. This visit to the Federation was going to entail leaving out details of our own follies. What it would not be leaving out is that, somehow, three unregistered aliens were able to gain access to our planet despite it requiring a specific key code to get past our defenses. A very specific, highly guarded code that would have only been granted to Federation members.

The colonies had higher levels of security. The embassy was a fortress to keep our humans safe, and the planet was getting a system upgrade with the help of Ravi and several others from neighboring hoards.

Someone was sabotaging us, and the human issues were merely an annoying distraction.