7. Zara

The first step onto the craziest looking stone pathway felt surreal. This had to be what the brain experienced when it woke up from some kind of coma.

Inside that house, it was so much easier to think that maybe it was some dream or was just another country where everyone's second language was English and they just didn't know that dragon didn't mean what they thought it meant.

This though?

I was on an alien planet. There was no mistaking it.

My human companions joined me in the random pause and blink and stare game.

"This is not Earth. It really isn't, is it?" asked Aria.

My mouth hung open until I realized it, and then I promptly closed it.

"No. Not even close."

Even if I didn't look up, there was still no pretending this was like my shitty little neighborhood.

There was a lot of strange white stone that I'd have loved to pretend looked like marble, but it just didn't. Everything seemed to have an iridescence to it, and it was hard to explain. I shrieked as I saw something large and feathered leaping out of the corner of my eye.

"Riki, sit," said Ciro. Or at least I thought that was his name.

"What in the fun-cake is that thing?"

They all followed my finger to the thing called Riki.

"This is a Solar Hound, as the humans have adapted its name. Our language is much more guttural so that some words we've had to adapt to help our planet become as much a part of the humans as it is a part of us," said Ciro.

My feet were moving before I realized I was moving backward. I hit a solid wall and stopped as Tarek's arms wrapped around me.

"Breathe, my Zara. It will all be well. Riki wouldn't hurt a tiny human child, let alone you."

I blinked. Did it have six legs?

"I don't like dogs. They bite."

Aurora was petting it. Logically, that meant it wasn't dangerous to humans. Fuck. Humans? Since when was I buying into there being multiple humanoid species here? Since now apparently.

"Why don't we start to walk? I believe the exercise will help you calm yourself," Tarek said.

I nodded like a damn bobble head. "Right. Walk. Sure."

He seemed to push me along, but as my legs moved, my brain still struggled to process everything. All the shoes here were older in style and yet somehow updated and new. They were like something we might have seen in a history book.

If I focused on shoes, things almost felt normal. Almost.

"I thought we would do some shopping and allow you to pick some of your own clothing? The seamstress is just ahead."

Seamstress?

"Do we get custom-made clothes?"

Tarek hadn't left my side, and it hadn't gone unnoticed. I just couldn't wrap my brain around much, but his presence seemed to give me some comfort even if it didn't make sense. Though the warmth of his arm as it brushed against mine suddenly felt grounding, if that was possible on an alien planet.

"Of course. Dragon lords can't have their mates in just anything," Aurora said. I nearly tripped over an uneven stone in the street, and the only thing keeping me up was Tarek.

Dragon lord?

I froze in the middle of what must have been a street.

"Dragon lord? And then you mentioned human lords. Do you still have monarchies here?"

All the men shrugged, and Aurora seemed to find this question entertaining, if her giggle was any indication.

"Yes. Of course. The dragon lords oversee all the colonies. Inside the colonies are the founding families, the titled that came over from Earth. The humans and dragons share the balance of power."

Tarek took my hand, weaving his fingers through mine.

"Come. The seamstress is to give you all gowns, as well as anything you need. Anything to make you feel like you're home."

Home. The word that had haunted me in my dreams. This wasn't home, But there were things like home. We passed a pub where men were drinking large mugs of something that might have been beer, but then, it just wasn't. The scents here were strange. Maybe flowers? Maybe fire?

"Does everything around here smell like shit's burning?"

Aurora paused before a small storefront that said seamstress.

"It smells like poop is burning?" she asked as Ciro held the door.

"No. I mean- Oh, never mind."

I followed in, Tarek only letting my hand go when the other girls walked in with me. The store seemed large from outside, but right now? Well, it felt small and claustrophobic with so many large men inside. It was hard to forget that really they were anything but men. The way Tarek's eyes shifted between the emerald-green of a human to the elongated pupils of that of a lizard at any given point kept reminding me this place was only almost like home.

Why was I watching him so much? I'd studied him so often I was able to notice he indeed had eyes that seemed to shift.

The smirk he flashed me as he caught me this last time had my heart beating double time. And my breathing? I didn't even know that I was breathing. It was more like holding my breath, hoping I'd wake up and realize that Tarek was a manifestation of my imagination. A very good and vivid manifestation.

The way his muscles rippled with every movement along his arms. It wasn't natural to have that much muscle. There was no way to miss how these men moved so smoothly and fluidly. They couldn't be mistaken for the Earth guys I'd spent far too much of my life trying to sift through, as if what was missing inside me was never on Earth.

I let out an audible sigh, watching Tarek talk to whatever he called the others. I think he called them brothers. His eyes turned to me and caught me red-handed, or rather red faced. I just couldn't not look. He was a strange eclipse that everyone told you not to look at and yet I was powerless to stop.

"Miss? What about this fabric?"

I blinked and looked at the woman trying to help me. I flicked my eyes over the room and noticed that even Aria was up on a pedestal as another woman draped a soft, almost peach fabric over her.

"Oh, right."

The fabric was a soft green along the same lines of the clothing that I'd picked from the ones supplied to me. There was no denying just how gorgeous the fabrics were. I ran my hand over the sheer cloth and watched as tiny feathers came to life under my touch.

"What in the world?"

The woman smiled.

"This fabric is from the Aetherfern. Very rare and even harder to get. You've probably only seen some of the larger, more readily available fabrics made of the larger fibers and feathers. This would make a statement fitting a dragon lord's mate."

There was a lot to unpack here.

"I have a few questions. Dragon lord?"

She nodded to our giant entourage.

"Lords? I… Well, how many of them are there exactly?"

She blinked at me a few times and laughed.

"That's a funny question. No one really knows. Well, none of the colonies really know. You would be a much better expert, wouldn't you now?"

She clucked her tongue and laughed again.

I swallowed because that told me maybe this wasn't an everyday thing around here. I wanted to ask a million more questions, but it didn't seem like this woman really understood just how confusing this all was to me. I went back to the fabric.

"Is this alive?" I realized I was still gently running my fingers over the strange feather-like fibers.

She shrugged. "I suppose so. The plant feeds off the energies in the atmosphere. Our farmers never seem successful in growing it within the domes, but like this it still seems to thrive just fine. So are we settled? Lord Tarek said that we were to spare nothing. This is one of our finest, and if you don't mind me saying, his colors suit you quite nicely."

My blink must have been all she needed for confirmation because someone else was gently ushering me up and onto a pedestal where her skills were put on display as she measured me and draped the fabric as she tucked and pinned it.

"Excuse me? What is this?"

The woman tried to smile with pins in her mouth and pulled out the two she'd been holding.

"Oh. I assumed you'd been through this before. I forget that fated mates don't all have the same means. Silly me. This is the latest of styles with a little twist befitting our dragon lord's mates. Once I have the lining fabrics just right, we will work on adding your choices in. Lots and lots of layers."

I nodded and went with this. Just days ago, I'd been up and down the aisles of my favorite department store grabbing lotion and shampoo and later a t-shirt. Nothing I'd ever had in my life was like this.

I was really going to miss one-stop shopping, probably. I wonder if they had anything out here like our superstores? The thing was, with every pitch and pull of the fabric, I watched something come alive that I doubted I'd ever find back home.

I was something important here. Someone that people fussed over.

A warmth radiated near me, and I knew without even looking that it was Tarek. I felt him like a sixth sense, and that should have been unnerving, but my entire body heated and warmed. Instead of freaking out about being on whatever this strange planet was and the fact aliens were so real that we could touch them, I was busy pressing my thighs together and swallowing down the foreign feeling.

I wanted him, and I wasn't sure that I didn't suddenly believe in fated mates.