Chapter Eleven

Fred

Washing a year of sleep off wasn't as difficult as washing thirty-six years of sleep off, but it wasn't easy to wash the fog of sleep away either way. My dragon's eyes drifted closed again and again inside his inner sanctum. It would've been easy to stretch out under the hot water and drift back off for another few decades. Lotus wasn't on this world. If she was, I'd have felt her by now. She'd be banging down the door or tearing a hole through the ship's hull to get to me.

"Dad!" Teddy said through the bathroom door. "Someone's knocking of the ship's door."

I blinked and my dragon jerked back awake, our joint hearts skipping a beat in time.

"Did they let them in?" I asked, using them on purpose.

My hopes were already smashed to pieces. I didn't want to put Teddy through false hope only to let him down.

"Castor won't open the door until we're all ready," Teddy said.

"I'm hurrying," I said, slipping back under the shower to rinse the shampoo from my hair. "I'd like not to smell like sleeping ass when I meet the aliens."

"They're not really aliens, you know. They're from the Other World just like the Moonscales are."

"Maybe we're aliens too," I teased him.

Him talking through the door while I tried to get ready for the day reminded me of how he and his siblings gathered at the bathroom door any time Lotus or I was inside of it. Even as teenagers they managed always to remember the most important thing, they meant to tell us right when we closed the bathroom door behind us. I smiled at the memory and then pushed it aside before Lotus's face had a chance to drift back into my memories. I had to have my head in the game today. Lotus probably wasn't here. I didn't know what these alien dragons wanted from me, and I wasn't the only one at risk. If Teddy hadn't been here, I'd let the others take their chances, but grown or not, Teddy's chances were always going to be mine. I'd let the aliens eat the rest of them if that was the only way to save my son.

***

Twenty minutes later, the rest of the guys gave me the stink eye when I walked into the room. They wore their impatience on their skin. Except for Castor who leaned against the door like a living doorstop.

"About time," Sunny rolled his eyes.

"Hey now," Teddy shot him a dirty look.

"Stop it," Castor said, sounding bored. "No fighting in front of the Starscales. I mean it. We're to present a united front. All Freddie did was make everyone wait a few more minutes. It's nothing in the grand scheme of things. I know we're all stir crazy, but we have to approach cautiously. No breath of real fresh air is worth dying over when the oxygen on the Medwin 2 will keep us alive for decades. Speaking of air. Izora is ninety-five percent sure that we can breathe their air."

"A dragon's a dragon," Izora shrugged.

"Casimir? Freddie? You guys ready to greet the future?" Castor asked, glancing around at us.

I almost hugged Teddy before nodding my consent but didn't want to embarrass him in front of the other guys. I was beyond anything shaking me up, but he was young and from the smell of it heading into that phase of life where he felt like he had something to prove. Old Man Cromwell would've been proud.

"The rest of you back up," Castor ordered, slipping into his pilot's voice.

The other guys backed up and Casimir stepped up next to me. He nodded, still smelling irritated that I held things up. Whoever wanted us out of the ship knocked again and my dragon rolled his eyes and made a comment about turning into a slot machine before we made it back to Earthside.

Stepping behind the shield wall on the left side of the door, Castor pulled the handle. I glanced at Teddy peeking around the doorway of the room the others had been banished to before stepping forward. My dragon reared up on his hind legs ready to pounce before the new scent hit me. Sweet and metallic and not Lotus at all. I took a step back stumbling into Casimir who shoved me forward laughing.

"Quit fucking around, glitter man," he said, but I pushed back against him, my mouth opening and a fire ball tingling in the back of my throat. I knew this feeling. It wasn't anything new to me, but the man hovering midair in front of the door to the Medwin 2 wasn't Lotus. Reincarnation didn't consider gender all that much, but I'd know my little flower anywhere and this definitely wasn't her.

I touched the spot on my shoulder where Lotus had once claimed me. The gland lay as flat as it had since that day. This wasn't her. He wasn't her. This was trickery and--- My thoughts derailed as my dragon breathed in and let the fireball out. It gushed from my mouth, molten over my tongue as the flames sprayed through the air. He roared and growled as the fire kept coming. I couldn't see the floater through the flames. Maybe they weren't there at all. No one impersonated our true-mate and used magic to make us respond to them and lived to tell the tale.

"Freddie! Frost damn you!" Castor swore trying to pull the lever down to shut the door, but it was too hot to move. "Damn you! I did not say to go out blazing! We don't know if they're a hostile or not! What in the name of Frost's swinging balls were you thinking?"

Nothing. Everything. Lotus. Liar. Another spray of flames washed out of my mouth as my dragon took over. His wings broke through my flesh, shredding my shirt. It was a small price to pay to fly out and turn this whole lying world into ash and cinder.