Page 48 of Reaper

I smiled at Brees’s cleverness.

Creckels normally displayed submission by lying on their backs with their bellies exposed at the mercy of the dominant. Brees had not submitted yet had nonetheless granted the Matriarch power over her by opening herself in such a vulnerable position.

The Matriarch slightly opened her jaw, her forked tongue lolling out on the left side, in a gesture I’d too often witnessed from Stran expressing a mocking grin. She had understood Brees’s display and seemed impressed. Closing the distance between them, the Matriarch extended her viciously sharp claws and carefully raked them on Brees’s underbelly, from the side of her neck to the bottom of her tummy.

Janelle all but melted against me in relief. I couldn’t help but chuckle and tenderly kissed her forehead. By this gesture, the Matriarch had accepted Brees’s concession of power, confirmed that she wouldn’t abuse that trust, and that no harm would come to her and her people for the duration of their stay.

Both females then spent a couple of minutes examining each other with undisguised curiosity, psychic energy flowing through them as each flaunted their assets and differences. After Brees introduced her to the other Horned Creckels, the Matriarch finally turned her gaze towards us—or more precisely towards my mate.

Tugging Janelle by the hand, I led her to the impressive female. She bumped my hand with her snout in a welcoming gesture before rubbing cheeks with my mate. Janelle burst out crying before wrapping her arms around the Matriarch’s neck. My gaze flicked back and forth between the two females, utterly confused and curious as to what they were psychically telling each other.

“My mother was in such awe of you,” Janelle finally said out loud, as if she’d read my thoughts. “She always knew you would become the Matriarch one day. She wanted so much to see you ascend.”

It was the Matriarch’s turn to sit on her hind legs but this time to draw my mate into an almost human embrace. When they parted, and after a few more greetings to the rest of the team, the Matriarch and her Hunters led us to the main Creckel village, one of many smaller ones on Dreija.

Although they mostly lived outside, they had dug a series of caverns inside wide cliffs by a large body of water. There was no question a sentient species lived here by the stunning decorative carvings they had done around the entrances and in some large stones surrounding the village. The caves provided shelter from the rain and the elements, for the sick and for the young. Many of the walls had primitive images marking important historical events of their people, including the Kryptid invasion.

To celebrate the unexpected return of so many of their people, the Creckels offered to hunt local meat for us to have a feast. But with the large amount of meat left from our Zebier battle, we did the honors. Despite that, we still had plenty of it left for the rest of our trip back to Khepri with the Horned Creckels, should they decide to come with us.

Although Janelle and I were slightly isolated, we were sitting near a campfire with the rest of our team and a few Creckels, but without Brees. After her liberation from the base, she had all but become Stran’s shadow, learning all that she could from him… until Leyi’s awakening. Even though she’d never admit to it, Janelle had felt a little jealous to have ‘lost’ her best friend to him.

Brees seemed to enjoy some of the things I’d been teaching her about tactics we’d used in specific battle situations over various missions. I had no shame in admitting it had been in an effort to seduce her with the type of epic encounters she could become a part of if she came with us. A part of me hoped that Brees would welcome my guidance once we parted with Stran. The idea of being the official trainer of the first true Creckel division of the Vanguard was exhilarating. I had bonded with these magnificent creatures over the past three weeks and had been diligently working on improving my image-based speech.

But then, if they came to Khepri, Doom would probably lay claim to the role. After all, he spoke their language fluently, had battled alongside the greatest Creckel in the Vanguard’s history for decades, and as one of the leaders of the Vanguard, he definitely outranked me. Yet again, I would likely play second fiddle.

However, the disturbing amount of time Meery—the Matriarch—was spending with Brees did not bode well. My fear that she would convince the Horned Creckels to stay on Dreija kept growing steadily. The way they had so naturally meshed with their ancestors would likely erase their last hesitations about not fitting in. If Brees stayed here, I believed my mate would refuse to part ways with her. But what kind of life would Janelle, our offspring, and I have on this planet devoid of any other humans?

The same type of life Janelle is used to, living with Creckels.

Chasing the depressing thought away, I turned to my mate who was looking at Stran playing with his young sons under the loving gaze of his mate. They had already expended so much energy, they’d soon be falling asleep. The sky, which was neither blue nor green but almost the aqua color of tropical waters, was beginning to darken as night crept in.

“I’m happy for him and yet sad for her,” Janelle said pensively.

I slightly recoiled, stunned by such a statement. “Sad for her? Why?”

“Because she spent nine years in stasis and then twenty in hibernation,” Janelle explained in a soft voice. “That’s twenty-nine years lost during which Stran continued to age. That means he will leave long before she does.”

“No one knows what the future holds,” I said in a gentle tone, refusing to let sadness for them take root. “But those years were not lost. Those years helped bring peace to the galaxy and gave us the means to find all of you. Stran is still young. He’s barely over sixty, and his species has an average lifespan of one hundred and thirty-five. That means they still have at least seventy to eighty years to spend together.”

“Yes, that is one way to look at it,” Janelle says with a shy smile. “I guess I should be more optimistic, but…”

“But?” I insisted, sensing there was more troubling her.

“Well, Doom is older than Stran, and yet he doesn’t look one day older than you are,” my mate said in a somewhat hesitant fashion, as if she was carefully choosing her words. “You are pretty much immortal with your replacement bodies. And I—”

“Dragons and Xian Warriors have a two-hundred-year lifespan,” I interrupted, knowing where this was headed. “As my mate, you get the same.”

Janelle’s eyes all but popped out of her head from shock. “What? How?”

“Have you noticed the scales around Madeline’s forehead?” I asked, temporarily ignoring her question.

“So, theyarescales?” Janelle asked. “I had noticed the darker shapes, but as I can’t see too well, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t dare ask, for fear of embarrassing her in case it was a sensitive topic.”

I chuckled and gently caressed her cheek. “That was very considerate of you, but no, she’s not sensitive about it,at all. Quite the opposite in fact. She’s very proud to display the proof of her bond with Reklig. When you and I are fully bonded, you will also bear my mark on you.”

“Around my forehead?” she asked, shock, awe, and excited curiosity filling her voice.

I shook my head. “No,” I said with a smile, pleased by her reaction. With my fingertips, I caressed the side of her neck and the line of her shoulder. “You will develop some black scales here, on both sides of your neck and shoulders that will match the pattern of my own. It’s what we call the mantle. All the wives of Xian Warriors and Dragons get them.”