Page 11 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

"Yesterday you volunteered to carry her sample case. You don't carry things, Toren. You're a prince. You haven't carried anything heavier than a data tablet since you were twelve."

"The case was heavy."

"The case weighs about seven pounds. You can lift a Drog." Auren grinned at him with the deeply annoying certainty of a friend who knew he was right. "You like her."

"I respect her professional competence."

"That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard you say."

Toren didn't respond because there was nothing to say that wouldn't confirm Auren's assessment. He did like her. The liking was inconvenient and growing and he didn't know what to do about it. On Dobromia, romantic attachments followed established patterns. There was a formal courtship, family negotiations and the bond ceremony. None of those patterns applied to a situation where the woman in question was a human scientist stranded on a desert planet who didn't know he was a prince.

Well, she knew now. He'd told her. That conversation had gone better than he'd feared and worse than he'd hoped, because the honesty had created a new kind of closeness between them that made the liking harder to ignore.

"Khrelan thinks you're compromised," Auren added, because apparently the day wasn't complicated enough.

"Khrelan thinks everyone is compromised. It's his default setting."

"He's not wrong this time, is he?"

Toren looked at Marina. She was crouched beside the mineral deposit, explaining something to Patel, her red hair catching the light of the twin suns. She glanced up, caught him watching, and gave him a small wave. He waved back. The gesture was ridiculous; the prince of Dobromia, waving at a human woman across a field of alien rock like a teenager with his first crush.

"No," he admitted. "He's not wrong."

* * *

Khrelan confronted him that evening.

The navy-scaled Weredragon waited until Auren was asleep and the humans were inside the ship, then appeared at the entrance to the shallow cave where Toren had been reviewing the day's observations.

"We need to talk," Khrelan stated. He didn't sit. He stood with his arms crossed and his tail rigid behind him; the body language of a soldier delivering an unwelcome report to a superior who wasn't going to like it.

"About the surveys?"

"About the human."

Toren had been expecting this. He set aside his data tablet and gave Khrelan his full attention. "Say what you need to say."

"You're losing focus. The mission was to scout Ceylara for resources and return to Dobromia. Instead, you've established an unauthorized alliance with a human species, revealed your identity as the prince, and now you're proposing to bring them to the Colony. Your father didn't sanction any of this."

"My father doesn't know about any of this."

"Exactly my point." Khrelan's red-tinged eyes were hard. "When he finds out, and he will, there will be consequences. The D'Karr doesn't approve of unsanctioned contact with human species. You know this."

"My father's position on human contact was established when we had no reason to believe they could help us. The situation has changed."

"Has it? Or have you changed? Because from where I'm standing, you look like a man who's making strategic decisions based on personal attraction, and that's a dangerous foundation for diplomacy."

The words hit harder than Toren expected. Partly because Khrelan wasn't wrong. The attraction was there, and it was influencing his choices, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. But Khrelan was also not entirely right. The alliance was sound regardless of how Toren felt about Marina. The humans had technology, food production capacity, and a planet that wasn't dying. Those were facts, not feelings.

"I hear your concern," Toren replied. He kept his voice steady. "And I take it seriously. But the strategic argument stands on its own. These humans can help our people, Khrelan. Not because I find their lead scientist attractive, but because Dobromia is running out of time and they have resources we need."

"And if your father disagrees?"

"Then I'll make my case. That's what the visit is for. I want him to see what I've seen."

"What you've seen," Khrelan repeated. "Red hair and green eyes and a woman who asks too many questions."

"I've seen a species that shares food with strangers. That fights for each other. That builds communities out of disaster." Toren stood. He was taller than Khrelan, though he rarely used the height advantage. He used it now. "I've seen what Dobromia could become if we stopped being afraid of everything that isn't us. That's what I want my father to see."