Page 13 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

Auren approached Athena with an expression that mixed genuine contrition with the desperate hope that she'd stop yelling. "I am sorry," he said. His voice was lower now, stripped of the performance. "I was trying to impress you. It was stupid."

Athena stared at him. "You were trying to impress me by breathing fire."

"Yes."

"That's the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever done in my presence, and I once watched a recruit try to juggle live grenades."

"Did it work?" Auren asked. "The impressing, not the grenades."

"Absolutely not."

But Marina, watching from a few yards away, noticed that Athena's fury had dimmed by several degrees, and that the look she was giving Auren contained something that wasn't entirely anger. It was closer to the exasperated fondness you developed for a dog that kept knocking things over; annoying, destructive, and somehow impossible to stay mad at.

*** Toren ***

That night, Toren sat with Marina near the ship while Rowan's team worked on the titanium samples. The twin suns were down, and the temperature had dropped enough that Marina had pulled on a thermal jacket. She was reviewing data on her tablet, her face lit by the blue glow of the screen.

"I've been thinking about your invitation," she said without looking up.

"To Dobromia."

"Yes." She set the tablet down. "I want to go. But I need to be honest with you about why."

"Scientific curiosity?"

"Partly. Also, because my ship is broken, your planet might have the resources to fix it, and sitting here waiting for a rescue signal that may or may not reach anyone feels like a slow way to die." She met his eyes. "And partly because I want to see where you come from. I want to understand who you are. That's not scientific. That's personal, and I should probably be more professional about it, but I'm stranded on an alien planet and professionalism feels like a luxury I can't afford right now."

Toren felt something shift in his chest. Not the bond; he didn't think humans could trigger the bond, and the medical data on cross-species connections was nonexistent. Something simpler. Something that felt like hope.

"I want you to see Dobromia," he said. "I want you to meet my people. I want you to see the bioluminescent caverns and the crystal arrays and the waterfalls that power our cities. I want you to see everything beautiful about my world before you see everything that's dying."

"That's not a very reassuring pitch."

"It's an honest one. I'd rather give you honesty than a sales pitch."

Marina looked at him for a long moment. The starlight caught the red in her hair, and her green eyes held that quality he'd come to recognize; the one that meant she was making a decision she'd already made and was just confirming it with herself.

"Okay," she said. "When do we leave?"

"Three days. Rowan needs time to process the titanium. The crew needs to prepare. And I need to warn Auren to stop breathing fire at things."

Marina laughed. It was quiet and genuine, and it was the best sound Toren had heard on any planet.

Three days. And then Dobromia. And then his father. And then whatever came next.

He couldn't wait. He was also terrified.

Both feelings, he was learning, could be true at the same time.

CHAPTER 5

*** MARINA ***

The three days before the trip to Dobromia were the busiest of Marina's life, and that was saying something for a woman who'd survived a crash landing on an alien planet.

Rowan and his team worked around the clock on the titanium samples. The alloy wasn't a perfect match for the Vulcana's broken coupling, but it was close enough that Rowan stopped saying "maybe" and started saying "probably," which was the engineering equivalent of a standing ovation. He needed more material than they'd found at the initial vein, but Toren had mentioned that Dobromia's underground mines were rich with compatible metals. Another reason to make the trip.

Dr. Patel had turned the tube worm explosion into a full research project. She'd set up a containment lab in cargo bay three and was spending her days cataloging Ceylara's biology with the obsessive energy of a scientist who'd been handed the discovery of a lifetime. Marina checked on her twice a day, partly out of professional responsibility, partly because Patel's enthusiasm was contagious.