Page 41 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

Marina's throat was tight. She put the necklace on. The beads sat against her collarbone, warm and light, and the dragonling in the woman's arms reached for them with tiny claws that stopped just short of touching.

"Thank you," Marina said. "I'll take care of it."

"Take care of us," the woman replied. "That matters more."

She walked away. The dragonling looked back at Marina over its mother's shoulder with those enormous dark eyes, and Marina thought about the lavender-scaled child who'd asked Boradrith if anyone could fix the suns, and she thought about the promise implicit in every bead on the necklace; that the story continued, that new chapters were possible, that the people who made the beads believed in a future worth decorating.

* * *

Melessra found her after the distribution was complete. The green-scaled scientist was holding a data tablet and wearing the expression of someone who'd received news that was important and terrible in equal measure.

"The revised collapse model is finished," Melessra said. "Patel and I finalized it this morning."

"And?"

"The collapse window has narrowed. Our combined data puts the secondary sun's failure at twelve to eighteen cycles. Six to nine years in your terms."

Marina absorbed this. Less than a decade before the second sun collapsed and Dobromia's surface became uninhabitable. The timeline made everything urgent. The food shipments, the technology exchange, the scientific collaboration, all of it. This wasn't a long-term project anymore. It was a countdown.

"The alliance isn't just beneficial," Marina said slowly. "It's essential. Without Earth's support, Dobromia doesn't survive the collapse."

"And without Dobromia's geothermal energy technology, Earth's deep-ocean settlements don't advance past their current limitations. The dependency runs both ways. That's what makes it sustainable." Melessra looked at her with an expression that had evolved considerably from the cool skepticism of their first meeting at three in the morning. "You were right. Both species become smarter together."

"The data proves it."

"The data always proves it. People just need time to believe it." Melessra paused. "I believed it at three in the morning on your first night, when you sat down at my console and started correcting my baseline calculations."

"I suggested alternative parameters."

"You corrected them and you were right." Melessra's amber eyes held something that looked, on a Weredragon face, remarkably like affection. "I'm glad you came to my cavern, Marina Livingstone."

"I'm glad you let me stay."

"I didn't let you. You sat down before I could object. Scientists from your planet are apparently as stubborn as scientists from mine."

"It's a universal constant."

Melessra almost smiled with the Weredragon version, which was more of a softening around the eyes than a movement of the mouth. Then she turned and walked away, data tablet in hand, already thinking about the next problem. The collapse model was finished, but the work it demanded was just beginning.

Marina touched the necklace at her throat. The beads were warm against her skin. Twelve to eighteen cycles. Six to nine years. A countdown that would define everything which included every shipment, every collaboration, every diplomatic negotiation, every moment of shared work between two species learning to survive together.

She wasn't afraid. Fear was a luxury she'd traded for purpose a long time ago. What she felt was something closer to resolve; the bone-deep determination of a woman who'd been given a problem she couldn't solve alone and who'd found the people she could solve it with.

The bond hummed in her chest. Somewhere in the Colony, Toren was unloading the last of the grain shipment. She could feel him through the connection. He was tired and satisfied, his joy a warm undercurrent beneath the physical exhaustion. He'd carried grain the same way he'd carried Peter, without complaint, without showmanship, because the work needed doing and he was there to do it.

She loved him for that. For the simplicity of it. For the prince who carried things.

Marina Livingstone stood in a storage cavern inside a volcano on a planet with dying suns, wearing a necklace made by strangers who believed in her, and she got back to work.

There was always work to do.

* * *

The volunteers settled into the Colony over the next two days in ways that surprised Marina and delighted Auren, who appointed himself the unofficial welcoming committee.

Garcia set up a translation station in the relay room within hours of arriving. She'd been teaching herself Dobromian from the transmissions, and now, surrounded by native speakers, she dove into the language with the obsessive focus of someone who'd found her calling. By the second day, three young Weredragons had started learning English in return, and the relay room had become an unofficial language school where Garcia held court with a data tablet in one hand and a cup of Dobromian tea in the other, correcting pronunciation with the cheerful ruthlessness of a born teacher.

"Your 'th' sound doesn't exist in Dobromian," she told a young warrior named Korvax, who was attempting to say "the" and producing something closer to "ze." "Try putting your tongue between your teeth."