Twin Dragons: Dragon Lords of Valdier Book 7 Read Free Page B

him. He had not even
heard it enter their living quarters. It must have sensed his
distress. He dropped his fingers to the smooth, golden creature. A
strained smile tugged at the corner of his mouth when he realized
it had taken a form very similar to Creon’s that stayed at Carmen’s
side.
    “What did she call this form again?” Calo
asked as he looked at Cree’s which had taken an identical
shape.
    “A dog,” Cree said gruffly. “When this
mission is over, I am done, Calo. I… It is getting to be too
dangerous. I am sorry, brother. I have reached the end.”
    Calo didn’t argue. He had made up his mind
the day before and was just trying to figure out how best to tell
his brother. A wave of relief and sorrow filled him.
    “I want to see Mother and Father one last
time,” he said in an emotionless voice. “I promised Mother.”
    “Just as I promised Father,” Cree responded.
He held out his hand. “Together.”
    “Forever,” Calo murmured, gripping his
brother’s hand and pulling him closer. “We go together,
brother.”
    Cree’s throat tightened and he nodded,
embracing Calo before stepping back. “Get some rest. I spoke to
Creon earlier. We will be at the Antrox mining area on the outer
edges of the Cardovus star system in a few hours. He wants both of
us to remain close to Carmen while he and a team search the
asteroid.”
    “Perhaps it would be better if we went,”
Calo suggested tiredly. “We could…”
    “No, I already suggested it,” Cree
interrupted. “Creon was insistent that we stay with Carmen. He says
he trusts no others.”
    Calo gave a short, bitter laugh. “If he only
knew,” he muttered before he pulled off his shirt and started
walking toward the cleansing unit. “I’ll be ready.”
    Cree watched as his brother slammed his palm
on the access panel to the door of the cleansing unit. Calo’s
admittance that he was losing control of his dragon was alarming.
His brother had always been the easier-going one out of the two of
them.
    He fingered the knife at his waist. When it
came time, he would slit his brother’s throat before Calo knew what
was happening. He knew his twin thought that he could follow
through on their agreement, but he also could feel the
reluctance.
    Pushing the dark thoughts to the back of his
mind, he pressed the comlink linking him to Carmen. He sighed when
it showed she was in her and Creon’s living quarters. He hoped she
stayed there for the rest of the evening. He was barely hanging on
and needed to work out. Perhaps he could talk Ha’ven into a match
in the training room.

Chapter 3
    “We don’t have much left, Mel,” Cal said in
his scratchy voice. “A couple day’s food, a few days longer of
water if we conserve it. The replicator that you found has finally
died.”
    Melina looked at the defeated curve of her
grandfather’s shoulders. He had been working on the lone replicator
for the past three days, trying to get it to work again. They were
living on the things that Melina had hidden over the past couple of
months in various nooks and crannies that she had found wandering
the maze of tunnels throughout the asteroid that had been their
home for the past four years.
    “It will be alright, Gramps,” she replied,
laying her hand on his shoulder. “I can search again. There has to
be something they left behind.”
    Cal looked grimly at his twenty year old
granddaughter. She wasn’t wearing the oversize hat that she
normally wore to hide her rich, dark brown hair. It was growing
longer and showed off how beautiful she was becoming, just like her
mother and grandmother at that age.
    For years, he had been forced to cut it
short to hide the fact that Melina was a girl. It helped that she
was small-boned. He knew the last few years she had started binding
her chest to hide her developing figure from the creatures holding
them.
    It was dangerous enough with the damn aliens
thinking Melina was a male. It would have been deadly for her if
they had