Dragon Mage: BWWM Scifi Romance, #2

By Tyra Clark

A single mother stranded on an alien planet.
Her daughter's magical powers are awakening.
A Dragon Mage may hold the answers she seeks...but first, she'll have to trust him with her heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tyra Clark
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393110026

Tyra Clark

Hello I am Tyra Clark and thank you for checking out my books. Some authors do a lot of crazy things, but I don't know how they have time for all that! Me? I work, spend as much time with my family as I can, and in the little spare time that I have, I write. Well, when I'm not reading that is. Writing is a lot of fun and it helps supplement my income and fund my reading habit. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you like my books.

Book preview

Vanessa

None of this was real.

It couldn’t have been. It defied everything that I knew about the world. Yet if I were to believe my sister?

The darkness I had been sitting alone in? It was an alien spaceship. I had been abducted by aliens in the middle of a sunny July day. I was now on some wild planet light-years away from Earth. We were kidnapped by a bunch of purple loving aliens called the Kelavxan, and she saved us with the help of some human-looking aliens with tattoos that call themselves Dragons.

I didn’t believe a damn single word of it.

Silently, I sat in what had been designated my room. We were told we would be here for a bit so we could have our own little personal spaces, for how personal I could call black steel and a giant pillow I was meant to use as a bed.

To be honest, it was a very nice pillow. I mean, it was incredibly soft and comfortable, and if I were in any other situation, I’d call the comfort I got from sulking into it otherworldly.

Just that had a very different meaning right now.

No. That was all crazy talk. Madison was either crazy or in some deep variation of Stockholm Syndrome.

We were probably in the Amazon rainforest, and Rio De Janeiro was like, a couple miles away and we just needed to pick ourselves up and make the hike. Also, there was some sort of weird weather phenomenon making it appear that there were three suns. The Dragon people? Just really burly well built foreigners who had a ludicrous amount of tattoos. The Kelavxan? Someone who definitely just needed a whole lot more sun, and honestly? Probably a cheeseburger too. That boy was too skinny to be attractive.

All human. All mundane. All typical.

I didn’t have an explanation for the strange ships yet. Or the pods that my sisters and I were being kept in. Or the strange guns that Madison was toting about.

There had to be a reasonable, non-physics destroying explanation for all of this.

Mommy? The echo bounced off the metal as I heard her little feet charge through the hallways of this so-called ship. Mommy, where are you?

In here, Tia, I called out, not as loudly as her.

She was quick to find me, pushing open the sliding door. Why are you in here all alone? That must be boring, Mommy.

Mommy just needed time to think. Are you behaving?

Tia. My little girl. Seven-years-old, and now? She was in this bizarre situation. When I was seven, the only problem I had to worry about was if I could get home from school in time to make sure I could catch all the cartoons I wanted to see.

My mother, in turn, when I was seven, only had the problem of making sure she could make rent after our father had taken off on us. That was still a problem, and I would no way belittle my mother for her struggles, but really?

I’d rather have that problem than the one I had now. It was so normal, so standard, so human.

Being stranded on some alien planet or the Amazon was not something for a girl who spent seven years in various schools to eventually get her degree to be a psychologist. It was supposed to set us up for a more normal future, where I could provide her with all the best opportunities, and prepare her to try to avoid the mistakes I had made.

Now? I was just worried about her survival. I knew there were people with families who got by in these harsh jungle environments, but Tia and I were not those types of people. We were soft and unprepared for such a lifestyle, thousands of years of civilization removed from our ancestors who were.

Yes, Mommy, I’m being good. She was shiftless. I knew she was incredibly bored in this situation, and I was partially at fault.

She would often occupy herself with reading, even getting into books without pictures. There were no books here. No video games, or television, or movies, or anything else. The only hobby of hers that she could possibly entertain was exploring. She’d often go and look for things in the woods behind our mother’s house.I thought about getting her into the Girl Scouts or whatever, but I guess I didn’t get to think about that right now.

We didn’t dare let her go into the woods here, not after what Madison told us about the world around us. I’m sure she was exaggerating, but I’d rather be safe than sorry when it came to my daughter.

Can I go help Aunt Madison, Mommy? Please? She grabbed my arm and pulled at it. I’m bored and I want to help her.

I grit my teeth. I didn’t want to let her go and do that either, and for a good reason. Madison? She was working with the people who claimed to not be human. To me? That was a delusion. I didn’t want them near my young impressionable daughter. I didn’t want her to buy into this nonsense. She’d be back home and getting ready for second grade soon enough, I told myself.

You’re still in here? Really?

Breanna.

My oldest sister, and the one who took the mantle of mother when our mother passed. It was her fault we were all gathered together to be conveniently abducted by aliens at the same time.

Or kidnapped by... by...

I was still trying to figure that part of the insanity out. What could be gained by drugging six black girls, one of their daughters, and taking them from a graveyard? I couldn’t think of any earthly reason, there was no one who would pay an incredible ransom for any of us, and more nebulous uses of six women of ages eighteen to twenty-eight didn’t involve rainforests and giant black steel monstrosities. Knowing how racist the world was, we probably weren’t worth all that much there either.

Hell, even if I bought into the alien part? There was nothing special about us. If we were lab rats they didn’t leave any marks as evidence on us.

You have a problem with me being in here?

Vanessa, you’re ruminating again. You’re sitting in here sulking about how terrible everything is. You always do this.

It’s a pretty terrible situation to be in honestly.

Yeah, well, it is, but you aren’t going to help things by staying in here and dwelling on it. Go outside, get some sunshine.

From three suns? That seems like a recipe for some sort of super cancer, Bre.

You’re a doctor. You know super cancer isn’t a thing.

I’m a shrink, I’m allowed to be willfully ignorant of physical maladies, I said, throwing on a smirk. We were the oldest of our sisters, and as such, we had developed a bit of a sibling rivalry, right down to our career paths.

Breanna was taking her time training to be a nurse. Caring for the body. While me?

I guess I wanted to understand myself better so I instead went into psychology.

We both wanted to help people, but somehow, we found a way to fight over on how to do that.

I understood health was more about one or the other, obviously, but I would never give her the satisfaction that I think what she’s doing in good. It was a mother’s job to be proud of your progress, it was my job as a little sister to be jealous instead.

Come out. Talk to us, Vanessa. She said, coming to my side and sitting next to me and my daughter. Yeah, we’re in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, we’re in a strange place. We can make the best of it though. The sun still rises every morning.

Three suns rise.

Whatever. That’s not important. Life goes on. Smile. Go outside. Say hi. It’s what Tia wants, see? She nudged my daughter.

She all too easily gave into her aunt’s influence. Yeah, Mommy, let’s do something fun.

I sulked in response.

She countered by pulling me up to my feet. Let’s go. Now. I’m not leaving this room without you, Vanessa, so it’s either you go outside with us or we’re going to be sharing a room again.

Ugh, we’re not pre-teens anymore.

Then you’re coming with me then.

I relented. It would make her shut up at least, and a little bit of fresh air couldn’t be too bad.

Even if it was possibly some sort of air that wasn’t Earth-air.

The three of us left the dark hole of the ship. It really was quite a contrast. The black metal was incredibly artificial, and it contrasted hugely against the verdant green that utterly surrounded us outside of it. This place could have been called a paradise if it wasn’t for all the deadly things Madison told us about.

Life was going on in a way, just like Breanna said. Kayla, Imani, and Emma were chatting around a small fire, Kayla doing her damndest to make the other two laugh. It was what she was good at, besides the whole fighting thing.

The Dragons, as they called themselves, were out and about and talking among themselves as well. There was definitely a divide between our two groups, and I wondered if it could really be closed. If I went by my theory that they were just humans from some remote part of the world, they were so unconnected to the rest of us that I wondered if we truly had anything in common at all.

Ooo, a flower! Tia called out, rushing over to a nearby tree.

Tia, wait, I said, following her. You don’t know if that’s poisonous or whatever.

You can’t be worried about everything forever, Vanessa, Breanna said, following me.

I sure as hell can, especially when it’s my daughter in some weird place like this. The flower Tia was eying? I was never one to claim to be a botanist, but it looked like some sort of tiny blue sunflower with a weird pattern in the middle. That wasn’t anything I knew.

Quickly, I reminded myself that there are countless plants on the Earth that no one knew about yet, let alone my relatively sheltered ass. Being strange doesn’t instantly make anything around me alien.

I don’t think it’s poisonous, Mommy, can I pick it, please?

And you think it’s not poisonous because?

It’s pretty!

Smirking, I ruffled my daughter’s hair. That’s... that’s not a good scientific reason to not think something is poisonous, sweetie.

Xen

Stasis did not leave your mind in the way you left it.

Not in that it changes you, or alters you in any way, but instead, it breaks you from your consciousness, and leaves you trying to re-attune to the world around you.

I had read about this in Kelavxan texts, and I also had also experienced it before.

Everything was foggy and it would take some time for me to re-align myself with the universe.

What was worse was that I did not know how this far-flung planet played into the balance.

So after my briefing from my king, and some niceties with the others, I found my silence and solace.

Resting on kega-stuffed cushions was almost too much luxury for this.

Almost.

So I sat. I thought to myself. I organized them, putting them back in order after the strangely chaotic nature of stasis.

Clear sight. I should have had it. It was my failure to maintain it that likely caused us to walk into that ambush in the first place. I should have noticed it was askew, and Ryvok trusted me with this more than anyone else.

Yet I failed. The rest of my people, or I should say my mother’s people, were not attuned like I was. They could not sense such oddities.

I grunted. I was being too hard on myself. Prophecy was not my calling, and I still had much to study with it to truly be effective beyond simply being able to predict the weather, and our clan had shamans who could do that without my meddling.

They were not entirely my people, even though in a way, they truly were. They were all I ever knew, and growing from a whelp to a wyrm would not have been possible without my brother’s blessings.

My mother was a Dragon. My father? A Mage.

A clash of cultures if there ever was one, and it immediately made me think of my situation at the time.

The women. From Earth, Valek had told me.

Beautiful creatures. No, people. There was an intelligence to them, and calling them creatures was demeaning and something a Kelavxan would do.

I wanted to know more about them. Perhaps learn more about one of them in particular.

Laughing quietly, that was not what I should have been focusing on.

My focus should have been learning what I could about this land.

It was untamed. No civilization had arisen here, only creatures guided by lust and hunger. Not even the Kelavxan knew of this.

My picture of the world grew more in focus, and then I was completely distracted by something else.

Auras. Auras of my people. This time, my father’s people. Mages.

It was a tainted one, not a pure-blooded one, as much as anything could be pure of blood. The aura with it was completely unknown to me.

Yet it was incredibly strong, and there were several of them too.

Six. No, seven. Seven of them.