Bodran the Blue flew into his eyrie with a sheep in each front claw. He landed gracefully on his hind legs and made short work of the meal. Aerial combat lessons with his father were demanding. He should have been thinking about everything he'd learned that day, but as usual, his thoughts were elsewhere.

  He finished up, cleaned his face and claws in the running water that ran through one corner of the eyrie, and morphed back into his empyrean form. Unlike most dragons, he preferred his 'weaker' form. Though his hair had the same distinctive bold blue as his dragon form's scales, and his eyes and fingernails were the same bright metallic silver as his scale tips, he stood out far less in this form. For one thing, he could always opt to make himself average-sized in this form. In his dragon form, Bodran was the biggest male dragon anyone had ever laid eyes on.

  Usually a dragon his age would be raising a the young of his cohort's queen, but his mother had only had one clutch and it had been queenless. After that, no more Lekkings were arranged for her, and she'd eventually been 'supplanted' by a queen from one of her own mother's younger clutches. She wasn't a wyrmhole dragon, so she might have gotten away with going into hiding, but she'd been too proud to do anything but die.

  With no brood queen in his own clutch, Bodran and all his brothers and sisters were left without the responsibility that normally fell to males and sister dragons. Some of his brothers and sisters lamented it, but he liked it that way. If he hadn't been freakishly big, and if he hadn't had such a strong magical affinity, no one would have even noticed him. He could have pursued his own interests in obscurity, but that wasn't the case. Without a daughter-queen to champion, Bodran's father had put all the attention on him. His father was a rebel, and he'd hung all his hopes and dreams on his giant of a son. There were constant magic lessons and fighting tutelage both in dragon form and empyrean. His father's grand plan was to have Bodran compete in the next Empyreal Lekking so he could get close enough to the Empress to kill her. It was understood that he would not survive the mission.

  Bodran wasn't interested in Lekkings or fighting or anything to do with politics or hatchlings or mating queens, but what could he do? He may not have had a brood queen in his clutch, but he was still part of a tribe. He did did enjoy learning about magic. Once you understood how it worked, magic was predictable. There was a system and there was clear causality and progression.

  Fighting, on the other hand, seemed boring and pointless. He knew the mechanics of every move, but, as his father and all his teachers told him repeatedly, he had no art. Still, years of lessons couldn't help but pay off, and despite his shortcomings, he was technically proficient. He just couldn't beat anyone who matched his skill level if they had even a little of their heart in it.

  With fighting lessons over for the day, he went to the corner of his lair where his empyrean-sized accommodations were kept and opened his latest acquisition. It was a history of spaceflight. Engineering was what was in Bodran's heart.

  The first time a wyrmhole dragon had aimed for the sun and glimpsed space, she'd almost suffocated, but the tale of the blackness between worlds had become a fascination for dragonkind all over the home world. What came next was a series of inventions blending magic and engineering that allowed wyrmhole dragons to push further and further into the unknown in vehicles called wyrmcraft. These craft were built on the planet and put in orbit via wyrmhole magic. Other magic was used for everything needed on the wyrmcraft: shielding, atmosphere, lighting, food storage, maneuvering, heat, and even waste elimination. That had been a thousand years ago, and since then, better and better propulsion magic had been incorporated. Momentum was conserved from one end of a wyrmhole to another, allowing even the least of wyrmhole dragon sisters to travel vast distances as they built more and more speed over time. Wyrmhole queens could traverse great distances. The Empress could travel from one solar system to another in a single jump, bringing armies of dragonkind with her in their city-sized wyrmcraft.

  It was Bodran's dream to become a wyrmcraft engineer and to build wyrmcraft designed for exploration and science, not war and conquest. There were many dragons like him; dragons tired of the endless conquest, dragons who had come to enjoy the way of life of some of the so-called lesser races led before being made part of the war machine, dragons who wanted to have a single permanent family without having to go through brutal Lekking after brutal Lekking vying for a temporary position at the head of a brood queen's family only to be discarded when the next clutch was laid.

  And there were some dragons, like Bodran, who just wanted to explore the world for the sake of curiosity.

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  Bodran turned the page of his new book and a paper fell out. It landed on the floor, face down. As soon as he picked it up and turned it over, he was entranced. It was a soul pattern. Given the age of the book, he figured it had to be from a long dead wyrmhole sister. He'd never looked at one before. Rebels had no desire to bond with one of the enemy. The pattern was so beautiful. It was far more complicated than he'd been led to believe any soul pattern could be.

  The pattern began to move in his mind.

  He couldn't look away.

  A contract formed and in completing the pattern, he had accepted it.

  The wyrmhole opened in the center of his lair and he waited, already trying to figure out how he was going to explain this to his father. But no wyrmhole queen stepped through. He felt confusion and panic through the new bond. Terror, not of him but of the Empress. The crushing weight of duty bore down on him like he was hefting an entire mountain, making his own duty seem inconsequential. The emotions kept coming, switching back and forth faster than he could decipher them; indecision, guilt, fear, panic, resolution, despair, anger. He was starting to think he'd been bonded to a madwoman.

  Under it all there were two quieter images. One dreamed of bizarre things. Cities made of glass and metal, flat images of people on little rectangles in people's hands, and countless strange marvels of engineering.

  The other seemed to be dreaming of killing a many legged creature with brown wings and large antennae as it crawled across a floor. Anticipation turned to disappointment as a foot came down and crushed it.

  Bodran was more than a little curious about all of this. He shifted back into his dragon form, encased his body in an atmosphere spell, and stepped through the portal. His jaw fell open when he saw the Empyreal Princess carrying a bubble of atmosphere with two unconscious creatures inside. One looked like a miniature empyrean with dull hair. The other was an even tinier creature. Despite its size, he could tell it had been designed for combat. And it was - dare he say it - adorable. He knew if the rest of dragonkind could see it, they'd want to have one in every home.

  When it hit him that his soul was as intwined with the souls of these two creatures as with that of the princess, he almost belched out a flame. What the hell had he gotten himself into? He took a deep breath. Sure this was complicated, but if Bodran was known for one thing other than his giant size, it was his cool head.

  The portal closed behind him and he opened his mouth to speak. Only his training saved him. He dodged partly out of the way as a beam of white hot fire passed by him. The rest of the damage was deflected in a sonic shield he put up purely by instinct.

  "Wait!" he shouted.

  "I will not be a broodmare for the enemy," she said. She sounded calm and dignified, but panicked images bombarded him through their bond, and only half of them had to do with the fact that she'd somehow read that he was a rebel plotting to kill her mother. The rest were panic over the fact that she'd somehow managed to bond not one, but two unknown species and fear over how this would be seen by the court, and even greater, the fact that she had somehow created a wyrmhole to another galaxy and wasn't even sure if she'd be able to go back. A scene of her mother aiming a spell to sterilize her just that morning, the relief when the wyrmhole opened just in time, her horror at finding her bondmates weren't dragons - she'd had a long day.

  He could feel the rage in her as she gathered power for another attack. "I will not allow you to steal my bloodline." Power flowed off her in ripples as the heat compressed into a beam of death. She anticipated his dodge and aimed. The attack would have landed if he hadn't already put up a shield. He used almost all his mana repelling the attack, and she looked like she was just getting started. Against a typical dragon, he could have done this all day, but Queens were another matter. Queens could draw on deep wells of mana for making eggs. That mana was there to protect those eggs too. Plus, her Imperial Highness wasn't just a brood queen, she was a wyrmhole queen, and wyrmhole dragon spells were just stronger. He knew he wouldn't be able to withstand a third attack. The rebellion had worked hard to gather intel on wyrmhole dragons, and they were mostly sure that there was some kind of mutual death pact between bonded, but she still seemed to want him dead. He needed to understand what was going through her mind. He focused using the affinity his father thought was shamefully weak.

  And then he saw her greatest fear. She was sure he was sent here to kidnap her, and she was willing to die, not to avoid it, but because ... his eyes widened. She was willing to die because she couldn't bear to be any more of a disappointment to the Empire. She thought the galaxy would be better off without her.

  He opened his mind to her so she could see beyond his rebel affiliation and into his motivations -- into who he was.

  He spoke out loud and at the same time projected his meaning through their bond and into her mind, hoping she could feel the truth in his words. I promise, I wasn't sent here. This is all a cosmic coincidence. Maybe there's a way we can help each other. At least talk to me. You can always kill us all later.

  "Very well," she said. She assumed an imperious posture.

  Bodran exhaled. "I know of an abandoned ancient wyrmcraft. I've always wanted to salvage it. If we can get to it, you'll be able to easily power its enchantments, and I can probably fix anything that's broken. Can we go there and talk?"

  He felt her probing his mind, looking for the trap. He offered no resistance.

  "That is acceptable," she said.