The Dragon Prince's Consort

One

**This story contains MATURE CONTENT. Please exercise your best judgment and be aware that from the start there will be adult language, sex, alcohol, references to sex work, dysfunctional families, sibling rivalry/violence, coerced marriage and light BDSM. I have all the faith that you will self-censor and stop reading when you come upon a topic that upsets you. There is no SA or dubious consent.**

From the Federation Archives:

The inhabitants of Anun, a habitable-zone planet near the Thuban binary star system, made their first contact with the Federation exploration team on November 21, 2XXX. The most notable remark of the occasion came from Lieutenant Anders Hammond when he looked out the window of the Savitskaya module: "Hey... Captain? I think you should see this - there's a god-damned dragon standing outside the lander."

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Fang turned down an alley and ducked between two tall stacks of casks, hoping to lose the guy who'd been tailing her for the last fifteen minutes. She kicked through gritty drifts of snow and trash, but as she looked up at the sound of what passed for this planet's rats she skidded to a stop next to a stack of empty crates that smelled of beer. Shit! The Drass at the near end of the alley lumbered forward, heavy boots crunching over the snow. His long, thin tail flicked behind him, its dark brush-tip drawing sharp circles in the air. "Thought you were gonna get away, did you? Not this time, girl. You owe me, remember?"

Fang did remember - Munok was hard to miss, he was easily seven feet tall with scaly skin the color of bricks. Not as big as a Dreen, but heavier, denser and a lot meaner. "Eyah, come on Munok, I have to eat too." She could run back to the flat-share and get what she had hidden in the floorboards under her cot, or at least tell Munok that's what she was doing, then she might be able to creep out the back door and-

"I can tell you're thinking up some excuse," growled Munok. He wore his chin-length dark hair pulled into a tight little knob at the back of his head, and snow sifted down from the blue-black sky overhead and speckled him with white. "Don't try anything stupid, or you'll have worse than broken fingers."

Fang shook her head, letting a sweet smile appear on her lips, "I was just trying to remember how much I have back at my place. I can give you... I think I have a few hundred kai at home, tonight and have the rest soon."

He seemed to think about it, his leaf-shaped red ears laying back against his head. Like their tails Drass ears were mobile and expressive, and when they laid flat like that it usually meant trouble. "Give me everything you have on you," he finally demanded. "I'll give you two days to get the money. All of it, I want my ten thousand kai the day after tomorrow by sundown, or your next meal is going to be porridge through a straw in the emergency clinic."

Fang dug around in her third-hand robes, the fabric coarse from so many washings and countless repairs. In her pockets she produced an empty fare card, a packet of protein blocks that were supposed to taste like cream-cake but really tasted like sugary sawdust, loose threads, and a few bronze bok coins she'd intended to use to buy more tasteless protein bars and some vitamin pills. She touched the two kai coins she had sewn into the lining of her coat, but left them there. Fang decided she'd had enough of the Drassian Empire and its capital world Anun, the last three years spent starving, freezing her ass off and slowly slipping deeper and deeper into poverty and debt - leaving the Federation had been her first mistake, borrowing money from a Drass thug had been her latest. Fang dropped the bok coins into Munok's hand. "So, I'll see you in a couple of days?"