The Clash Of Drakkon: Book Four Of The Drakkon Series

Chapter Twenty

Adhara Rynta

Blade of Queen Alessandra of Solveig

Queen Alessandra hadn't contacted me in what felt like months, but I knew it to only be weeks. It was strange to be here, on Solveig, without an enemy to fight. Sure, we still had our daily struggles with the natural predators on the planet, but we had long ago adapted to be aware of them, the Numar were not a threat unless we tried to attack them, not that we ever would, they were Numa's children after all and Numa protected us, we would not betray him that way by killing his own blood. The Ikari would have and in some still are the biggest threat to us, the only advantage being when we had discovered how to bond with them, now they cared for us when we created the bond just as we cared for them.

I hadn't truly understood what all the men were talking about, having lived my life for so long without bonding an Ikari, I couldn't understand it, it wasn't something that could be explained, but I had only recently realized that after I bonded with my own Ikari. Never did I think I would succeed in bonding my Ikari, I had only taken part in that challenge to become Queen, because it was what had been expected of me. I was the best fighter among the females, among the males too, the men in the Solveig clan may have the advantage of being able to bond with an Ikari easier than the females but the women in our clan were the strongest.

We handled pain better than the men, our control over the flames was better than the men, the skills passed down by our ancestors through blood and bone, were clearer to us than the men. In most aspects the women in the Solveig clan were stronger than the men, we didn't allow our emotions to sway our decisions, like men did, anger or lust did not blind us. Instead, we used our emotions to make us stronger, to think clearer.

After bonding my Atlanta I had realized that the one advantage the men had over the women in our clan was colossal, the bond to an Ikari was like nothing else, I would give up the flames running through my veins for it, it was not the bond between a master and a pet, nor a bond between friends or even that of family, the second the bond formed between us we became more than just family, we became one, I knew that if I were to die, Atlanta would choose to follow me to the grave rather than live without me and though I had never seen a case where the Ikari died and their rider didn't, I knew that I would rather die than live without her as well. She had become the other half of my soul the second the bond formed between us, to lose her would be akin to losing my entire being, it was not a fate I would choose to suffer for long.

Which was why it was so strange to not have an enemy to fight, we had battled against the Gorguts for so long, tried to exterminate all of them and in the end, it was all in vain. That they weren't even the true enemy but merely their pets sent to weaken us, being versed in battle strategy was engraved in my very bones, all the battle knowledge from the previous generation passed down the next, it made it easy to know that we didn't have a chance. If the enemy had the forces to send pets to weaken us, to make it even worse it was pets we couldn't even beat, what chance did we have against the true threat?

I was not giving up, I would fight to the death, because Solveig bowed to no one we didn't want to and the only person we wanted to bow to, the only person deserving of our loyalty was our Queen. At first, I had been hesitant to trust her, unsure if a Solveig not born here could truly be one of us, one who was only half Solveig on top of that, but Alessandra proved once again that the Queen's bloodline had stood at the top of our clan for millennia, that there was a reason we followed them. A reason we chose them to lead us into battle, that we were willing to give our choice in death away to her, the fact that she was not raised here for most of her life, or completely Solveig in her blood, made us respect her all the more, when she succeeded in every task set before her by our elders.