Her Dragon Captor

They came underneath a violet sky of dancing lights, winged shadows converging from every direction. Later this collision of charged particles cast off from the sun and the earth’s gaseous atmosphere would come to be known as aurora borealis or the Northern Lights.

The future etymology of the upright primates mattered little to Damianos back then. But for the rest of his life he would recall how appropriate this plasmatic solar windstorm seemed. How utterly dramatic a background it was for the wrong they would right that morn.

He and the other drakkon set down in the agreed upon assembling space, a wide expanse of land on the south side of a mountain. The mountain stood between them and the village his horde planned to attack, gargantuan and intimidating. Damianos supposed the sight of it alone might have been enough to turn back their weaker enemies.

The south face of the mountain was covered in glittering ice and inclined so steeply, the path up could almost be described as vertical. And there weren’t many alternatives to surmounting the monstrous marriage of rock and earth. An angry sea crashed formidable waves into one side the mountain. A dense forest filled with the heat signatures of all manner of predators, stretching as far as even a drakkon eye could see.

Indeed, the North Wolves had positioned their seat of power well. They’d surrounded themselves with a natural fortress of mountain, forest, and sea. The mountains and forest were nearly insurmountable, while the sea allowed the village’s wolf mutations to easily spot an incoming fleet of enemy ships, well before they had the chance to storm their shores.

A lesser army would have given up without a fight.

Fortunately their horde had wings. What was impossible for the second most advanced species on this planet was but a bit of work for them.

Damianos was the first to arrive but the last to land. He circled above, waiting until there were no more incoming drakkon on the horizon before setting down himself.

All the world’s drakkon had been called forth to wage this battle, but Damianos picked his father from the others in the horde easily. Only three dark blue drakkon were left in their species after their numbers were so tragically reduced by the Terrible Destroyer. Those remaining drakkon were his father, the Royal Overlord; his cousin, who everyone continued to refer to as the new king several millennia after his unexpected assumption of power, and himself. The Royal Overlord always arrived early and the new king, Damianos noted with one scan of the gathered forces, had not yet shown up.

He was late. Again.

It had been the new king’s idea to use one of the Royal Geneticist’s fating portals to take them to a time before the destruction of their planet. The plan had met with great cheer and instant agreement. Yet, after securing their agreement to wage attacks on several North Wolves villages in order to find one of these fating portals, the new king of the drakkon had barely been in contact.

Damianos was not surprised the new king had failed to show up this morn. Their king had achieved his current position through unexpected inheritance. Before that, he was the prince his brother had ordered Damianos and his father to assassinate, so as to erase any competition for the throne.

After their planet’s destruction by the Royal Geneticist, the remaining drakkon had let his younger brother assume the mantle. That choice, the Royal Overlord pointed out to his son had been lazy and based purely in tradition. It certainly had nothing to do with any performance metrics. If those had been taken into account, the other drakkon would certainly have chosen Damianos as their new king. For none better exemplified the superiority of their race than his son, a drakkon who’d been named to the most venerable position of Royal Huntmaster when he was little more than a millennia old.

Before his undeserved ascension, the new king had held two titles: Second Prince and, for the purposes of their mission, Royal Fate Maker. The second title only meant that the former Second Prince was a fating portal specialist, someone who’d spent more time writing lab reports than leading. And that was before he disappeared for many solar rotations, not showing up again until shortly after their planet was destroyed.

The Royal Fate Maker was no great hunter. Nor was he strong or particularly intelligent outside of his chosen field. And as far as Damianos could discern, the new king had no talent for execution.

But his cousin and his cousin alone possessed the knowledge required to pass the horde through fating portals that had not been originally assigned to their race. This meant Damianos and the rest of the drakkon would fight this day. And the new king would most likely show up toward the end of battle to issue orders, regarding the portals that he’d hypothesized could issue the members of their castaway horde to the most sexually compatible drakki from their destroyed planet.

If only our initial plan to assassinate that mostly useless puppet had worked, Damianos thought to himself as his father started delivering mission notes in the new king’s absence. Yes, they’d all be stuck here on this useless planet for the rest of their lives, but Damianos would be the one in charge. Not his unworthy cousin.

However, this was not the time for emotion. He extinguished those resentful thoughts and did his best to keep his frustration from showing in his flame.

As his father had told him so often, only strategy and patience would win the throne.

“We could not have asked for better conditions,” his father declared to the horde in the old language. “This particular tribe of the Terrible Destroyer’s wolf mutations refers to the solar event happening above us as Freya’s lights. They believe they are a sign from one of the gods they created to entertain themselves around their fires. A call for all North Wolves to go forth and mate. For this reason, claiming the village will be the easiest part of our mission. During this time, they divert much of their energy to feasting, drink, and fornication. Most likely they will be so deep in their silly celebrations, the entire village will burn to the ground before it occurs to their warriors to put their penises and plates away, so that they might fight back.”

Damianos and the other drakkon all exhaled steam with derisive grunts.

After thousands of years of being stranded on this water planet, they’d all observed how obsessed the upright primates were with food and sex. Drakkon only mated to procreate. And while drakkon had enjoyed hunting on this game planet before their own home was destroyed, eating was considered no more than a required ingestion of needed nutrients.

However, the upright primates seemed to think of little else, and those two activities were often the impetus for their species’ greatest successes and downfalls alike. And after making his home in the southern Greek peninsula overseen by the Roman Empire for the last few centuries, Damianos had no trouble believing that their horde would find the warriors in the midst of an orgy of feasting and sex, just as his father predicted.

“Perhaps we should only have a small advance team of warriors attack the village,” Damianos suggested. He flickered his flame, as if the idea was just now occurring to him and hadn’t been discussed with his father the previous night.

“This is a good idea, Royal Huntmaster,” his father answered, using his son’s formal title and flickering his own flame with surprised delight. “There is no reason to waste our energy with a full battalion.”

Or share the glory, Damianos silently noted before choosing five other drakkon to accompany him into battle. “The rest will hold their position in the air, in case reinforcements are needed, which they will not be,” he told the horde.

“We must wait for the new king to approve this strategy,” Hwedo, the Lead Researcher pointed out. He was a dragon of the deepest red and liked to do everything, including choosing their leader, by the old rules. “Don’t you agree, Royal Overlord?”

The red drakkon’s point played so perfectly into his father’s plan, Damianos had to wonder if it was a sincere question, or if his father had also held a secret conversation with their fussiest comrade last eve.

“Yes, I agree,” his father answered, his flame burning with benevolent good will. Damianos couldn’t help but admire his father in this moment. Impatience and rage often caused Damianos to lose control of his fire. But his father held his with a firm grip of carefully curated heat signatures. “We shall wait for the king’s arrival and hope he approves of my son’s proposed plan.”

And so they waited. And waited

“It is now well past the mutation’s mating hours,” his father observed when their waiting reached the near dawn hour. “We might very well lose the surprise advantage if we don’t attack now. Can we all agree to let my son lead us into battle in place of the former prince.”

Damianos inwardly commended his father’s use of titles. He used his son’s most intimate designation to remind the other drakkon of his illustrious connection to their mission leader. At the same time, he reminded them of the mere title the new king had held when they’d first arrived on this water planet.

He’d been just another team member before his older brother, the real King of Drakkon died in the Royal Geneticist’s planet-destroying terrorist attack. A mere fating portal engineer, who’d been officially sent, but more like secretly exiled, to this planet. His mission had been to help construct a fertility portal system for the wolf mutations the Royal Geneticist had created to serve as their hunting dogs.

Of course, the other drakkon had no idea that Damianos and his father had been secretly assigned the task of killing the king’s younger brother, thus assuring he never returned to their home planet. But somewhere deep inside their flames, they had to understand who the true leaders were meant to be. The Royal Overlord and the Royal Huntmaster, not the missing king.

It went without saying that the gathered drakkon would all assent to his father’s proposal.

At least Damianos assumed it did. Unlike his father, he’d never cared for these shows of democracy.

The fact was it had already been decided that he, the Royal Huntmaster, would command a small squad of drakkon in battle with the wolf mutations. As the fiercest hunter in their horde, who had trained countless wolf mutations and anthros to obey him, he was obviously the best suited to lead the charge. Who cared whether the other drakkon agreed or not? Their spoken accord changed nothing about how events would unfold that morn.

To prove how little their assent mattered, Damianos launched himself into the sky before any of the drakkon could answer yay or nay. Even if the others continued to stupidly cling to a bloodline order that mattered little now that their numbers had been whittled down from six figures to a mere three, Damianos knew who the true king of the drakkon was.

Damianos thought of those moments before that battle often since that time. The memories of drakkon are photographic and exact. When he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could once again feel the wind rushing past his scales as he sailed over the mountain. He could still hear the beat of wings behind him. His would-be subjects rushing to catch up.

He’d been so certain of his place in the world before that battle. He had known without a doubt that he, not his worthless cousin the former prince, would be named King of Drakkon after that day.

And he’d been right in his prediction.

Unfortunately, his father had been wrong in his.

The wolf mutations were not engaged in their mindless sex and feast acts when they descended upon the village.

They had been armed. And expecting the drakkon who descended upon them.

The drakkon had been betrayed once again. This time by their new king, who for reasons Damianos still did not understand had allied with the wolf mutations, after sending his own drakkon subjects into a battle that would end in many of their deaths.

After uncovering the new king’s betrayal, Damianos would indeed become the King of Drakkon. But his father fell that day, his life cut thousands of years short by the sword of the oldest North Wolves prince. And soon after, Damianos was attacked by the youngest wolf prince. By the time Damianos recovered and moved to exact his revenge on his father’s killer, both princes and their sister had disappeared through the fating portals.

They’d used the drakkon’s own fertility technology to escape his wrath. His rage burned as hot as the forest he set to flame after their departure.

Then it began to burn cold.

When he was alive, his father had often scolded Damianos about his impatience and his inability to manage his flame. “If you wish to assume your rightful place as King of Drakkon, you must learn to control that temper of yours.”

Damianos had tried and failed so many times to honor his father’s directions to manage his flame wisely prior to that tragic day. Ironically, revering his father after his death was how Damianos finally learned patience.

He bided his time through the following centuries. Torturing the Betrayer King endlessly as he waited for the wolf mutations who’d gotten away to reappear. He knew it was only a matter of patience. For a wolf mutation’s lifespan is but a speck of time in comparison to a drakkon’s.

Thus he waited. And waited. And waited some more. Carts gave way to cars which gave way to drones. The upright primates’ villages became cities, one of which was located on Mars. And there was talk of going even further now. To the next solar system.

For their former food now believed they were worthy of forming civilizations on other planets. What hubris. But still Damianos waited.

Until one day both wolf prince brothers showed up in the North American territories. The fating portal had sent them both to the same mate, with whom they bore two girls. This only made his plans for revenge that much sweeter.

The only thing better than taking the lives of the two brothers responsible for his father’s death would be also taking the lives of their mate and twin daughters for whom they had crossed centuries to unite with.

But the sister had yet to join them, and the revenge would not be complete without her.

So proving himself worthy of his father, he continued to wait. His father’s killers grew older as did their daughters. Perhaps they would bear children he would also end before their grandfather’s eyes. Both his desire and thirst for blood grew greater with each rotation of the planet around the sun.

And then one beautiful day, while standing upon the balcony of his Greek estate, he received the message for which he’d been waiting hundreds of years.

The sister, Myrna, had arrived at the exact right time. Just as the Ao Quong, the mission’s Lead Field Engineer made a promising breakthrough in his many-century studies of the fating portals Damianos had acquired by one means or another all over the world.

It would seem that they would soon be able to enact the original plan without the Betrayer King’s help after all.

After he visited his grisly revenge upon the family responsible for his father’s demise, he would use the Idaho fating portal to travel back in time to the planet The Royal Geneticist destroyed.

His plan?

Become King of Drakkon once more. And as for the precocious, over-fertile anthrohominids who’d overrun this planet—he would return them to their rightful state as food for their drakkon hunts.

This he vowed.

However, something extraordinary happened soon after the North Wolves princess appeared in this time.

The Drakkon Murderers’ daughters showed up at his estate.

As it turned out, the Betrayer King had a reason for allying with his father’s murderers after all.

These males would eventually become the fathers of the Betrayer King’s fated mate.

And that mate had born him a son.

An actual living, breathing son named Eos who spoke the old language, just as his father did. Eos seemed to Damianos, who had not seen a drakkon young in millennia, nothing short of miraculous.

Only one thing eclipsed that discovery of a hybrid wolf-drakkon… the twin sister of the Betrayer King’s mate.

One look. A single look had been enough to change….not everything—he was still intent on making the twins’ fathers pay for what they’d done. But in an instant, one name was removed from his list of those who would be slaughtered on his father’s behalf.

Ola.

Her name was Ola.

And though she did not know it yet, she would soon be his.

With a snap of his secretly clawed fingers.

As one of the human cattle’s ever-bleating musicians once declared…

Don’t believe me. Just watch.

OLA:

This is the best night of my entire life.

Everything I’ve been groomed for. Everything I worked for. It’s all happening right now. And that’s why nobody’s clapping louder than me when my uncles take the stage in the kingdom house’s main ballroom.

The King and Beta of North Dakota are both in their sixties now with nearly three decades of marriage behind them, but they’re holding hands like they’re newlyweds. And they don’t look much different from the photograph, they took after Uncle Kyle received the crown from his father.

Uncle Clyde’s rocking all black denim and leather, just like he did back then. Paying homage to his old Detroit pack which used to be just a few steps up from a motorcycle gang before my mom took over as the first alpha queen ever in the history of North America. He’s also carrying the sawed-off Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge shotgun like a sword at his hip. That gun’s made many a close-minded bitch think twice before crossing him or his husband. And everybody knows the ones who dared to say anything to their face about their previously unheard of royal gay union are currently buried six feet deep. It doesn’t matter how old he gets or how sweet and kind he is when the kingdom’s not watching, my uncle stays mean-muggin’ and straight-thuggin’. Just like in his and Kyle’s coronation photograph, which now hangs over the kingdom house’s mantle.

Which is kind of funny, because my uncle-in-law, Kyle, the alpha king of North Dakota is the total opposite of him. Still boyishly handsome with his carefully colored light blond hair and lanky physique, wearing the official pack crown, he reminds me of one of those early Disney princes—just with a few extra eye crinkles.

Nobody would have put them together, but everybody in North America knows what a great couple they are. And I don’t think my Uncle Clyde has ever regretted, not even for one day, ceding his own crown to my mother and fathers, so that he could marry his then-secret boyfriend. And especially not now that they’ve made it to early retirement.

Watching my uncles take the stage together, I squeeze Akwasi’s hand, secretly hoping we’ll end up that happy one day. But, you know, without all the drama that kicked off my uncles’ happy marriage…and my parents’ happy marriage…and my sister’s happy marriage to a dragon of all dudes…and okay, all of my triplet cousins’ recent happy marriages—maybe they thought we were running out of crazy stories to tell around the fire at the Greenwolf-Ataneq-Nightwolf Thanksgiving table?

My stomach drops. Oh God, is it even possible for a member of my family to simply date and get married like normal wolves? My nerdy mom tried her best to make a go of it in a human career as a video game designer and even got engaged to her brother’s BFF, the then Prince of North Dakota—totally practical move for a werewolf princess. But what did she get for all those level-headed decisions? An ex-fiancé who’d ended up marrying her brother, and not one, but two time-traveling Viking wolves claiming to be her fated mates. I mean, lucky for me, or my twin sister and I never would have been born but it seriously feels like the odds are completely stacked against me.

Stop, Ola. Best night of your life. Remember?

Okay, calm face emoji…that’s totally right. I push thoughts of my family’s notoriously bad, super dramatic, time-traveling often included relationship history out of my head and remind myself that doesn’t have to be me.

I’m in a terrific relationship with the starting center for the North Dakota Elks, after all, and it’s been 100% drama free so far. That’s pretty amazing considering my background and, you know, general personality, which is made up of one-part co-dependent twin, two parts descended from motorcycle gangsters and Vikings, and a whole lot of telling it like it is.

But somehow that didn’t scare away my down-to-earth and no drama boyfriend. He appreciates my straight talk. “Your directness is refreshing. Honesty is important in a relationship, yes?” he’d told me on our third date. He finds my background, “very historical and fun.” And as for my sister, he likes that I care about my family and he assures me he cares just as much about his, even though they’re far away in Ghana. In fact, he wants us to take a trip there to meet his people in a couple more months. A trip I’m pretty sure will culminate in a biomedia post with the title, “He put a ring on it!!!”

That is if I don’t fuck it up.

“Are you okay, my baby?” Akwasi asks. He has to lean in close to be heard over all the hooting and hollering.

Geez, he smells good. That expensive cologne on top of rich and famous kind of good that regular wolves just can’t replicate. Plus, he laughs at all my jokes—even the really inappropriate ones, and he hasn’t so much as flirted with another woman since our first date. I know, because I dosed him with a spy drone on our second one.

What?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know spy drones are super illegal, and some might argue a pretty large invasion of privacy, but whatever. I’m a distrustful bitch—everybody knows that.

Besides, Akwasi passed all my tests with flying colors. Isn’t that what counts? My famous and super talented boyfriend is tall, dark, and handsome as hell. Plus, he’s really into me. He calls me “my baby” with a seriously sexy Ghanaian accent, but unlike the string of guys I dated before him, he’s been respecting my decision not to have sex until I go into heat.

I should also throw some extra points at him for actually showing up to the most important night of my life.

Other than my parents, it’s not exactly a family reunion up in here.

You see, my cousins, the Nightwolf triplets decided to schedule their totally unnecessary triple vow renewal on the same weekend as my coronation.

I’m sure, the oldest triplet, Rafes had a lot to do with that date choice. He’s the President of the North American Lupine, and he hates my guts, which is totally unfair because I’m fucking awesome and he’s a stuck up prick. But unfortunately, he made it a choice between the three of them and the one of me, and all my favorite aunts and cousins opted to spend the weekend in Mississippi instead of North Dakota.

And as for that twin sister I used to be so co-dependent on—well, she’s currently in hiding from our family’s mortal dragon enemy.

A mortal enemy who I sort of grabbed by the dick last year. Or by the dicks, maybe? Still not exactly sure what was going on down there. But whatever I touched was large and pulsing. And nearly a year later, I can still remember the sensation of it or them moving around beneath my hand.

Look, I don’t normally go around grabbing guys by the dick. That’s all sorts of bad hashtags, which I’m supposed to be avoiding now that I’m officially representing for a state pack. I was just trying to distract him, while my sister and her mate escaped from his supervillain fortress located on a remote Greek isle. You know, hero stuff!

But I’ve kind of been having a hard time scrubbing that memory from my head. And sometimes when I let myself think about it too long, I get a little scared. Because it wasn’t pure horror I felt when I touched him. I mean there was a lot of that. But there was also a weird feeling in my stomach.

My wolf stood up.

So many of my relatives have used that phrase to describe how they felt the first time they laid eyes on their mate. I’d never been able to envision what that felt like. My wolf had always been pretty background, like, “I’m just going to let you do you, Ola. You’re bitch enough for the both of us and I truly believe you got this, girl.”

Normally, she and me are totally copacetic and on the same page. But when I touched our family’s mortal enemy, that strange sensation…was that what it was? No, it couldn’t be.

Could it?

“Ola? Are you okay?”

Akwasi again. Bringing me back to reality. Back to the room where wolves from both the Michigan and North Dakota packs are cheering loudly.

I look up at my perfect boyfriend and mentally slap myself. Why the hell am I thinking about that dragon supervillain when I have this total package standing right next to me?

“I’m fucking fantastic,” I assure him with a big grin as I join back in with all the clapping and shouting out for my Uncle, the best king North Dakota has ever had.

“Alright, alright, calm down,” Uncle Kyle says on stage, motioning with both hands for everyone to stop clapping already.

But they don’t stop. If anything, the hoots, hollers, and whistles grow even louder. I totally get why the crowd can’t stop cheering. Under Uncle Kyle, the state pack has flourished, moving from a steady mid-level treasury to become one of the top ten richest territories in North America. Real talk 100, he’s leaving me a state that pretty much runs itself. And now that he’s retiring early, everyone in the ballroom wants him to know how much they adore him, including me. Especially me. I pump my fist and jump up and down, encouraging the crowd to keep it going.

As the applause goes on and on, Kyle shakes his head at his subjects, his expression indulgent and exasperated.

My Uncle Clyde isn’t having it, though. His man told the crowd to calm down, so they better do what he says. He holds up a hand. And his eyes slit with what my mom calls a “Leroy Greenwolf” look after my great-grandfather, who fought and shot his way into becoming Michigan’s first black state pack alpha king.

The look itself is hard to describe. It’s kind of like the biggest baddest muthafucka in a 70s prison movie, and everybody who’s ever tried to fight Rocky Balboa got together to make a glare baby.

It works. The enthusiastic audience stops clapping like a switch has been flipped, allowing Uncle Kyle to finally get some words in.

“When I took over as North America’s first openly gay king, many said I’d upend our state’s legacy. They claimed I would turn the kingdom house into a spectacle and earn our pack a reputation as a bunch of wild and hedonistic wolves. They said if I were allowed to take over, I’d hashtag our pack in irrevocable ways. And do you know what my mate Clyde and I would like to say to those haters now, on the night of my niece’s coronation?”

This is where Clyde steps in, the Leroy Greenwolf glare morphing into a crazy face emoji grin as he calls out, “Y'all bitches was TOTALLY RIGHT!”

Just when I thought the crowd couldn’t possibly get any louder, they take it to the next decibel level.

Kyle’s laughing by the time the applause and shouts of approval finally die down. “I could not think of a better person than Ola to keep our non-traditional reputation going. She’s loyal, intelligent, courageous, and fierce with and without hair and makeup. So please join me in welcoming our new queen, the princess of Michigan, and one hell of a she-wolf, Ola Greenwolf!”

My heart leaps in my chest. This is it!

I walk up the stairs, in a glittering gown made entirely of gold-plated nanite sequins and specially customized to squeeze every curve. It feels like I’m floating on air. No role seemed to fit my outsized personality until I started training under my uncles to take over as queen of North Dakota. And now I’ve finally made it to the night of my coronation.

I cross the stage and my uncle, who’s a few inches shorter than me, lifts the heavy gold crown from his head. He pauses long enough for me to get a glimpse of the North Dakota pack’s raised wolf symbol on its front. Then he places the crown on top of my hair, which I had straightened, just so it could fit underneath the ornamental headdress.

“All yours, honey,” he says his eyes brimming with tears.

“Thanks, Uncle Kyle,” I whisper back.

Listen, I’m no crying-ass bitch. Leroy Greenwolf did half-raise me until the age of five, and a few of the older members of the Michigan pack swear I’m carrying around his reincarnated soul. But the tears shining in Uncle Kyle’s eyes make me all that more determined to be a great queen.

Queen Ola.

That’s my official title now. I turn to face the audience’s slightly less enthusiastic applause.

Most of the North Dakota pack clap just enough to be polite—which is fine. I’m new, from out-of-state, and even if I’m dating a famous basketball player, I haven’t proven myself yet. I’ve got time to work myself up to thunderous applause.

However, the male wolves standing toward the back of the room worry me. They’ve all taken the same stance, arms folded tight and jaws clenched with impotent frustration.

Yellow Mountain Wolves. It’s easy to tell because they’re wearing t-shirts, covered in silhouettes of guns underneath camo jackets—which is dressed up for them. They also look totally pissed that the gay king they didn’t approve of is now being replaced by a black she-wolf from another state’s pack. I’m basically their worst nightmare, and I have the feeling that the only thing keeping them from out-and-out booing is all the strapped up Michigan wolves standing between them and the stage.

If great granddaddy Leroy were here, he’d be calling all these sour-faced YMWs punk bitches to their face. And my throat itches to honor that legacy. Too bad Uncle Kyle made me promise I wouldn’t say anything to them tonight. Their small pack is in charge of the North Dakota time gate, so I’m supposed to be nice. You know, politics. The total opposite of hero stuff.

But whatever. I look them directly in the eyes, as I brush their hate off my shoulder. This is my night. And I’m not going to let any enemies, old or new, ruin it.

Besides, my parents are here, cheering and smiling up at me from the front of the crowd. Best distraction from the haters ever. My mom’s eyes are shining with total pride that her daughter’s also an alpha queen now. And my dads are waving their Viking swords in the air. They’re all so proud of me, it almost makes up for Fensa not being here.

Plus, half the audience is made up of visiting subjects from my former Michigan pack. And thanks to the heavy motorcycle boots many of them still wear in homage to our twentieth century motorcycle gang roots, their hooting and hollering game echoes way louder than the North Dakota pack’s anemic clapping and the Yellow Mountain Wolves anger emoji impressions.

In any case, I don’t bother to motion for them to stop applauding. As anyone who knows me would attest, I’m a loud ass. And as short as Uncle Kyle’s speech was, mine is even shorter:

“I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment,” I shout out to my new pack, keeping it Real Emotion 100.

Then I raise a bottle of champagne in the air, and yell “Let’s light this shit up!”