i have no excuse for posting it this late besides college and my mom landing in the hospital again, but here it is. Sorry for the delay, i'll try to write more regularly.

The day started rather loudly for the paladins, once again the alarm signals were signalling through the hallways of the castle, the royal pair together with Coran wee standing calmly in the main hall of the castle awaiting the paladins.
Their pattering feet through the hallway signalled their arrival before Keith could even see them, sighing he waved at Coran to quiet down the noise while Shiro chuckled softly at his fiancés actions.

"Really? You all stumble in here like idiots? Half dressed and not ready for training? Yesterday showed us that while we were strong enough to defeat Sendak the fight was incredibly close to being in his favour."

"But that was because you and Shiro were the only two there anyway, we weren't fast enough to get there?"

"Exactly, if you had developed deeper bonds with your lions you would have realised Sendak attacked at an earlier time, that's why instead of working on your non-existent fighting capabilities we will instead focus on bonding with our lions"

"Hey Keith"

"Yes?"

"My mother always told me if i didn't do well in school she'd launch me into space and leave me there, and i'd honestly rather do that then train even more"

"Lance, if you'd rather do try that i can show you where our airlock is, we'll take Allura as the blue paladin instead then." Remarked Keith with a raised eyebrow, hands on his hips in a fake-intimidating stance.
Shiro chuckled at his fiancé's remark, putting a hand on his right shoulder and pulling the shorter man closer to himself, "Relax baby, maybe you're overworking them. They haven't got the same practice as we do anyway, why don't we put the gladiator on kids mode and let them figure it out on their own. With Coran's supervision of course."

Lance's exclamation of "Kid's mode?!" was promptly ignored and the royal couple looked towards Coran, waiting for his response.

The man in question smiled at Shiro, his orange moustache quirking upwards with glee, excited at the thought of getting to train the young paladins once again. "I'd be happy to my prince, it's been a while since i've had the honour of training the paladins!"

"Well then Coran, that's great. We'll leave the paladins to you while Keith and i plan how to attack the galra's next."

"And maybe we'll search for Lotor, if we ended up alive it's not that much of a stretch that Lotor made it out as well, he'd certainly be ambitious enough to survive this long." The ebony haired man shrugged his shoulders as Shiro gave him a disbelieving look.
'What? You came back to me after a few years as well, you still aren't forgiven for that by the way."

Shiro frowned and guided Keith out of the room "We'll talk about this later, right now we need to retaliate and show them what we're actually made of."

The other paladins looked at the royal pair as they walked out of sight, the mechanical door closing behind them. "What was that all about?"

"Prince Keith is very worried about Prince Lotor, that's all. They've been friends for a very long time, he's known him almost as long as he's known Shiro. If i'm correct i preserved the note Lotor left them, they never asked me to but i thought they'd want it"

"Do you know where Lotor is then?"

"No, i don't think anyone really knows where he is, if Zarkon found him it would've been galaxial news by now. There's still hope for Keith that he's alive, let's just hope he's correct." Coran sighed before looking at the paladins cheerfully, "Well then paladins! Let's get to training"

~~~

Lotor looked up towards the sky, the half galran prince has been on the run for the last ten thousand years, hoping for a way for either Prince Keith or Commander Shiro to find him and pick him up from Arus' thick forest.
He had sent the couple a bunch of distress signals through the years, the last one he sent had been five hundred years ago. He found the Castle of Lions on the same planet but saw the rest of lions as well, not just the red and black lion.

He looked at his ship's dashboard and pressed the distress button again, waiting for an answer from the Altean royal couple.