The Dragon Lord's Pet Page 2

  The royal guard drew back, the tips of their sharp blades still pointed toward the attacker. Vitomir took his human form and seized her from the floor, one hand pulling her arms behind her back, the other catching in her hair to control the motion of her head.

  “Who are you?” He growled the words into her soft ear. “What is your name?”

  She growled and squirmed but made no reply. Her teeth were clenched, her face contorted, but in spite of that, it was clear that she had an aquiline, even noble beauty. Her eyes were a deep, rich blue, her lips crimson red with anger. Her face had a fine construction that was somehow familiar to those present, though none of them had ever seen or heard of her before.

  “Speak now!” King Casimer thundered. “Or you risk going to an unmarked grave for this foolishness.”

  “You should know my name,” she hissed at the king. “I know yours. Bastard.”

  Vitomir shook the scrappy little wretch. “Answer him, and do it with respect.”

  “Respect him? I would rather lick a dog’s ass.” Her voice dripped with disgust and hate, even as her shapely naked body rubbed against him, her rear grinding against his crotch. She couldn’t help it due to how he was holding her, and he was sure it was involuntary.

  “You will go to the dungeon,” Vitomir snarled. “And we will see how uncomfortable you can be made before you tell us what we need to know.”

  He carried her there himself, dragging her naked form through the empty halls of the palace. The nobles had all retreated to their rooms and were no doubt barred in. There were a few guards still positioned at various strategic points. They followed him at his command as he hauled her into the dimly lit dungeon and called for the jailer.

  “A slab of full restraint. We need one!”

  The jailer directed him to a small cell in which a large flat raised slab was built out of polished rock. It had been fitted with several gleaming rings designed to hold restraints, and it was marked along the outer rim with dragon glyphs designed to weaken the occupant.

  Vitomir pushed his little female prisoner onto the slab and held her in place.

  “She needs to be bound with dragonsbane shackles,” he growled at the jailer. “She must not be set free even for an instant until I return. Not for any reason, you understand? Hand me them now.”

  The jailer brought a set of shackles, but they were far too large for the young woman’s slim limbs. They slipped off over her hands and feet and landed uselessly on the floor below.

  “Smaller!” Vitomir insisted. “Do you not have any smaller?”

  “I will have to look, sir,” the jailer stammered. “It is so rare to hold a female…”

  “Find smaller,” Vitomir growled. “There must be some from before Casimer’s time. We have not always been so delicate about chaining women.”

  It took quite some time for the jailer to go back through the stores of shackles, during which time Vitomir held his prisoner pinned naked on her back on the stone plinth. He could feel her glare, a look of vehement hate emanating from her small female frame.

  He had done battle many times before, and in his experience when one made physical contact with an enemy, it was his spirit that could be felt as much as his physical strength. This little one had close to nothing in physical strength, but her will alone could have melted a lesser man. She had paralyzed the elite royal guard, even the king himself with her sudden attack, calculated to maximum effect. If she had been possessed of just a little more power, the kingdom would be without a king at this very moment.

  Vitomir did not waste words on her, nor she on him. They had the measure of one another without the need to babble.

  “What say you to these, my lord?” The jailer appeared with a set of shackles, gleaming silver in spite of the cobwebs he was still brushing from them. “They were used for the ancient queen…”

  “We don’t need a history lesson,” Vitomir snapped. “Get them on her.”

  They were much lighter than the first set of shackles, though if anything they were stronger than them, made much more finely by craftsmen who knew how to bind a dragon thoroughly. Vitomir knew precisely who the shackles had belonged to, an ancestor of King Casimer’s. He noted that they were inscribed with floral designs so that the illustrious prisoner would still look good even when chained.

  The moment she felt the dragonsbane closing around her wrists and ankles, the prisoner started to fight ferociously, so much so that he was forced to call the guard to come and hold her in place, lest she harm herself in her thrashing.

  “Easy,” he snarled. “Don’t want to break your neck.”

  It was no small effort, but she was restrained. The dragonsbane was holding each and every one of her limbs and there was a final piece too, one that slid around her neck like a collar. She would not be going anywhere now, not in any form.

  Vitomir stood back, took stock of the situation. She was beautiful. That shouldn’t have been the first thought in his head, but he could hardly help it. Those passionate eyes spitting hate right into his. He remembered how her lithe body had felt writhing against him. Her anger made her quite stunning. He wondered what she would look like in more peaceful circumstances.

  “Tell me who you are.”

  She smirked, but she did not answer him.

  “You look young to my gaze,” he said. “Maybe too young to know what can happen to a girl in the company of an angry dragon.”

  “I’m eighteen,” she growled, clearly goaded by his assumption of youth. “I am a grown woman.”

  “Grown woman?” Vitomir snorted, watching as fresh anger flared in her eyes. This little human fancied herself far more mature and powerful than she was. He wondered who had convinced a mere eighteen-year-old that she was a force to be reckoned with. Whoever it was had done her a great disservice. Still, her claim to maturity did make certain treatment a possibility.

  He pushed her legs apart, the chains of the shackles providing more than enough room to bare her slit. She tried to close her legs, but it took no effort to hold them apart.

  “Oh, no,” he tutted as he felt her weak struggles. “You’re a grown woman. A grown woman who must understand what being a prisoner means. You have no agency over your body. You are flesh to be touched, punished, taken as we see fit. When you set your blade at the king’s head, it was your body you surrendered.”

  Her face flushed quite beautifully, the blue of her eyes all the more striking. They were locked on him with a maidenly uncertainty that made him quite certain she had yet to experience all being a grown woman truly entailed.

  “Your name, girl,” he demanded again.

  When she did not speak, his palm swept between her thighs, caught her pouting lower lips in a swift slap, which finally had some effect. She threw back her head with a shocked gasp and cursed profusely at him.

  “I very much doubt ‘Fucking Asshole’ is your name,” he drawled. “Do I need to repeat the treatment, with some leather and oil to heighten the effect?”

  She was totally helpless. She knew it. And yet she was resisting him. It wasn’t because of a lack of fear. He could see that in her eyes. It was something else. She must be more worried about someone else than she was about him. He would have to change that.

  “You might think that if you speak to me, you’ll be harmed by whoever told you not to. I tell you now, if you do not answer my questions, you will never see the light of day again. This dungeon has swallowed thousands of souls before you. One more will make no difference. You could simply be left here… forgotten.”

  He saw anxiety flash through her body, but still she did not answer his question. He put his hand back between her thighs, aware that his every movement and hers was still being watched by the guards who had fallen back, but not dispersed. Unfortunately, having her chained down like this limited his options. If she did not start answering him soon, he would have her bound face down and repeat the interrogation, with a sturdy cane perhaps.

  She might be pretty and y
oung, but she had also made herself the most notorious criminal in the entire realm. She did not deserve mercy and he could not show her it.

  “Do you want your sex thrashed?” He threatened her, his fingers moving in relatively light taps under which he felt her soft lips compress and then swell at his touch. She was responding to him in spite of the apparent harshness of his treatment. He could feel the way her hips rose almost imperceptibly toward his fingers. Interesting. Very interesting.

  He looked into her eyes and for the first time—at least, consciously, he realized that there was something familiar about her features. She was not a total stranger; at least, her genetics weren’t. He had seen those cheekbones before, that nose too. He had seen many of her features, in fact, configured in much more masculine ways, but no doubt recognizable.

  “Oh, my,” he murmured to himself, a slow, not entirely pleasant smile spreading over his face. “Well, well. So that is who you are.”

  She gritted her teeth as he rubbed his fingers over her mound, his touch more thoughtful than punishing.

  “I’ll not tell you anything,” she growled as his fingers found her clit and pinched it lightly, teasing it from the delicate hood that covered it. Human females had such pretty pussies. He amused himself for a few minutes, toying with her sex as she tried her best to stifle her moans.

  He was no longer attempting to get any kind of answer from her, at least not of a sort she could have told him about. Now he was testing her on a different level. Even after being spanked between her thighs, she did not seem to find his touch unpleasant. In fact, her hips were rising toward his hand repeatedly as her nipples hardened and her skin flushed. A pretty scent of arousal began to make itself apparent too.

  She liked this treatment. He was sure of it. Her eyes were locked on his, rebellion and something more mixed into her gaze, which was formed from the stars of two very different realms. When he pulled his hand away from her pussy, she let out an involuntary whine of complaint. Her attempt to stifle it by biting her lower lip failed adorably.

  “Don’t worry,” he smirked. “I’ll be back for you, pet.”

  “Stand outside this cell and do not speak to her,” Vitomir instructed the jailer. “Not a word, understand? And those shackles must not come off without my presence. This little thing is the most dangerous prisoner you have ever held—and if anything happens while I am gone, it will be your head held forfeit. Understand?”

  “You need not threaten me, m’lord,” the jailer said with a hint of offended subservience. “I’ll not let her escape.”

  “See that you don’t.”

  Chapter Three

  Vitomir left the dungeon and ascended to the palace proper. The chaos was beginning to die down, but the royal celebration was utterly ruined. There could be no doubt about that. The air was already thick with the wings of departing guests too afraid to spend the rest of the evening within the palace walls and many of the lights in the city had gone out as word of the attack on the king’s life had spread. This was a tale that would be told over and over for the next hundred years, of that he had no doubt.

  “High Lord Vitomir,” the royal guardsman bowed as Vitomir stepped back into the hall and found every general in the place assembled there. “We have detected no further disturbance. The Lords Chaksley and Valkimer are on their way from their country estate.”

  “They will have much to answer for,” Vitomir growled. “Portal guardians who did not detect a portal opening in the very heart of the palace! And failing to attend the king’s birthday! That itself is practically sedition. They should have been here.”

  It would not have made any difference if they had been. He knew that, even as he snarled about their absence.

  Portals were the bane of the dragon realm. More dangerous than world eaters—and they were quickly becoming more frequent as well. They were unnatural bridges between the human world and the dragon realm and when they opened they caused a variety of unpleasant side effects, foremost among them being a mixing of dragon and man, something nature had clearly never intended.

  The first portal had been the result of a mistake in the human realm. The humans had torn open space and time in an effort to draw power from radioactive rocks. Since then, only smaller and much more contained portals had ever been opened—and then, incredibly rarely. For one to burst open in the very heart of the dragon realm meant that something had changed. Something that could spell death and destruction for all concerned.

  “Where is Casimer? I must speak with him.”

  “He has been called away, sir. None may disturb him.”

  “The king has gone into seclusion?” Vitomir frowned. What could possibly be more important than this…

  A rumbling beneath his feet made him spin around looking for another portal. He saw many of the others do the same, but this time the vibration had nothing whatsoever to do with any portal or assassin. This time it was followed by the herald’s call, a hundred dragons taking flight with full voice, sending echoes across the city.

  A broad smile broke across Vitomir’s face. There could be only one reason for a chorus to occur at this time of night, only one reason why the rumbling which would be heard across the entire city would be sounding in the delicate hour before dawn.

  “We have a son! The realm has its heir!”

  A cheer went up around the room, the atmosphere changing in an instant. Celebration broke out across the castle and as Vitomir walked between the soldiers and generals and those nobles brave enough to stay, he saw them breaking open the bottles that had survived the portal stampede and drinking to the new prince’s health. He himself threw a quart of fiery brew down his throat in honor of the occasion, and joined in the hugs and handshakes that were being offered everywhere.

  “This is an auspicious night. Born into battle, he will be a great leader!”

  “Casimer’s blood will not be denied!”

  “The realm is safe another thousand years!”

  The shouts were everywhere at once, growing louder and more enthusiastic by the moment.

  “Ten thousand years! He will never die!”

  “He will consume the human realm with one bite of his eternal jaws!”

  “Long live the king to be, the king before, the king of now!”

  It was quite amazing, how the good news suddenly eclipsed the bad. Much as the portal had destroyed the birthday celebrations, the birth made the world anew. Lights were lit across the city again and he could see from the windows how people poured into the streets, taking wing to form a great soaring dragon cloud that spun and whirled around the palace, a proper greeting for the son of a king.

  Vitomir did not join the formation. Not because he did not wish to; indeed his heart was soaring with those winged beasts in the sky. He stayed bound to the ground, watching over the palace with the few guards who managed to resist the call.

  * * *

  Casimer sought him out the following midafternoon when all had collapsed with exhaustion. Vitomir had remained alert in case another portal opened, along with a couple of other guards, but at no point had the palace ever been so under-defended as it was at that moment. It was sheer fortune that the portal had opened when it did, and not a few hours later. The would-be assassin would likely have found an empty palace to rampage through, and caught a king and his bride in the most joyful, vulnerable moment of their lives.

  The dragon king had clearly not slept any more than Vitomir had, but his was an elated exhaustion.

  “Congratulations, your majesty,” Vitomir said, rising to bow. “We all rejoice. I hope all is well.”

  “Vadim is a fine strong lad already,” Casimer beamed. “Mika is tired, but happy. We owe you thanks. But for you, blood would surely have been shed on the day of his birth. Whoever that little wench is, she owes you her life.”

  “Speaking of the wench,” Vitomir said. “She will not say a word to me, but I do not think she needs to. I think I know precisely who she is. Or at least, whose loin
s she has sprung from.”

  “Oh?”

  “She has a solid-colored flight form, so we know she is part human,” Vitomir said. “She appears to loathe you, yet she is inept in the art of vengeance. She is hardly a soldier and yet she came here brandishing a dragonsbane blade and she made directly for your person.”

  “You are speaking in riddles,” Casimer said, rubbing his forehead. “And my brain is too dull to comprehend them.”

  “I believe she is the offspring of Lazarus the exile. He who betrayed you and your bride. Her flight form is black. I believe his was black and gold, no? She has come on this the day of your birth, right into the very heart of your palace. That is poetic timing for Lazarus’ justice, should he seek it.”

  “I have kept watch over him since his banishment,” Casimer said with a shake of his head. “There is no evidence of any child being born to him.”

  “You may have missed a little time here and there. That is all it would have taken. Have you watched him all day, every day? The human realm slips by so quickly. If you did not look in on him for just two days he would have had twenty to do as he pleased. And perhaps he became aware of when your eye was on him. Perhaps he worked to hide his plans. He was many things, but you cannot deny he was not ruthlessly intelligent.”

  “I may have slipped in my vigilance,” Casimer admitted. “I have had other, more pleasant things to focus my attentions on. If this is true, then I should have had him castrated before his exile. He sends a girl against me? He must be desperate.”

  “It has been almost sixty human years since he was exiled,” Vitomir said. “Sixty long human years atop his dragon age. He must be near to death.”

  “He could be dead. Perhaps this girl of his has taken some notion of revenge on her own,” Casimer mused. “You say the interrogation has been a failure so far?”