Leashed by the Dragons Read online

  “What?” Chak couldn’t believe Valkimer was thinking about his lunch at a time like this.

  “My lunch. I put it right over there,” he said, pointing to a table set next to a bush. “It’s gone.”

  “Who cares where your damn lunch is!”

  “It didn’t grow legs and walk away…” Valkimer looked around, an expression of interest on his features. His anger seemed to have faded completely now that his attention was taken with the mystery of his missing food.

  “Maybe a bird or an animal took it. Or maybe it grew legs and walked away. Does it matter?”

  “It was in a box,” Valkimer said. “Too heavy for a small animal to take, nothing for a bird to latch onto… strange.”

  “If you cared about the humans we’re trying to take as much as you did your lunch…”

  “Sh!”

  In the silence following Chak’s outrage at being hushed, Valkimer pointed at a bush several dozen feet away. The leaves were moving independent of the light breeze, almost as if something was moving through them.

  Go around. Valkimer mouthed the words at Chak, making a swirling motion with his finger as he did. Chak could hardly believe it. If that was the human female in the bushes, she had survived well over a day in their atmosphere. He shuddered to think what kind of condition she would be in.

  He swiftly ran around the exterior of their mansion home to come around and cut off her escape route. When Valkimer saw him, he nodded and they both proceeded toward the bush slowly. There was every chance that she would be able to see them coming, and he knew well that she would probably attempt another escape, no matter what her condition.

  They were less than three feet from the bush on either side when the rustling suddenly erupted and the human girl went straight up the wall in front of them, as if she had been shot from some kind of cannon.

  Valkimer and Chak both threw themselves at her, but she was atop the wall almost before they had seen her move, standing twenty feet in the air above them.

  Chak’s jaw dropped. How had she managed to get up there? He’d seen her do it, but it didn’t make any sense. As far as he was aware, no human could climb that height. And yet, there she was, standing on the very top of it, looking out at the world beyond.

  “Hey! Come down!” he called out to her. “It’s too high!”

  She turned her head and looked straight at him. He felt those green eyes sear into his soul as, for a moment, they just looked at one another. Her expression was curiously free of fear in that moment. He saw determination and resolve. And then she jumped.

  Chak’s heart plummeted with her. Falling from that height would seriously harm her, possibly even kill her. And now he was on the wrong side of the wall to be of any use at all. Pulling his clothes off, he flowed into his dragon form.

  A black dragon marked with a yellow stripe running from his nose to his tail, Chak soared over the wall. He expected to see her broken body lying on the other side of it, but she was up and running. She had to be the luckiest human in all existence.

  He had her now though. No human could outrun the wings of a dragon.

  He swept down over her, claws outstretched and plucked her from the ground. She let out a terrified scream and went limp in his grasp, allowing him to transport her back inside the wall then take his walking, naked form and pick her up in his arms. He carried her carefully, hoping that his claws had not grasped her too hard. This was all so much more unpleasant than he had imagined it would be. When they had formulated their plan, he hadn’t realized that he would see a human woman as being so much like him.

  “I’ve got her,” he said as Valkimer approached at a brisk walk, his case of tonics and syringes in his hand. “She looks…” he could hardly believe it, even as he said it, “she looks okay.”

  “Hmm…” Valkimer mused, peering at her face. “I don’t see any signs of a radiation reaction.”

  As she lay there, still fainted dead away in his arms, both Chak and Valkimer examined the exposed parts of her body. Her clothing was torn, the knees of her tights dirty. She had obviously been crawling around in the rocks and dirt since her escape.

  “I’ve read what happened to the first human fighter who penetrated our realm,” Valkimer said. “In minutes he showed signs of welts and sores. Her skin is as pure now as it was when she entered…” He frowned to himself. “I think we should take her in and keep the formula at hand. If she needs it, we can give it to her. If she doesn’t…”

  “If she doesn’t, then there’s something else going on with her,” Chak said. “The way she caught our eye… as if there wasn’t a single other woman in the room. We didn’t even consider another woman after we saw her. Or before we saw her. I wonder…”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if she has dragon blood in her somehow, the way Princess Mika does?”

  “I don’t think so,” Valkimer said. “There is something about her… but I don’t think it’s dragon blood. I don’t sense it in her. Princess Mika was obviously born of a dragon line. This one… she’s human.”

  “Keep that syringe on hand then,” Chak said. “Let’s get her contained.”

  He was so relieved to discover that she was not only alive, but healthy. Together, he and Valkimer took her into the mansion and up to one of the towers where a simple room had been prepared to receive their pet in training. It was several stories high and secured with a heavy door locked multiple times in multiple ways from the outside. The stories of humans being escape artists had spread far and wide, so they had made sure that their pet’s room would be secure.

  He laid her down on the bed and stood back as she curled up on her side.

  “Do you think she’s sleeping?”

  “She’s likely exhausted,” Valkimer said. “I will watch her for any signs of sickness. Get her some water, and prepare her some food.”

  “Please,” Chak reminded him.

  “Thank you,” Valkimer smirked.

  Chak tossed one of the pillows on the bed right at Valk’s smug face. “You really have to stop barking orders at me.”

  “I have someone new to bark orders at now,” Valkimer chuckled. “Maybe I’ll spare you.”

  “That’ll save you a beating,” Chak replied, his tone holding real warning. Valk had taken the lead on this project of theirs, but his habit of command was starting to wear very, very thin. For the most part he had adjusted to a more civilian lifestyle, but every now and then the old squadron commander in him made an appearance. Chak didn’t care for that at all.

  “You want to battle, brother? Any time,” Valk grinned.

  “Right now she needs food and water,” Chak said. “That’s saving your hide.”

  “And she needs sleep,” Valkimer replied. “I’ll call you when she wakes up, then you can play mother.”

  Chak grinned and shook his head at Valkimer’s taunt. “Once we have her settled, you and I are going to meet in the ring, Valky. It’s been too long since we tested our strength.”

  “Can’t wait,” Valkimer snapped back, his teeth flashing white with a broad, arrogant smile.

  Chapter Four

  Valkimer sat back in his chair as Chak made his threats and departed. Only then did he breathe a very long sigh of relief. Chak thought he was a heartless asshole, and maybe he was, but he didn’t totally lack all form of feeling. Losing their very first pet, possibly leading to her death had been a point of shame weighing on him. He was glad to have her safe.

  Humans, as his readings and personal observations had indicated, were more trouble than they seemed. Now, with this one lying on the bed in front of him, still in everything besides the slow rise and fall of her chest as she drew breath after breath, he found himself drawn to her in a way that did not make him entirely comfortable.

  She was very pretty. To one extent or another, all humans were. Their features were delicate, their bodies were soft, and they smelled like sex. Something about their cycle made them almost eternally receptive to erotic
advances. He could smell her ripeness even at a distance. It made his cock twitch and heightened his instinct to be careful.

  Valkimer had not wanted to take a human because he wanted a human for himself. He didn’t particularly care for them. They were simple, loud, and all too often, destructive. Their softness was too soft. He preferred the leather of a dragon female beneath his body, something unyielding, something that could take the force of his lust without being harmed. But this wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about supplying a demand.

  He watched the human carefully, but with a cold detachment.

  Chak seemed to already be enchanted with the creature. He had always been given to passion and grand romances. Valkimer hoped that Chak would not become too attached. Properly trained, he had no doubt that she would earn many thousands of gold pieces when sold to one of the noble families. They would hold her for a few weeks, ensure that she knew what she needed to know—enough to impress her eventual owner—and then she would be sold. That was the plan and he intended to stick to it, in spite of the clammy cold fingers of some strange guilt already clawing at his heart.

  This was quite an achievement. As far as all records showed, this was only the third pure human to ever enter the dragon realm. Her presence in his estate was the culmination of many years of research on his part into humans and their handling. He had read every account written by the warriors of the first war to learn as much about the species as possible.

  Human training had become something of a specialty for those in the royal line. King Casimer had trained the crown princess Mika, and two generations before that, the first human had been tamed by General Vyktor. She had been a warrior herself, but she had succumbed to her dragon owner, just as this one soon would.

  The king’s recent marriage to a part-human female had sparked a fashion—a fashion that was impossible to fulfill. Only the king had a human pet, but there were plenty of nobles who wanted one of their own. Casimer’s pronouncement forbidding the opening of portals into the human realm meant that their dreams would have long gone unsatisfied, if Valkimer and Chak had not spotted a business opportunity, one nobody else was willing to attempt.

  First they had combined their personal funds to purchase a secluded estate to the far north of the royal city. Far enough from any settled areas that they would not be disturbed by anyone. There, Valkimer had assembled the most forbidden thing in all the realm—a portal. Ironically, he had used the same instructions created by the mother of Princess Mika, who had once infiltrated the realm. The documents had been sealed away in the great royal library, a secret to most until Valkimer had retrieved them. To his great surprise, the rumors had actually been true. Mika’s mother, the scientist Kate Ferrier, had devised a method for opening small, stable portals, and a formula for a treatment that would protect humans from the effects of dragon realm radiation. For decades there had been a recipe for cornering the human market sitting in the royal library, just waiting for someone with the courage and sense to use it.

  And now they had used it, and here the very first human obtained for the purposes of becoming a pet had been taken. There had been a few hiccups along the way, but all in all, Valkimer was pleased. She was in one piece and if she was strong enough to survive the dragon realm, then she was strong enough to withstand the training she was about to undergo.

  He was eager to begin that process. Once she was fully trained and sold to her new owner, they would be rich beyond compare. This little human was to be his proof of concept. If they could successfully train and sell her, then there was nothing stopping them from picking up dozens of females and repeating the process.

  They would be limited only by their ability to maintain some kind of secrecy around their source, and to keep their involvement secret as well. It had not been specifically forbidden to bring humans into the dragon realm, but it was forbidden to open portals to the human realm without the king’s permission.

  But all that was still some way off. Before any of that could come to pass, he had to be sure that she was well. Valkimer sat very close to the side of the bed, monitoring the shade and tone of her skin for long minutes. An hour passed and though she remained insensate, she seemed to be showing no signs of reaction to the atmosphere. Odd. Very odd. He kept the medicine by his side, locked away safely in the little case, but it was obviously not needed.

  He had been a medic during his service, so he was able to conduct basic procedures. He could dress wounds, knit bones, prepare a few medicines made from herbs and wines. Dragon medicine was relatively rudimentary compared to human medicine. Technology was the domain of those wingless creatures. It was the one respect in which Valkimer felt as though perhaps the dragon realm was still inferior.

  His kind had no need for high technology. The dragon realm was a simple place. Technology seemed to have confused the humans and separated them from themselves. Hence the stray females with no protectors to take care of them, no suitable mates ready to do anything besides spend their seed, then abandon the woman and her progeny.

  When death came in the dragon realm, it was accepted. When it came to humans, it was fought with tooth and nail. Their natural instincts had gone so far awry, it was almost as if they weren’t truly part of nature anymore.

  Valkimer amused himself by going through their new pet’s pockets. There he found a series of objects, one being a phone. He recognized the device immediately. The humans he had seen while in their realm had been obsessed with the things, constantly staring at their glowing rectangular screens. At first he had mistaken them for some kind of portal device, but it soon became apparent that nothing came through the phones, and nothing left them either. They were simply information displays.

  He squeezed a button at the side of the phone. It lit up in his hand with a melodic set of chimes. He let out a soft growl as a series of numbers arranged in a grid appeared at the bottom, and above them stark letters that read:

  No service

  He palmed the device lightly, felt the weight of it in his hand. It was such a strange thing. When they were working as intended they glowed with quite a strange light, and words and pictures danced across the screens. He would have liked to have investigated further, but the human realm was toxic to a dragon’s health and he had no interest in trading his lifespan for human baubles.

  * * *

  Bing bingy bonnnnggg binnng!

  Was that her… phone?

  Pulled out of sleep by the sound of the device, Brianna woke up. She was somewhere soft and warm, with crisp sheets wrapped around her and a soft mattress beneath her. This wasn’t her bed. Had she gone home with someone from the bar? Opening her eyes, she saw a very high ceiling far above her head, paved with what looked like stone. Could ceilings be paved? She screwed up her face in confusion and looked to her left, where a window revealed a rolling landscape of green and gold. This didn’t look like anywhere in Ironsands. Even the ‘good’ part of town that looked out over the golf course wasn’t that nice.

  “Where the hell…” she murmured the question to herself.

  “You’re awake.”

  The words came from behind her, delivered in a thick accent in very masculine tones. She froze and blinked as suddenly her addled memory came online, throwing the events of the past couple of days at her in a slideshow of disconnected snapshots. She remembered the bar. The alley. Hands on her arms. Then two men arguing over a terrifyingly large syringe. And then the doorway. Warm light. The garden. Hiding.

  None of it could possibly be real. Maybe someone had slipped her something at the bar. Or maybe one of her asshole roommates had pulled one of their incredibly unfunny ‘pranks’ and dosed her before she even left.

  “Over here, pet.”

  Brianna rolled to the other side and saw a tall blond man with hyper-masculine features sitting in a chair next to the bed. She recognized him immediately as one of the two who had approached her in the bar, and then…

  He no longer held a syringe, and he no longer
looked quite as threatening. He had rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up over his arms and was sitting, relaxed, his legs spread wide in the armchair that put her in mind of something out of some earlier century. He had obviously been through her things while she was unconscious. He was holding her phone in his hand.

  “What are you doing with that? It’s mine.”

  He smirked and tossed it back next to her. “Just looking.”

  She grabbed it and pulled it back to herself, keying in her pass code. She tried to send a text to her roommates, but it failed. Then she noticed the lack of signal. Wherever they were, it was a total dead spot. No service. No Wi-Fi.

  “Fuck,” she swore to herself. “Is there anywhere in this stone box that actually gets reception?”

  “We have to talk,” the blond said, ignoring her question. “There’s something strange about you. You’re not like other humans, are you?”

  His question almost seemed to imply that he was not human. That was weird. Maybe it was just his accent. English obviously wasn’t his original language.

  “Where. Am. I?” She asked the question slowly and carefully, so he would understand. A flash of annoyance burst across his face.

  “I am asking the questions,” he said. He was handsome, in an icy and remote sort of way. She didn’t trust him. She didn’t like him. She wanted to be far away from him. Just looking at him gave her a tremor of fear that ran through the very core of her.

  “And so am I,” she said, sitting up. “I want to go home. I won’t call the cops on you, you can keep my weed and my other stuff. Even the phone. And the money. Just let me go.”

  “Your phone, your money, your… stuff, none of it is any good here.”

  “What is that supposed to mean? Where am I?”

  “Answer my question first, and I will answer yours,” he said, sounding impatient. “Why are you different from other people?”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” she said, getting up. She looked around for an exit, but the window looked too high and he was sitting in front of the door. She doubted he was going to just let her walk past him to get out. “Let me go. People will be looking for me.”