Chapter 9:
Gandadirth
Light hit my eyes, just a faint strip of sunlight seeping in through my eyelids as I was being violently jostled awake.
“The girls are gone,” came the stern tone of the purple shifter, Ik'nale. He gave me a sharp look that somehow cast blame, and I shot up in my tent, scrambling to the world outside.
“Gets worse,” Tesyduss said, waiting outside my tent with his arms crossed, looking eerily calm as screams echoed off in the distance.
“What happened?” I demanded, looking around the camp still half-asleep.
He raised both brows smugly and nodded his head toward Kodyn, another blue shifter with a gaunt face. He was holding Fiona: her thin arms gesticulating wildly as she tried in vain to release herself from his hand.
Her brown hair was a mess of mud and leaves and blood, her face looking weak and tired with drips of red flowing down in streaks.
What happened?
I looked her over from afar and saw bruises and her pants flayed: ripped open.
My stomach sank at that and a wild rage coursed through me then. I set my jaw and began marching toward Kodyn before Tesyduss gripped my arm.
“She’s the only one left,” he said to me, and I was immediately irked that he didn’t even know her name. “They made a break for it in the night. Jadirel caught her.”
What else did he do? I wondered and ran my tongue along my teeth. I nodded slowly, watching Fiona with calculation. “The others?”
He shrugged. “Dead?”
I nodded and kept walking, but Tesyduss pulled me back once more. “She did something to the commander,” he said and nodded toward Jadirel, who had a crowd of shifters surrounding him.
Forgetting Fiona, I raced to Jadirel and watched as a pink sphere darted around his neck, zooming in an infinite circle. It gripped him as he moved, causing a sizzle of heat to radiate against his neck.
My heart sped up then, and I watched as Jadirel spread his wings and retracted them in quick succession, his body throwing out a myriad of reactions. All of it was muscle memory; just his brain trying to figure out the right combination of movements to make the pain stop.
Veins bulged out of Jadirel’s thick skull, and he finally fell to the ground, his body heaving in a mass of breaths and twitching every time he tried to move.
He let out a thick and cracked dragon’s cry. The sound of it jarred us all with its weird humming through our bodies.
The yellow shifter caught sight of me, his red eyes wet and bloodshot. He reached up for my hand, and the rest of the shifters stepped back to give us a circle of space.
I took his hand, and he winced and gasped in a furious pain as he pulled me down near him.
At first, I thought he might say something dire or of affection. Something someone might say on their deathbed. Instead, he shot me a furious glare and seethed, “Get. It. Off.”
I nodded and knelt down, inspecting the ring. There was a detonator pressed into his flesh, stuck to him with a sticky substance that seemed to meld into his skin.
“She had a bag with her,” Tesyduss said, and I motioned for him to bring it to me.
I looked through the contents, but it was barely full. I reached around the darkness and then pulled out four more of the rings. Just a little cap that fit in the palm of my hand. I raised one to my sightline and clicked the button on the side, tossing it from my hand as the pink ring flew out like a collar and landed on the ground nearby, burning the ground beneath it.
I blinked and blew out a long breath.
“Has anyone tried to take it off?” I said, and they knew I meant touch it.
Tesyduss looked around, and then they all shook their heads. I inhaled nervously and grabbed an armored glove off of Ik'nale’s purple-scaled fist and put it on my own.
As my hand neared the beam collar, I could feel the heat on me, already sharp and cutting from inches away. I clung to a brave moment and dove my hand onto the collar, screaming in agony as the shock coursed through my hand and arm.
I pulled at the collar and only ended up hurting Jadirel more, both of us roaring in a vivid pain before I let go, launching myself backward with the effort.
Two moons passed before I was finally able to see Fiona. She was heavily guarded now.
Five warriors had been scouting the forests for any sign of the remaining females while the rest of us stayed at the camp, unable to move to our new base. We were too busy trying to find a way to get our leader on his feet again.
As second-in-command and with Jadirel knocked out, I became the defacto leader.
I approached the guarded cage and dismissed the shifters who were watching over Fiona. Her actions made her an object of hatred amongst our camp. It would be almost impossible to protect her now.
Darkness fell over the camp, making the massive fire the only thing lighting our way. I held a torch that I had lit up myself and plunged it into the ground in front of her cell.
“How was your day, dear?” she said smugly; smiling proudly.
“Cute,” I said, toneless. “What did you do to him?”
She swallowed.
“I heard you stole my key,” I said with mock enthusiasm. “Well hey now, aren’t you clever.”
“He was trying to rape me,” she said through clenched teeth.
“You were trying to escape,” I said and immediately regretted it.
I’d said it as a ‘What did you expect?’ argument, but as I looked down at her pants, still ripped, her wounds still fresh and unattended to, I felt protective and regretful.
Torn.
A long sigh escaped me, long and thick, like blowing out a single plume of smoke. I thought on her argument but stayed resolute in my utter annoyance.
“Gandadirth,” she said, firm but pleading.
“What,” I spat.
She looked me up and down and walked up to the bars, reaching her hand between my legs.
“You’re trying to use me now?” I said in a low tone; curious and overcome with relief and anger. “I’m not big on the whole manipulation, thing. It’s not good.”
“I need you,” she said.
“Why did you do that?”
“I was trying to protect myself,” she shook her head and pulled me close, trying to kiss me through the bars. I pulled back, and she whispered, “Let the girls get away,” before reaching back in with her soft lips against mine.
“This is what you do?” I snapped.
“I need it,” she said in a whisper.
She reached again for me, stroking her hand on the outside of my pants and trying to get me hard. I grabbed her before she could succeed and said, “What does it do?”
“It just…restrains him, is all.”
“Why can’t he rip it off?” I demanded and threw her hand down away from me.
She blinked, hurt as she cradled her hand against her chest. She looked at me like I was the enemy and it was only at that moment I realized she’d never thought of me as such.
Not until now, anyway.
“It’s a weapon designed to restrain Weredragons,” she finally said, cold and curt.
I twitched.
Was this what DET was?
“From where?” I asked.
Fiona walked to the other side of the cage, out of my reach and just barely out of torchlight. Half of her face was shadowed in darkness now, and she turned completely around so I could only see her back.
“Go then, if you don’t want it,” she said with sticky words, her tone hanging in the air with betrayal and selfish anger.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” I hummed in anger: yelling in as much of a whisper as I could afford. “Now I have to skulk about, amongst my own people, just to make sure you’re not hurt? Why did you have to do this? You’ve made yourself an even bigger target than you already were!”
She scoffed. “I care?”
“I thought you did, yes.”
She whipped around. “I’m a prisoner here!” she yelled loudly enough for it to echo and the whole camp to be stirred by her voice. “What was I supposed to do, Gandadirth?! Let him rape me? Kill me? Let you guys wipe out my people? No! Bullshit. No way.”
I stared at her, numb.
“Will he die?” I asked, stoic.
“No.”
I shook my head and took my leave from her, scared that if I stayed near her any longer that I might do something I regretted: kill her or plunge my dick into her.
I laid in my tent and scraped my fingertip over my forehead and eyes, willing the night to end. I could hear the crackle of the fire mixed with Jadirel’s moans of agony outside.
We were supposed to be on a mission come sunlight. Moving our base to the military fortress and exploring their mechanical suits.
I should have been sleeping and if I wasn’t sleeping then I should have been thinking up a strategy for us. But instead, all I could think of was Fiona. A theme, these days.
I thought about how warm she felt impaled on me and the noises she made when she came. I thought about her tenacity and the strange new respect I had for her all because she managed to confine Jadirel.
My hero.
I’d fought with him since I was a dragonling and never seen him fail or flee a fight.
But one encounter with little Fiona and he was left quivering on the ground.