HAPTER EIGHT
Since I had arrived I had grown so used to waking with a jolt, or in dangerous new surroundings, it seemed odd to float up to consciousness without any sense of alarm. But as I drifted back to the world of the waking, I heard faint whispers towards the edge of the pen.
That was odd. What need would any of us have to whisper. We were all allies in this together.
Unless they were just trying to be courteous and not wake those still in the gentle grip of sleep. I wish some of my previous roommates had that kind of thoughtfulness…
“I am telling you, I saw it with my own eyes. If it were not for her, the dragons would be all but defeated and we would be free.”
I knew that was definitely not a good sentence to be uttered, and I risked cracking open my eye. Instantly, my heart dropped into my stomach and I had to swallow hard. Two of the few men were at the fence of the pens, conferring with someone outside of the barrier. It took a moment for my vision to adjust, but I was able to make out the visage of a raven-haired human woman, who happened to be very, very pregnant.
“That cannot be. She says she is a lightning rider.”
“So?” the woman hissed. “What responsibility does a lightning rider have to us? They come and go with the wind, and who can say what their fancy is? They have won battles just as much as they have turned them against us.
“But I am telling you what I saw with my own eyes. She saved them, and doomed all of us in return.”
Now I had two options here. I could stay, basically in perfect mob-territory, and try to reason this out. I could hope they would understand that it was all part of the plan and not turn on me. Or, I could get the hell out before they noticed I was gone and get proof of my commitment to save them and avoid risking possible death.
I decided to go with the latter. I didn’t trust other people to be reasonable. Slowly, and carefully, I slipped out from between my new bedmates and crawled towards the far fence opposite of the gossipers. It was surprisingly difficult to make any progress in the fine dress I was in, but I managed. Bit by bit, looking back occasionally to make sure that they weren’t onto me yet.
I could no longer hear the conspirators, and had no idea if they were still whispering of my perceived sins. This in and of itself was pretty terrifying, because I had no idea if they had moved on from whispering to planning my death.
“There! She’s trying to slip away!”
Ah, it looked like they had jumped right to the planning my death part. Great.
I jumped to my feet and risked a glance over my shoulders. The men were running for me now, with a couple of others with them. Most of the humans were just beginning to sit up, trying to groggily understand what was going on.
Well I wasn’t about to stick around and explain it to them. I sprinted forward, but my dress was not making things easy on me. I picked up the glimmering layers of loosely draped fabric and put everything I had into reaching the fence.
My pursuers were gaining on me, and I had the abrupt realization that there was nothing to stop them from vaulting over the fence to go after me. The only thing that kept them within the widely-gapped pieces of wood was their fear. Finding and destroying a traitor was plenty of motivation for them to overcome that very fear.
I would have sworn to myself, but I needed every single bit of breath I had to keep pushing my feet forward. Although I wasn’t wearing any sort of corset or stays, the tight lacing at the bodice of my dress made it hard for my diaphragm to expand how I wanted it to, leaving me panting, sweating and generally fearing for my life.
I could hear shouts behind me, and arguing, but I couldn’t spare the thought processing to iron them out. I just had to go. Go, go, go—
My thoughts were cut off as something slammed into the back of my head, and I went down. Hard.
Groaning, I tried to get back to my feet, but only could manage to rise to my hands and knees before dizziness swamped me. I just needed a second. If they could give me a second, I could be fine.
What had even hit me?
My eyes drifted to a rock a few inches away, part of it splattered with dark red blood.
Well…someone had an excellent arm on them.
My vision cleared, and I tried to push myself to my feet. But before I could make any progress on that front, a foot connected with the back of my thigh and I went sprawling forward again.
“Traitorous whore!”
“Wow, you just went straight to the insult there, didn’t ya bud?” I hissed, rolling onto my front, away from the next kick that he tried to land on me. I lashed out with my own foot, striking at his weight-bearing shin, and he went down.
I scrambled up, just in time to see another person launch themselves at me. I didn’t have time to move, but could only brace myself as a body slammed into mine.
We went tumbling, both of us trying to come out on top, only to have my attacker manage to get the upper hand. It was a larger woman, one from the next village over, that I hadn’t talked to much the night before.
“Did you sell us out to those winged devils?!” she screeched.
I shoved at her, trying to get her off of me. “I told you, I needed to win their trust! That was the only way to do it. And killing children is wrong!”
“Lies.”
“How can you say it’s lies? Does anything else make sense?!”
She grabbed my wrists and pulled them from her. We were fairly evenly matched, but she had weight and position over me. The best I could do was tire her out.
Until more people crowded around us, and someone else tore my hands from her grip, pinning them down to the earth.
“What are you doing?” I heard Avros cry. “Let her go! Are you mad?”
“She’s betrayed us,” someone else shouted back.
“Why would she do that? What does she have to gain?”
“Who knows? Maybe gold. Power. More of those fancy dresses.” Now that my arms were taken care of, the woman reached down and wrapped her hands around my throat. “Kill the vermin, then kill her scaled friends.”
“What, no! Stop!”
My heart was beating a mile a minute, and I tried to buck to her off of me. Already my head was starting to pound and my vision was speckling black at the edges. This was the second time in a short period that I had been deprived of oxygen and I wasn’t sure at which point brain damage was going to be an issue.
Panic started to take over, and the sounds of Avros and others fighting for me began to fade into a dull hum. Slowly, my limbs began to feel like they were pulling through cement until they were too heavy to lift at all. My legs settled to the earth, and the world slid into grey.
Then a roar cut through the stupor of my mind, and suddenly the lethal pressure was removed through my throat. I gasped, color rushing back into the world, but everything was still blurred and wavering.
“Dragon!”
There were screams, and clamor, and general chaos as wind buffeted my frame. I turned my head towards the noise to see glimmering gold and white land down just a few feet from me. Gently, claws wrapped around my torso, and I was pulled up into the air. I hung there like a rag doll, my brain still trying to catch up with everything that had happened.
There was yet another roar, and I decided that piecing everything together could wait until later. I still couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath and the world was slipping and sliding around nauseatingly. My eyelids fluttering, I slipped down into darkness yet again.
*
I groaned.
Waking up in pain was starting to become a habit, and I was not a fan of it.
I tried to swallow to pull moisture to my mouth, but the action sent stabbing pain down my throat. I let out another wheeze, then felt someone kneel at my side.
“Lady Mercedes, are you awake?”
I went to nod, but that didn’t work out very well either. My eyelids shot open, and I saw the concerned face of Gael hovering over me.
He too was looking slightly worse for wear, a split on his lip and what looked like a laceration going from the top of his forehead into his hairline.
“Thank the gods. The healer said you would be fine, but I could not help but worry, her knowledge of our physiology was too different from your own. She made me a tea to serve you when you were awake. Let me prepare you some now.” His lavender eyes were so kind and concerned that I was momentarily glad I was unable to speak. Why did he care so much about me? We had just met. Certainly, I wasn’t worth risking his life over. He was a Prince! A Champion!
Nevertheless, he rushed off, returning several minutes later with a steaming tankard, and a spoon.
“I thought it might be too difficult to drink directly, so you might need the cutlery,” he explained quietly.
I managed a smile and tried to sit up. I got most of the way there, but I was feeling dizzy again, and my body didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Gael noticed of course, what didn’t he notice, and helped pull me up, arranging some pillows behind me to lean against.
I tried to whisper a thank you, but only another wheeze come out. “It’s fine. You can tell me everything later,” the Prince said comfortingly. “For now, think you can try at least a sip to whet your throat?”
I couldn’t nod, and couldn’t speak, so I just settled with cautiously opening my mouth. The action only caused a slight wave of discomfort, but it faded quickly as I waited.
The Prince looked uncertain for a moment, but recovered enough to carefully spoon out some of the liquid and deposit it on my tongue. I was grateful that I didn’t dribble some out of the corner of my mouth like an idiot, and let it slide to the back of my throat.
The relief was almost instant. It was a warming, pleasant sensation, and I found myself able to swallow without the vicious stabs of agony. I waited a few moments, eyes closed while I savored the rich, homey flavors, before opening my mouth again.
Dutifully, the Prince gave me another spoonful. I had to wonder a bit at the irony of a dragon royal serving me, a lowly human peasant, but I was too distracted by the delicious tea to concentrate on that for long.
It was so strange. I had expected something sweet, or bitter, and definitely tasting only of plants. But the drink he served me was layered with salt, and undertones that were more in line with broth than the leafy-water I was used to. I certainly wasn’t complaining, but it was an interesting surprise.
After a few more spoonful’s, I felt like I was ready to risk talking again.
“Y-you saved me.” It was raspy at first, and much breathier than I would ever speak normally, but it was better than just a few minutes ago.
“Of course. You have my deepest apologies that you were ever put into that position in the first place. I don’t know what Myrik was thinking, returning you to the pens dressed as you were, with our scent all over you.”
“He was just following the Queen’s orders. And honestly—” I winced, my throat protesting at its use, so I sighed and opened my mouth again. Thankfully, Gael understood and spooned another bit of tea onto my tongue. I let it slosh around and do its magic a bit before swallowing to continue. “I would have been fine if this woman hadn’t shown up. I thought the plan had just started, but she’s pregnant. And she certainly didn’t seem happy about that.”
The Prince’s face darkened at that. “That must have been Ashlynne. She was a wild woman that Jayne happened across when he was wounded and hiding from a hunting party. She found him, and nursed him back to health in his human form, and then he revealed himself to her and took her.”
“That’s not how you’re supposed to show your gratitude, last I checked.”
Gael nodded. “I know not what made him think that was honorable. The Queen thought as much also, and there were talks of banishment. But then it was discovered that she was with child and…” He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “That’s when the first talk of interbreeding began.”
“But how do you know it’s viable? She’s still with child, what if it can’t survive on its own? Or just turns out to be completely human?”
“My lady,” the Prince said softly. “Ashlynne has been with us for six of your years. This is her third child, and all of them have been healthy, live births with no defects. It was upon the birth of the second that the Queen could no longer fight the will of her people. We’ve been preparing the pens, and learning from her how to take care of you ever since. That is most likely how she knew to even go to the pens, or who you were. As a mother, she is allowed free roam wherever she wants.”
“Except her home.”
“Yes. Except that.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just opened my mouth again for him to pour more tea. How could I feel so attracted to a man whose people were doing something so terrible? Was I a monster that it didn’t seem to affect my opinion at all?
But then the spoon was gone and it was his calloused hand gently touching my neck. The appendage was warm, and a welcome relief against the soreness still lingering there. “They bruised you quite badly. There was much to clean up after Cyphus laid still, but I’ll never forgive myself for assuming you were being tended to. It wasn’t until the morn that I heard that you had been left there over the night, I flew to you as quickly as I could.” He shook his head and I saw him visibly tense. “But when I saw them surrounding you, hurting you, it took everything in me not to set our own meadows ablaze.”
The passion, the utter respect in his tone made desire pool in my belly. “But why am I so important to you? You don’t even know me. I could be a liar, and a spy.”
His lavender eyes flicked to me, and instead of suspicion, I saw a knowing kind of resignation. “I cannot explain it, and you would think me a fool if I tried. I only know, from the moment you uttered my name, that you were not sent here by happenstance. I do not know whether it is the spirits that still hide in the depths, or fate, or what have you, but my world has never so narrowly focused on one human.”
My face flushed and my heart picked up its tempo, and for once it wasn’t because I was terrified. Far from it. As silly as it sounded, I felt myself being drawn towards the Prince in all his shimmering, muscled glory. From his striking face, to his kind eyes, to his scent to his seemingly genuine desire to protect me from all harm.
“I believe you could be the one who’s meant to save my people, if that’s not too audacious a claim to make. I’ve never met a human willing to stare down a dragon with nothing but their righteous fury and wit to see them t—”
He stopped talking, but that was probably because I was kissing him. It hurt a bit to move, but it was a delicious sort of pleasure-pain that filled me as I pressed myself to him.
He didn’t react at first, and I worried I should stop, but then his strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me to him like a vice.
Appropriately enough, fire burned in my belly as our bodies touched, spreading throughout my veins in an exhilarating scourge. His hands were so large, gripping my back and side, squeezing me like a man holding onto his last lifeline in a vast ocean.
My mouth worked against his, begging, pleading, reveling in his affection until suddenly he broke away.
The sudden cut off in contact was jarring, and it took all of my maturity not to pout like a spoiled brat.
“My deepest, humblest of apologies,” the Prince blurted, sliding off of the bed to kneel before me. Now I was really confused, and had no idea where he was going with this. “You were brought here against your will, and I have no right to take advantage of that. I did not save you in return for some sort of payment of the flesh, and I am truly shamed if my words made it seem so.”
“Oh goodness. You silly, noble man.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the moment, although it probably wasn’t what the Prince wanted to hear. It’s just he was so…so lovely. So genuine.
“I do not understand what humor you find in this situation, Lady Mercedes.”
I reached up and pulled at his chin so he would look at me. “Just thinking how funny it was that you would say such kind words about me being powerful enough to save your people, but then thinking that you could force me to do anything that I wasn’t a willing party to.” I let go of his face and pulled him to me. “Or a happy instigator of.”
“You’re saying that you did not kiss me because you felt you had to?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just got kinda caught up in the moment, which you’re currently kinda killing. So, if you can let down all those rules, protocols and what’s proper for a second, I’d like to kiss you again.”
The resulting smile on the dragon’s face was almost devilish. “I think I can accommodate that request.”
His mouth crashed to mind once more, and I let myself get swept away in the passion. At first I told myself that I only needed a little make out session, some much needed positive attention with something I was quite familiar with after so many days of uncertainty and surprises. But as my hands tugged at the thickly woven fabric of his tunic, and his scent filled all of my senses, I felt the growing desire for more.
Gael seemed to be feeling much and the same, slowly moving forward from his kneeling position until I was flat on my back on the ornate bed, and he was over me. I didn’t release him for a second, even when he positioned his knees on either side of me.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, breaking away from our kisses to nip at the length of my neck. When I thought of what those teeth could do to me if he so wanted, I only felt myself grow hotter. That probably was not an appropriate response to possible lethal weapons, but I didn’t care. I was sinking into a blissful, burning celebration of my body and I wasn’t going to stop it for anything.
Our bodies moved against each other, rising and falling against each other in a needy rhythm. My fingers wrapped around the thick belt at his waist, and I yanked at it insistently. He laughed, and disentangled himself from me and worked the buckle. I didn’t waste a second, yanking his tunic up and over his head.
I let a giddy laugh bubble up out of my throat, letting my tongue’s tip languidly travel along the muscled scape exposed to me. The skin of his torso was much paler than his face and arms, and dotted with scars. My fingers traced along the toughened echoes of past wounds, wanting to feel and get to know everything I could about this compelling Prince.
He was on his own mission, his strong broad hands wrapping around my waist. I felt him squeeze a bit, then suddenly flip me over.
I gasped in surprise, unsure of what was happening next but thrilled with the display of strength. I heard the ripping of laces behind me, and then the constrictive bodice loosened. I breathed in gratefully, before being whirled once more to face Gael.
He was breathing heavily, and I could hear my own echoing in kind. “Are you sure you wish to continue?” he rasped.
“I think I might kick your ass if you try to stop.”
“Fair enough.”
He pressed himself to me once more, and through a series of frantic actions, we rid ourselves from the last barriers between us. I could feel his body’s full response to me, urgent and pressing against my thigh. God, it had been too long since I had felt so wanted, so recklessly and vitally desired. It made every single action seemed that much more intense and erotic than it should be.
Yet despite his obvious ache to know me intrinsically, he continued to pour all of his attention into me. No inch of me remained unworshipped by his lips, and his fingers carefully, delicately slipped into my center.
They worked against me in a counter rhythm that had my hips rising to meet his palm and my body throbbed along every nerve with pure, unadulterated pleasure. It was almost too much for a woman to bear.
And then finally I was cresting over that building wave of ecstasy in my middle, sending me crashing into a blinding pool of full body rapture. I felt myself burst into a sweat, and my toes curled, before I finally sank back down into after-bliss.
That seemed to be all the signal the Prince needed, and I finally felt him press himself to me. I gasped once more, and he paused in concern, but I urged him on. He filled me, almost to the brim, and when he rocked against me it was almost impossible to breathe. This was what I had been craving for so long. The utter, complete and total completion that came with another person who was truly your equal.
What started out as a measured, slow rush of mutual appreciation quickly descended into animalistic passion. My fingernails scored down his back, and his teeth broke the skin along my neck and shoulders. It was fire and brimstone, an unstoppable force of two people seeking solace in each other.
I felt myself soaring to that mind erasing peak again, spurred further by each thrust, bite and movement of the Prince. And when I reached it, I didn’t hold back. I wrapped my legs about him and a heady moan burst from my swollen tips.
Gael wasn’t far behind me. I felt his surges against me lose all rhythm, and his breath devolved into short gasps. Suddenly, he let out a roar that rattled me to my core. I held him to me, taking all of it in, before he slowly sank to me, breathless.
Neither of us said anything, because nothing really needed to be said. I wasn’t sure where we would go from here, but it didn’t seem to matter. The important thing was that for the first time in a while I felt safe, and content with the decisions that led me here.
Gael rolled off me, but pulled me flush to his side. He was ridiculously warm, but I loved the heat of it. He nuzzled the back of my neck, and I felt his breathing regulate. It was in his arms that I slipped into a blissful sleep.