Kidnapped by the Dragon

by Kayla Wolf

  “No need for repayment,” Helena said smoothly. Angela got the sense that the woman had been waiting for Alexander to deliver the verdict on whether Owen could stay—now she stepped in to guide the rest of the conversation. “But it sounds like you’ve travelled a great deal. We’d love to hear what’s going on in the rest of the world—as you can imagine, we’re rather isolated up here.”

  ”Of course. I’ll share everything I know.”

  “Join us this evening for dinner? We tend to dine in these shapes,” Helena said smoothly, gesturing down at her elegantly attired human form. “Of course, if you’d prefer, there’s good hunting in the valley—”

  ”It would be an honor to join you,” Owen said solemnly. Angela fought the urge to whoop with delight. He was staying! And he’d be staying in a room near hers… and they’d be having dinner together that night. She only hoped he wouldn’t find her boring in comparison to the company of a dragon like Helena, or Alexander, or Samuel—but even as that worrying thought crossed her mind, Owen smiled at her, his eyes darting over to meet hers. She smiled back. Who cared if the other dragons were more interesting than her? She’d be happy just to get to know him a little more.

  Chapter 5

  “So, which body do you like to sleep in?”

  Owen had to think about that. At the College, space was at a premium—as students, they’d shared barrack-type accommodation, ten people to a room in bunk beds in their human forms. It was militaristic, intentionally so. Stopped any sense of connection to place, or peace in solitude. The idea of having his own quarters was still a surprising luxury, even though he’d been given his own modest private quarters at the College decades ago.

  ”This one,” he said, gesturing downwards. It was what he was used to, anyway.

  ”Me too,” she replied happily. “Mainly because of my hearing. Someone turns over in bed a hundred feet away, and I wake up if I’m wolf-shaped. Human ears are comparatively pretty crappy, but at least I can get a good night’s sleep. Here, this way.”

  She led him down a twist in the corridor. There were some decorations on the walls that gave him something of a sense of direction, but still, the intricate structure of the palace took some getting used to. This was going to be a longer-term assignment than he thought, especially if he was going to avoid raising suspicion as he searched for the artifact. He’d found the princess, at least. And all the better—she seemed to like him. Probably bored out of her mind here, he thought, amused by the way she kept chattering away at him, then cutting herself off to ask him questions about himself as though embarrassed by her own enthusiasm. She was clearly smart as a tack, and that intellect was like a caged animal, pacing in circles here with only whatever research project she was working on to keep it entertained.

  It was a shame the pack up north wanted her so badly, he thought remotely, allowing himself a little bit of room for feeling. He’d worked in recruiting for a couple of decades—searching the country for shifters with College potential. A girl like Angela would’ve caught his interest straight away. She was smart, switched-on, and had that suppressed restlessness in her that was extremely easy to take advantage of. It would’ve been the work of maybe a week or two to get her interested in the kind of life the College offered—the discipline, the training, the complete overhaul of who you were. Sculpting your mind and body into a weapon. She’d be perfect for the intelligence sector of the College. They were always looking for more wolves—that mind-sharing thing they could do made training them much easier. She’d make a good scout. Recon was an important part of the College’s operations. He shook himself a little, having gone further down that line of thinking than he was really happy with. Whatever her potential, it was irrelevant. The dragons up north—his clients, the College’s employers—wanted her as a hostage. Her life was forfeit, whatever he might feel about it.

  And he didn’t feel much, he decided, putting a lid firmly on those feelings. Angela was a sweet girl. But he’d had plenty of experience shutting down feelings like sympathy. It was the only way to survive a life like his.

  She showed him to a room, pleasantly large, with an enormous bed in the middle of it—much better than the cramped bunk beds he’d occupied as a recruit, he thought with a grin. No matter how much time he’d spent in his new staff quarters, it was still those narrow bunk beds that came to mind when he thought of the College. There was furniture in the room, but the kind of furniture that was clearly there for decoration and not much more—an empty bookshelf, a squashed armchair beside it, and a little table over by the far wall. A fine layer of dust on everything, and in the air.

  ”This one hasn’t been used for decades,” Angela explained, moving cautiously into the center of the room. She could smell the dust, too—he could see her nose wrinkling. Cute, he thought, unexpectedly. “But it’s the biggest bed on the floor. I checked.”

  ”I don’t take up that much space, do I?”

  ”No!” Her bright eyes widened, clearly concerned she’d offended him.

  Owen laughed. “Joking. Just joking. You’re not going to offend me, I know how big I am.” He adjusted his posture a little, dropping through one hip to diminish his height. Important to draw as much attention away from his posture as he could. He didn’t want to intimidate her too much. It was clear from her body language that he made her anxious on some level—but she was also pursuing his company with considerable enthusiasm, so whatever he was doing must be working. She liked him. That made him feel—really good, actually. Strangely good. The rush of successfully infiltrating enemy territory, he told himself.

  “Nothing wrong with that. And besides—you’re not that big. You should meet Art.”

  ”Oh, yeah?” This was the bear, he remembered. He was interested in meeting the bear. Bears were interesting people. “Tall guy?”

  ”Scarily tall. He and Helena make quite a couple.” She ducked her head. “Makes me feel short. Well, shorter.”

  Something about how defeated she sounded made him move to reassure her before he’d thought it through. ”Short’s not bad. I knew a wolf your height. Toughest warrior I ever met.”

  ”You know wolves? What pack?”

  There was a good question. Why would a seaside dragon from a pacifist colony know anything about warrior wolves? He had to be careful here. “There was a neutral pack, lived down the coast a way. I got to know a few of them.” That would do. Before she could press the line of enquiry any further, he took off running, hurled himself into the air and landed hard on the bed. Dust puffed into the air, and Angela laughed with surprise, a pure sound that hit him right in the chest. It was a good laugh. He wanted to hear more of it.

  ”Good bed,” he declared, sitting up.

  ”Might be worth airing out those sheets,” Angela giggled, moving over to the bed. He stood to get out of her way, and when she brushed past him to grab the edge of the quilt, he felt her long blonde braid brush against his arm. It was soft. Soft wasn’t a feeling he had much experience with, these days. She turned back to him, the quilt gathered in her arms, and he realized with a start that he was standing up straight, his careful slouch forgotten. Her head came up to the middle of his chest, and she had her face tilted up to meet his eyes. An odd look on her face. Surprise? Shock? Wonder? He felt frozen there, somehow. The quilt in her arms was all that was keeping them apart. When had he last been this close to someone outside of the context of a fight to the death?

  “Your eyes,” she said softly, still peering up at him. He blinked hard. Reflex. An old memory, lurching out of the depths. “They really are black.” She was looking at him with that intensity because she was studying his eyes, he told himself, feeling oddly disoriented. No need to be rude. He looked back, tried to stop himself blinking. What was this feeling? Vulnerability. He felt vulnerable. She was only studying his eyes, he told himself, she wasn’t looking into his soul, nobody could do that. And yet, something about those fierce silver eyes of hers made it feel like they were cutting much deepe
r than surface level.

  ”Yeah,” he said, his voice feeling strange in his mouth. “Proper black. They look kind of spooky, I know.”

  ”I think they’re beautiful,” Angela said softly. How was she holding his gaze so confidently when it felt like it was going to shake him apart? “Really special.”

  They’re not mine, he wanted to tell her. This was done to me. This is what I’ve turned myself into. What I used to be is gone, long gone. Her eyes were silver because she was a wolf. Her adopted dragon family’s eyes were golden because it was the mark of their family connection. His eyes were black as a mark of what he was—what he’d let the College turn him into. The final mark of ownership they’d made on him after they’d rebuilt him from the ground up, body and soul. A soldier. Not even that—soldiers had personal lives. Soldiers could retire. He was a weapon. Nothing more.

  He’d forgotten to control his face. He had no idea what had passed across it, but Angela was suddenly dropping her gaze, looking shy suddenly, apologizing. What for? Looking at him?

  “I’ll go air this out,” she was saying, retreating towards the door with an apologetic little smile. “You—settle in. Get some rest, if you like.”

  All he could manage was: “Yeah. Thanks.”

  She closed the door behind her, and he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, his heart pounding like he’d just fought twenty armed men. There was a dizzy, light feeling in his head and his eyes were stinging. He focused on his breathing, focused on his clenched fists, focused on digging his nails into his palms until he could feel blood between his fingers. It only helped a little.

  ”This is new,” Owen muttered to himself after a few minutes, getting to his feet. But it wasn’t new. Not really. It was deeply, horribly familiar. The drumming in his chest, the dizzy feeling behind his eyes—it was how he’d felt when he’d first come to the College. When they’d taken pity on him, taken him in, helped him overcome all his weaknesses, his emotional outbursts, his petty connections to his old life. They’d helped him become something greater than that. Part of something good, something meaningful.

  And he was beyond all that stupid emotion. Wasn’t he?

  He took one more deep breath, then moved to the mirror set in one stone wall. Looked at himself, hard. A strong, square face. Sharp jaw. The hard line of his lips. And burning in the center of his face, his black eyes. Like the eyes of every other College graduate. A badge of pride, of honor. Those eyes meant he’d been strong enough to come through the College’s grueling training. They were something to be proud of. So why had it made him feel so goddamn terrible when Angela had looked at them?

  Why did he feel so ashamed?

  ***

  Angela came back a few hours later with the quilt. He’d been pacing, trying to think, trying to strategize. This resurgence of an emotional self that he thought he’d left decades in his past, it was troubling. But it was nothing he couldn’t handle. That’s what his training had prepared him for, after all. He couldn’t articulate why it had happened, what had prompted it—maybe it was something to do with the family he’d met, with the clear fondness they had for each other, the closeness between them. The way their eyes matched. Who knew? It didn’t matter, that was the thing. What had caused these feelings was completely irrelevant. They just needed to be stamped out, that was all. And he’d had plenty of practice stamping out feelings.

  So when Angela returned to him with the quilt, he took it as an opportunity to exercise the new callouses he’d started building. There were certain walls that could be constructed inside your own mind—he must have been getting sloppy with their maintenance, that was all. It had been a while since he’d been out on a mission, after all. So when Angela smiled at him and handed him the quilt, he smiled back, making sure that the warmth he showed her was all surface level.

  “Thanks.”

  ”You’ll need it. It gets cold in the mountains at night, even in the middle of summer.”

  Remember your character, remember your story. Don’t be cold to her—you need her to like you—but be cold inside, where it counts. Don’t let those vibrant silver eyes catch you out again. “I appreciate it. I bet your midsummer’s colder than our midwinter ever was.” He affected a yawn. “I’m pretty wiped, though. Is it okay if I spend the afternoon sleeping?”

  ”Of course! I can come to get you before dinner if you like?”

  ”Sounds good. Thanks, Angela.” He was keeping a close eye on her face. Important to observe and study the enemy, he told himself. And yes—there was definitely a bright spark of something in her eyes when he said her name. He was a good-looking guy. It wouldn’t be out of the question for her to find him attractive, even to be developing a crush on him. That was useful, he told himself, maintaining the icy composure he needed. It would be useful, for her to feel something for him. People with feelings were easy to manipulate. Yeah, Owen. Feelings make you weak. And you’re clearly not as immune to them as you thought you were. Keep hold of that information, would you?

  Angela left him to sleep, but he’d never felt less sleepy in his life. Despite his determination to be cold, he could feel his heart beating hard in his chest. His mind kept straying to the conclusion he’d drawn from the way she’d looked when he said her name. She liked him, she was attracted to him, she wanted him. Made him feel—strange. Dizzy. God, Tarik would have knocked him down for this, he thought with his teeth gritted. The old wolf had been his teacher since he arrived at the College. And he’d been old then, too. Who knew what kind of magic the College had access to, that aging wasn’t a concern for their staff? But Tarik had helped him get control of himself. Banish his feelings of grief, of loss, of longing.

  Why was that falling apart now?

  He stared hard at the ceiling until Angela came to get him before dinner. She’d changed clothes, he noticed—she was wearing a long blue dress that set off her silver eyes perfectly. And she knew it looked good on her, he could tell by the modest way she kept her eyes on the ground as they walked the corridors—except for when she thought he wasn’t looking, of course.

  ”Do you always eat in these forms?” he asked, to break a silence that was getting too loaded for his liking.

  ”Lately, yeah. I mean, me and Jessica always have, but the dragons used to do a lot more hunting before Lisa came to live here. She was kind of the catalyst for all this change.”

  ”The human.”

  ”Yeah. She’s fantastic. You’ll meet her.”

  And meet her he did—along with all the other members of the strange little family he’d stumbled into. There was a dining room in the central area of the palace, a huge table in its center that clearly got a lot of use. The three dragons he’d met earlier were there. Alexander and Samuel, the almost-indistinguishable brothers—it was the way they moved that was the difference, he’d figured out quickly. Samuel was faster than his brother, lighter on his feet, but Alexander had more strength in him, a lower center of gravity. Owen wouldn’t mind betting they were formidable fighters. Nothing he couldn’t handle, of course, but still. Lisa, the human woman Angela had mentioned, was luminous. She had that rapid-fire energy humans tended to bring with them—that sense of impatience, of constant movement. Spending time around humans reminded you that time was passing, that was for sure. Jessica, Angela’s older sister, stood beside her husband Samuel, more reserved—he could see the family resemblance clearly, beyond just those luminous silver eyes.

  He was very interested in meeting Helena’s mate—and he almost missed him when he stepped into the room. The bears he was used to weren’t so self-effacing. Art was seated at the table, his dark eyes lowered, and when Helena introduced him, he hesitated before standing up. Angela hadn’t been exaggerating—the guy was huge. Owen didn’t meet many people who were taller than him. It felt odd, to have to lift his head to speak to someone rather than lowering it. But those dark brown eyes were familiar—and unfamiliar at the same time. There was that sense of holding back—every bear he’
d ever met seemed to be at constant war with the beast within. But there was a strange sense of peace about Art that contradicted his preconceptions. He found himself curious about the guy. Maybe he’d get to know him a little while he was staying here. After all, this was going to be a long-term mission—may as well get some extra intel about this weird little family.

  It felt good to eat a solid meal at a table. Owen couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten in human shape, and he said as much, drawing nods of agreement from the other dragons at the table.

  ”We have to eat more often in these forms,” Samuel said, “but it’s much more enjoyable.”

  ”And I’d be pretty lonely if you all just stuck to wild game,” Lisa said. Angela had mentioned that the woman had been unwell on and off for the last few weeks, but she seemed fine to him—bright and cheerful, very interested in him and where he’d come from.

  ”How have you found the adjustment from human life to—well, this?” Owen asked her, curious despite himself. It made sense for his character to be curious, he told himself—but he couldn’t deny that he was genuinely interested in this little colony of shifters in a way that he hadn’t been about his targets for decades.

  ”Strange,” she admitted. “But pretty wonderful. I wouldn’t change it.”

  ”You’re doing your best,” Alexander pointed out blandly. Owen got the sense that the guy had quite a subtle sense of humor. “We haven’t had electricity before.”

  ”Nor have you had Netflix, and your lives have been the poorer for it,” Lisa said primly, and Owen laughed along with the others at the table. This kind of communal meal wasn’t a feature of the College. You ate whenever you got a chance, and you usually did it alone. It felt—it felt good, he had to admit, and that wrenched at something deep inside his chest. He looked up from his meal to find Art’s dark eyes fixed on his face. The bear held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. Something worrying about that—something altogether too knowing in that dark regard for Owen’s liking. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to get to know the guy. Might be wiser to keep his distance, there.