I promised them the most we can give without spilling blood. A temporary reprieve, but the best I could do. Now we wait and see what they say.
She communicated with the eyes? For a brief flash, he felt the full weight of betrayal. Was this female an enemy agent after all, sent to beguile him with promises of revenge and new life? He grasped her cheek, uncaring his claws might lacerate the fragile flesh, and turned it sharply to face his.
Do not play me false, Claudia. I will tolerate no more betrayals.
Calm down, soldier. Yes, it goes against everything you stand for, but I’m just keeping us both alive. When the camera speaks, we’ll see.
No, he wanted to roar until the mountains trembled. Though the invaders came boldly, the elders chose to give them welcome, confident of their Draegon majesty. When it became evident their unwanted visitors came to devastate and loot, the elders reluctantly sought to make a peaceful settlement against their superior might. And then when the invaders showed no interest in peace, when the slaughter began, the Draegon fought back. Right was on their side. They would surely prevail.
But evil, it seemed was in ascendance. Tooth, fang, and claw were no match for the white-hot light and the disintegrating rays the dragons, even in their fury, could not match.
Compromise, appeasement brought only destruction and degradation.
Trust me, Please. I know how this all works.
And he no longer did. Though he tried, all he saw were orbs and boxes hanging and blinking in the sky.
To beat them, we have to play their game, Tharius. Claudia lifted his damaged hand, rubbing the bent and clawed fingers with her thumb.
Then we will play. He yanked her from her feet, and took her mouth, brutally, carnally. Tasting the metallic tang of blood on his lips. His cock stiffened, every fibre of his being ready to take her. Is this what they wish to see?
Ask them, Tharius. She wasn’t pulling away, nor pushing him off in protest to his violence. Claudia pulled him in, greedy and demanding, climbing his body to better angle her lips to his.
He kissed her again, unable to stop the downward slide of his will into hers. But this was no thrall. This was destiny.
“Is this what you want?” He growled at the eyes and dashed the back of his hand over his blooded mouth, fighting the urge to wipe away the sliver of red staining Claudia’s quivering lips. “Is this what you wish to see?”
He counted ten breaths before the eye gave a low hiss and spoke.
“Claudia, you never cease to amaze us.” They both heard it, both in their own tongues.
“As always, I’m your servant, Mario.”
Sarcasm coloured Claudia’s reply, but they should be speaking to him, not to her.
“You will talk to me. Negotiate with me, do you understand?” Tharius stepped in front of her, partly to shield her from any nefarious ideas they might have of taking her from him, but mainly to assuage his male pride. “What do you offer us in return?”
It nearly choked him to deal with the hated invaders. But if this is how the game was now played...
Nice one, Tharius. Claudia sent her approval. It made him ridiculously happy. A sure sign he wasn’t himself.
“Calibrating audience response now. They want sex, no surprise there. Out here in the open. And then again in your lair. With full reactions and appropriate sound effects, and then maybe we’ll hold back that wyvern waiting to tear your little female to pieces.”
“I will shed blood for this insult. Rivers and lakes of blood, and you will all pay.”
“Oh, that’s a given.” The voice behind the camera coughed out a crackling chuckle. “Sex and blood are the two things you can count on, when Prison Moon One comes on the air. Don’t make them wait too long for it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Goading a part-shifted dragon, already a little crazy with arousal, and furious beyond measure at being made to do the hated invaders’ bidding, gave playing with fire a whole new meaning. Claudia laughed softly. She never shied from the challenges this new life threw at her - a lesson Tharius must learn, if he didn’t want them to kill him all over again.
The Corporation is first a business, Tharius. We’re assets, and only safe as long as we make them profit. She lengthened her step, breaking into a jog to keep up with his furious, thumping strides. I hate it, too. There are ways of fighting back, but for that, you have to stay alive. Be prepared to lose the little battles to win the bigger war.
Now you think to patronise me with terminology of war? You think I don’t remember the wyverns running towards the invaders’ rewards like younglings lured with sweetmeats?
Pride is an expensive commodity here. We can’t afford it.
Pride, honour is everything.
Was everything.
Claudia held back any further argument. Too close to the tipping point where anger boiled over into action to antagonise him further. Watching couples and groups having consensual or forced sex was every day viewing. In private or out in the open, those trapped here worked or suffered accordingly for their rewards. Most of the abductees soon learned to look the other way or ignore it. The felons simply didn’t care.
You did not go to the aid of those weaker than yourself?
I was chained for most of the year I spent in the camp. But I gave healing where I could.
Forgive me, I should not judge you.
Tharius caught her arm, bringing her to a halt. He opened his mouth, but the words never made it to his lips. The frustration of this new order clouded his purple eyes, clenched his muscles so tight they shook with it.
Where’s your lair? Claudia studied the slight rise in the land. More of a hill than a mountain with huddles of trees. Swathes of dark-red, low-lying vegetation stood out against the yellow soil.
What did a dragon lair really look like? She imagined a cave equipped with a straw nest and the obligatory overflowing chest of gold and treasure. Looking at Tharius, seeing the stern male emerging from the dragon, that image fit.
But she’d also seen glimpses in his memories of comfort—furniture, and woven hangings covering floors and walls.
“You will see.”
Yes, speak aloud occasionally, but don’t give too much away. That’s good. Keep them guessing. They like a bit of intrigue, but not too much.
Tharius’s eyes narrowed, and after a long scrutiny of the sinking sun, sniffed.
“I smell water behind that ridge, and small creatures for eating. We will have a fire. Stealth is no longer required. See how that small inlet in the rise is protected on three sides? It’s a good place to hole up for the night.”
The disappointment must have showed on her face. She’d hoped his lair might be around the next corner, or at least reachable by nightfall. But food, rest and relative safety sounded good, too. Insects and creatures rustled and twittered in the undergrowth. A sure sign night was about to drop.
During the day, the undergrowth, forests and long grasses whispered with footfall, the small noises made by creatures moving lightly around their predators. At night on this moon, they seemed to throw down all caution, filling the dark with whirring and clicks, rustlings and shrieks. A variety of the nastier predators kept nocturnal hours. Claudia listened, finding at least three beasts within radius that would happily eat them as a midnight snack.
Well, maybe her. They’d have a hard time getting through Tharius’s half-shifted hide. She frowned. Skin thicker than when they started walking. And his strong, male features seemed to have morphed into something more feral. More dragon.
Can I help? Tharius, you’re changing.
I know. He pressed scaled and leathered fingers to his cheek, nodding. My dragon does not suffer this indignity lightly. He would fight where the male bids him listen and plan. With rest and food, I will master the shift and take control.
Can you still…? Hot embarrassment flooded her once more. No going back on that promised sex now. Their audience awaited. The remains of her cloak, flapping at Tharius’s
waist, did nothing to hide his arousal. Of course, he was huge under that flimsy cloth, more so as he slipped towards his dragon.
She remembered women screaming and crying under rampant, half-shifted wyverns. She remembered the moaning, too. And Dio, she wanted Tharius. Sex with the man. With the dragon. Oh Madonna, did she just think that? Two years without sex getting to her at last? Maybe she desperately needed that intimate contact with a protective male? No, it wasn’t that. This was a life-and-death connection between them. Something destined to happen regardless of pervy voyeurs demanding they perform for roving cameras.
Tharius’s dark gaze confirmed that a million times over.
I will be careful with you.
Tell them different. Be the conqueror they expect.
You play this game so well, Claudia. His words held a mixture of suspicion and respect. Tharius took in a breath, expanding his chest in a mighty heave, as if he had to steel himself to speak such words.
“It will be rough, female. I am not a gentle dragon. I will take you in ways you never imagined.”
She could almost see the audience leaning forward, excitement lighting their watching eyes. Dio, his words caused a flare in the pit of her stomach. Not a woman who needed pain to achieve pleasure. Or one to seek out casual sex, though on her concert circuit, she’d certainly had her share of offers after the concerts.
Offers she’d occasionally indulged. The guys who followed her YouTube channel never held back in letting her know what they’d like her to play next.
I do not mean this, Claudia. Tell me you hear me.
I know. Say something else. They’ll be waiting for my reaction.
She needed to look scared, or at least apprehensive. Not like that thought intrigued her more than it should.
You wish me to use force? Tharius beat at a stubborn clump of thorny shrubs, heaving one from the ground with his good hand when it refused to lay flat so they could pass. A furry creature, the size of a small pig, raced away on two of its four legs, yipping alarm. Tharius swiped up a rock and lobbed it almost casually after the creature. The beast screeched, rolled, and lay still.
You really wish that? Tharius was staring at her, as if she’d suddenly turned into another being, not the female he’d begun to know.
No. She actually lifted her palms to cover her red cheeks. But we have to pretend for them.
“At full strength, I can rut for an entire night, female.”
Claudia widened her eyes, trying to look appalled for the viewers, but overcome by a sudden urge to laugh at the cheesy clichés falling from Tharius’s lips. He wouldn’t appreciate her laughter.
“I’m just a delicate Earth woman. We’re not very strong. Not like you are.” She could do cliché with the best of them. The audience lapped them up.
“Should I care?” Tharius curled his fingers around her biceps, hauling her close. “You thought to have tamed me? Think again, female.”
She thumped him lightly with a flat palm, pretending to push him off. Did she look suitably aghast? Tilting back her head to look up at him, she must look tiny next to his muscled bulk.
Nothing tiny about this male.
You are correct in that assumption.
Tharius, stop it! I can’t do this if you make me laugh.
He let her go and stalked away to retrieve his kill. Why would talk of a large cock be amusing?
We Earth women have wicked minds.
Tharius shook the felled cadaver and then tossed it into the clearing bounded by a large boulder on one side, a small huddle of stubby trees forming a barrier on the other. A rise in the slope protected their back where a spring exited from under a series of flat rocks and trickled away in a thin stream.
“Sit, I will gather fuel for a fire.”
Her legs almost buckled of their own accord. Odd, how a body soldiered on until it reached a place of safety. Now, it screamed at her to rest, to lie down and sleep.
“I’ll come too.”
“You will sit as commanded.” Tharius stalked off before she could argue back, so she fell to the springy, moss-strewn ground. Not real moss like on Earth—thicker and a little more wiry—but welcome all the same.
Tharius had found them a bed. And there was an orb, already in place. The third camera had zipped after him, and she wondered if the viewers were voting on whether he planned to abandon her or come back for the promised show.
She turned from the dead creature, with its vinegary stink. Sharp and pungent, it did nothing to override the other scent hanging heavy in the air of the enclosed space.
Arousal. His. Hers.
When she thought life couldn’t get stranger, here she was. Sitting on a bed of moss, waiting to have voyeur sex with a smoking hot dragon-man.
If it was the worst thing she was asked to do on this moon, she’d take it.
Chapter Fifteen
Tharius took his scents, listening for the soft crack of twigs underfoot, the slow intake of breath from a predator intent on attack. Nothing concerned him, but that might be down to his dulled senses. He foraged within sight of Claudia, gathering an armful of kindling and two stout boughs, each the size of his thighs.
Fire for protection, and to cook the flesh Claudia seemed reluctant to consume raw. When the fire died low, the nearer trees bounding the small enclave would provide more fuel.
Tharius paused for thought, shaking his head. Why did he still expect all other species to bow to the rule of the dragon? Wasn’t this inward-looking the very thing that brought them disaster in the first place?
From the moment of his birth, he’d learned that the Draegon ruled supreme. Their way was the only way. All other cultures bowed to their superiority and might, and because of that, the Draegon let down their guard. Delusions of invincibility would do that to any race.
They opened their doors to the invaders, bid them enter and offer tribute.
Tharius wrenched a branch from a tree, almost uprooting it in his pent-up anger. He’d been a part of that. Too lofty to see the threat, too brave to back down in the face of their overwhelming might.
No, the Draegon never backed down. But as he walked the few steps back to the enclave and his unlikely saviour, Claudia’s behaviour in the face of these demanding eyes, her apparent capitulation, began to make a little more sense. So small a being stood no chance in an out-and-out attack, but she might win in the end.
He tilted his head, watching Claudia from near enough to get to her if jumped by a predator or a marauding gang. In the falling dusk, he made out the angular shapes of an abandoned settlement nestled in a nearby hollow, absent roofs, windows gaping like empty eye sockets.
The sight tore at his hardened heart. The first people had populated this valley in settlements and smaller farmsteads. That the invaders did not even choose to live here amongst such bounty, insulted him.
He would not risk going down to find out. Claudia promised to tell him the whole story of what happened to his moon while he slept in his coffin of stone. He started towards her, thinking he’d left her alone with her thoughts for long enough. He wasn’t going to like what she said, no matter how she couched it.
So lost in his thoughts, he nearly bashed his head on the orb blocking his path. Baring his teeth, he growled and lunged towards the cursed spy, mouth stretched wide.
“Tharius, the viewers become impatient. Deliver, or they will demand confrontation. And we do not deem you fit enough for an entertaining fight. We need more data on that damaged arm. Though fighting with a handicap will be a draw in itself. They’re already calling for that.”
His first instinct was to look around to see who was talking. He pulled his attention back to the orb, aware such a move made him look foolish.
“You spoke of another blue. How so?”
Did this taunting amuse them? A thread of anxiety wound around his chest when he realised the other boxes guarded Claudia from him. He’d seen their firepower capability in battles, and she said they were so much more, now.
He would fight, damaged arm and all.
“We receive numerous notifications of sightings. Rarely confirmed, though any talk of dragons gets the wyverns out in force and doing that war dance of theirs. Which the viewers love.”
“I hear words but no answers.” An easy kill. If he chose to take it down. Too risky, with Claudia hemmed in and out of his reach.
“The other blue? Word is out one was spotted flying the skies the past days. Coincidence, we wonder? Or the start of a new Draegon ascendance?”
The effort it took to keep his features neutral, like that creature of stone whose expression revealed nothing, nearly undid him. Inside, his heart threatened to burst with the hope that his brother or another of his clan had survived. They would band together. Take up arms and claim back their world.
No longer an option according to Claudia. To win, they must do it her way. He ducked under the orb, his mind racing ahead to join with hers.
This close, the connection came so naturally, they almost shared one mind.
It will become easier to separate, Tharius. When we get used to this, we’ll learn to control it better.
Yes. He dropped the branches. Searched out stones to build a rudimentary fire-pit at the mouth of the enclave. “I will build you a fire. Your naked body will take cold when night falls, and I prefer my females hot.” He hadn’t forgotten his role as stern master to this alien female, but by Dramis himself, keeping the smile from his mouth when Claudia dipped her head into her lap to hide the heat of his words proved difficult even for his legendary stone face.
You’re good at this, Tharius. Almost too good.
Had I been born to another house, one that valued power over honour, I would have truly been your master by now.
Well, I’m glad it was you. Tharius, don’t spit on the fire to light it. Don’t show them any of that.
How else would a dragon light a fire? And how did she know about that skill? Some memory imbued by the ember? Or more likely, she’d watched the wyverns doing the same? A useful skill in half-shift for simple tasks like lighting camp fires, but nothing like the full force of his dragon fire.
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