Taming the Alpha

by Mandy M. Roth

  Madja closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and allowed her indignation to pass. She couldn’t solve all the injustices of the world, but she could solve one—her own. The chancellor had left her down here to die. She could hardly wait until she made her way back to town. She would bring back a whole sack full of gold and shower it over lowtown. Every impoverished man, woman, and child in the district would all know about the ‘dragon’s lair.’

  Galvanized by anticipation, she began to make her way down to the gold. The passageway she’d come from emptied onto a steep cliff that overlooked the cavern. A narrow outcropping in the wall formed a natural, albeit perilous, walkway. She crept down, one foot in front of the other as her hands gripped the wall for purchase.

  When she made it to the ground, Madja jumped a little too eagerly. The floor gave way and she fell on her rear before sliding down a slope of gold. She found out the hard way that the piles weren’t merely comprised of coins. As she came to a stop at the foot of the slope, something hard bit into her back. Wincing, she reached behind her to find a large, clunky band of gold.

  She was prepared to toss it aside purely out of spite, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen it somewhere before. It was a headband that somehow managed to look both simplistic and gaudy. It was so unfortunate-looking that to the untrained eye, it may have appeared to be little more than an elderly noblewoman’s costume jewelry.

  Madja knew better.

  The reed design that wrapped around the band was indicative of ancient Basheti craftsmanship. The once-great nation had built most of its wealth on the unassuming plant, which had many uses, ranging from food, textiles, and most notably—paper.

  But the small pearls that were interspersed among the reeds were a trademark of ancient Mandurian jewelry. Because the Basheti Empire had fallen within a century of the rise of the Mandurian Republic, it was very easy to pinpoint the timeframe in which the headband was crafted.

  However, it wasn’t the artwork that gave away its identity. It was the Lathian word that had been painstakingly carved into the inside of the band:

  Cromisttel—Unbroken.

  With muted reverence, she placed it onto her head. No celestial winds blew and no trumpets sounded, but Madja didn’t need any fanfare to recognize the significance of the moment. She was wearing the lost crown of Empress Arda. It really was as heavy as Arda had claimed.

  Madja wrapped her hands around her torso as she stood, fending off a chill. She could see now that there were countless objects littered on and within the piles of coins. In the pile she’d fallen down were sword hilts, jeweled rings, embroidered silks, and even what looked to be a golden flask—and that was just on the surface of a single gold pile, out of what appeared to be hundreds of piles. If she had found one of history’s most celebrated artifacts within the very first pile, how many more ancient treasures awaited her?

  She had hardly made it through one coin pile when afternoon finally gave way to evening. Moonlight afforded very little light so deep within the cavern and Madja had to rely on the fickle lamp for vision.

  The lamp wouldn’t last the night, and she knew that if she wanted to make it out of the mountain before the oil ran out, she would have to leave soon. Part of her wanted to wait out the night and keep exploring in the morning, but hunger dashed that idea. While it had an abundance of treasure, the cavern lacked the materials to maintain a proper fire, so cooking up one of the chickens was also not an option.

  Madja gathered up her favorite findings in a makeshift bag and flung it over her shoulder. Getting back up to the cliff took at least twenty minutes and she nearly lost her lamp twice in the process. When she reached the mouth of the passageway, her body slumped in relief and—if she were being honest with herself—disappointment.

  She looked out over the vast expanse of gold and treasures, knowing it wasn’t hers but also feeling somewhat entitled to it. Her thoughts quickly turned calculating. The journey out of the mountain was approximately two hours. She could leave, forage for food and firewood in the forest, and return to build a camp for herself within the lair. Humans would continue to come and go, leaving their meager offerings inside the tunnels while she lived out her life within the golden cavern, appraising and cataloguing innumerous wonders.

  Madja hated that she would even entertain such selfish thoughts, but as she turned to leave the cavern behind, her future remained uncertain. Once she made it out of the mountain, would she keep going and return to the city, or would she turn back and forsake her people, just like they had forsaken her?

  Her ethical dilemma was short-lived. As she faltered at the mouth of the passageway, something hard coiled around her waist. Madja screamed as she was lifted airborne, her bag and the lamp clattering to the ground—a ground that quickly drew farther and farther away.

  Everything happened in the span of a few seconds, yet somehow, Madja fully expected what she saw next. As she came to a stop, suspended in mid-air, something shifted within the shadows. Air vacated her lungs as a figure stepped out of her nightmares and into the moonlight.

  The dragon god, Sevrrn.

  Chapter Two

  Expecting what you’re about to see and being prepared to see it were two different things entirely. When his long, scaly tail had wrapped around her midsection and shot her up into the air, Madja had realized with sickening clarity that she had been wrong about the dragon.

  But knowing he actually existed and that she would undoubtedly be dead soon was nothing compared to seeing him. Nothing could have prepared her for that.

  He sat on a high ledge that overlooked the cavern. The light of the moon was brighter on his perch and it illuminated his ethereal form. In the pale light, his brilliant scales shone like panels of silver, but Madja knew from the legends that, much like his favorite metal, his scales were a radiant shade of gold. If the gleaming teeth he’d bared at her were any indication, Madja would never live to see him in the light of day.

  Terrified beyond measure and seconds from certain doom, Madja did the only reasonable thing there was to do. She greeted him.

  “Hello. You must be Sevrrn.” For good measure, she added, “The great and powerful dragon god. I am humbled to make your acquaintance.”

  The dragon stared impassively.

  Madja kept talking.

  “Funny story. I didn’t really believe that you were real. I thought this stuff was all just laying down here and—”

  The words died in her throat as he extended a hand. Just one of his claws was longer than her arm. She tried not to cry out as one came perilously close to removing her head. Instead, he carefully hooked it under the golden crown that Madja had forgotten she was wearing. He pulled his claw back just far enough to hold the crown in front of her, his garnet eyes demanding an explanation.

  Madja laughed nervously. “Oh, I forgot that was there. I apologize. It was wrong of me to put it on. It was just hard to resist wearing such an amazing piece of history.”

  The dragon inclined his head and then, ever so slightly, tilted it. On any creature besides an ancient dragon god, Madja might have found the curious expression rather endearing.

  She swallowed hard, before nodding at the crown and asking, “Do you…not know what that is?”

  Sevrrn didn’t so much as blink.

  There were a few ways she could interpret his lack of response. Either he didn’t understand a word that she was saying, he found her assumption to be astoundingly insulting, or—and she was really hoping she was right about this one—he was too proud to admit to not knowing something.

  “It’s the imperial crown of Arda, the first empress of Mandurin.” He seemed to be listening, so Madja kept talking. “Arda was actually the only empress of Mandurin. It took her twenty-three years to stabilize the empire, but once she did, she established the first republic in history. Ever since her death, Mandurin has elected all of its government officials. They’re more or less the only nation to ever implement a successful, long-term re
public—but I digress.”

  Madja backtracked from her tangent and went on to tell the story of Arda, a Basheti slave who had grown up tilling reeds along the riverbeds. She told the dragon how Arda had learned to write and had used this knowledge to spearhead the largest slave rebellion in history. Convinced that the story was the only thing keeping her alive, she told him every last detail she could think of.

  Just as she was about to begin making things up, Sevrrn surprised her by dropping the crown back onto her head. She watched in silence as he reached down to the cliff below, where her bag had fallen. As his clawed fingers sorted through the contents with impressive dexterity, Madja remained suspended in the air by his tail.

  When he found what he was looking for, he climbed back up the higher perch and held it out in front of her, much the same way he had held out the crown. The white, feathered cloak had reached the floor when Madja had tried it on earlier that day. In Sevrrn’s hand, it looked like little more than a handkerchief.

  “I can’t say for sure, because I’ve only seen it in pictures, but I think that’s the Cloak of Kinera, the Dvorian land goddess.” Madja wasted no time in plunging into another story. “Kinera was a swan who was caught bathing by a prince. He took her captive by stealing her cloak. You see, without it, she couldn’t return to her true form.

  “The prince—I forget his name, but it’s not important—he hid her cloak away and forced her to marry him. For years, she’d beg him to give her back her power, promising that if he’d just return her cloak, she’d stay by his side. The prince—actually, I think he was a king by then—would always deny her, saying that if she truly loved him, she wouldn’t need anything but him.

  “Then, one day, after they’d been married for a really, really long time, Kinera came to her husband and presented him with the cloak—that very one that you’re holding right now. She told him that one of her servants had brought it to her and as soon as she’d held it, she had realized that she no longer wanted to return to her true form. She wanted to stay by her husband’s side and live a mortal life.”

  Madja grinned, momentarily forgetting her dire circumstances as she reached her favorite part of the story.

  “The king was overjoyed to hear that Kinera truly loved him. He apologized for not trusting her and promised that he would never deny her anything again, so long as they both lived. That night, as they lay in bed, his wife confessed that the servant had refused to disclose the location of the cloak. Kinera told the king that she was a little curious. Where had he kept her cloak hidden all those years?

  “There are a lot of versions to the story, but where he’d hid it isn’t important. What is important is that he told her the truth and the next morning, he woke to find his wife was gone.

  “You see, the cloak—that cloak—was a fake. Kinera had it made so that she could trick her husband into revealing the location of her real cloak. As soon as the king had fallen asleep, she had left, found her cloak, shifted back into her true form, and flew away, never to return.”

  The dragon, who had been listening intently, gave her an expectant look.

  “That’s the end of the story,” she told him, cringing as she did so.

  Believe me, she thought, we both wish there was more.

  The dragon inclined his head until his long snout was uncomfortably close to Madja’s head. Not that there was a comfortable distance to be from the mouth of a dragon.

  He inhaled and exhaled, his powerful breath blowing her curly hair back and forth. When he pulled back, he stared at her for a long moment, seeming to consider her. Then, without warning, he jumped.

  There was only so much dignity a person could maintain while being both at the mercy of a dragon and falling towards the ground. Madja screamed the entire way down and continued to whimper after Sevrrn landed with preternatural grace.

  The dragon ignored her cries. On all fours, he bounded across piles of treasure in a manner not unlike an excited dog. As if to compound the analogy, when he arrived at the pile he wanted, he began to dig, his powerful hands flinging gold coins in every direction. Madja had to hold her hands in front of her face to keep from getting buffeted.

  When the flinging stopped, she lowered her hands to find that a sword had been thrust at her face. She knew what he wanted her to do, she just didn’t understand why. Why was a dragon so interested in the history of artifacts?

  Sevrrn dropped the sword in her hands. Despite the ornate design of its hilt, it was rather light and she was able to hold it with one hand as she traced the designs with the other.

  Through the artwork and materials, she was able to trace the sword to a certain time period, but could ascertain little else about it. Fortunately, Sevrrn seemed content to listen to her hypothesize over which battles it may have been in and to whom it could have belonged. When she ran out of things to say, he gave her another object to appraise. This went on for several hours, until early-morning light began to creep into the cavern.

  There was a certain comfort in their routine that made Madja slowly let her guard down. It was long after sunrise that she began to nod off. As her stories became increasingly disjointed and inconsistent, Sevrrn grew bored.

  He let out a pronounced yawn. Madja flinched, unsure if the sound was heralding her doom. Still holding her with his tail, he went on the move again. The piles of gold, which had towered over her earlier, now looked like anthills when compared to the massive dragon. She wondered if he’d been watching her for long and if so, how had she not noticed him sooner?

  Sevrrn rifled through a few piles, pulling out what looked to be fabrics. He stopped for several moments, his tail swaying back and forth. Madja tried to see what he was doing, but each time she got a glimpse, she would be swaying in another direction.

  By the time his tail swung around to the front, she was thoroughly dizzy. She closed her eyes to stave off the vertigo, and when she opened them again, she was on the ground. As Sevrrn’s tail uncoiled from around her waist, she surveyed her surroundings.

  The dragon had dropped her on a pallet of opulent silks, feathered pillows, and luxurious furs. He sat down beside the pallet, watching her as she inspected the bedding.

  “Is this for me to sleep on?” she asked, feeling hopeful.

  When Sevrrn didn’t respond, she pulled one of the silks over herself and laid her head down onto a pillow. Trying not to show how nervous she was, Madja closed her eyes.

  The soft clinking of displaced coins had her cracking one eye. Sevrrn was gone. She sat up and looked around, but he was nowhere to be found. Her gaze ventured up to the passageway and the cliff above it. Still no dragon.

  Madja had no idea how something so big could simply disappear, but she wouldn’t dare assume that he was gone. There was no doubt in her mind that he was somewhere within the lair, watching her, waiting to see what she would do next. There was no way she could escape—at least, not yet.

  Chapter Three

  As Madja woke, she became gradually aware of being nudged. Her tired mind conjured images of her young cousins, who would often sneak into her room to pester her in the mornings. She buried her head into her pillow and swatted at the air.

  “Go make your own breakfast,” she grumbled into her pillow.

  An imperious, masculine voice commanded, “Wake up.”

  Definitely not one of her cousins.

  Madja sat up. The events of the night before came back to her all at once, making the sight before her even more inexplicable to her sleep-blurred eyes.

  A man was sitting beside her.

  He was a very big man.

  Even sitting, he towered over her, so much so that she couldn’t have even guessed at his height. Everything about him was broad—the curve of his jaw, his sweeping shoulders, and his muscular chest.

  He was a very unsettling man.

  The sophisticated features of his face were contorted by a scowl. His eyes were a peculiar shade of brown that reminded Madja of uncut garnets and they possessed
a predatory edge to them that made her pulse quicken.

  He was a very…handsome man.

  Her cheeks heated as she stared up at his irritated, beautiful face. Long eyelashes brushed against the vibrant, golden bronze skin of his high cheekbones. White gold hair flowed down his back in soft waves, pooling onto the floor behind him. He wore lavish robes of yellow gold that appeared to be comprised of thousands of tiny scales. His entire body seemed to radiate an ethereal glow.

  He was a man unlike anything she had ever seen before. And, he was holding her spoon.

  “Hey, give that back,” she said, instinctively reaching for her possession. The man shifted his hand, easily evading her grasp.

  “It is mine.”

  He spoke her language, but with an extremely formal dialect and a heavy accent. Madja had always had a secret fondness for men with accents, no doubt acquired from spending her girlhood at the trading docks, and this man’s accent was nothing short of bewitching.

  She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and when she spoke again, her manner was far more docile.

  “It’s definitely my spoon. It must have fallen out of my pocket. I’m Madja, by the way. Madja O’aer. Pleasure to meet you.”

  She held out her hand to shake his, but he ignored it.

  “It did not fall from your pocket,” he said matter-of-factly. “I took it from your pocket while you slept.”

  Her brow knotted. “Wait, you…stole it from me?”

  “I do not steal,” he said, his scowl returning. “I accepted it as tribute for entering my lair.”

  That gave Madja pause.

  From the moment she’d laid eyes on the man, the suspicion had been in the back of her mind. In fables, powerful land gods had always been able to take human form. Why would Sevrrn be any different?

  Still, it was hard to reconcile the terrifying dragon god with the elegant man who sat beside her.