by Lisa Daniels
A chill went through Anya’s heart. Are they chasing me? Kalgrin? The feeling lingered, before Seon said, “Don’t worry. I don’t think it’s anything to do with you or Kalgrin. That happened far away in some little rural place nobody cares about. They’ll likely assume the slaves revolted. So don’t worry about that.”
Anya deflated slightly. “Sorry. I keep thinking… having nightmares that they’re still coming after me.”
“I suspected as much. No. I don’t know what they want. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
The way Seon kept polishing that glass, though, told Anya that maybe she did have an idea of what they wanted, but didn’t plan to tell Anya. Perhaps in time, with some more trust.
“So,” Seon said, “did you do the thing with Kal yet? I’m waiting.”
Anya blushed brighter than a ruby. “Uh… yes? We did the thing.”
The barmaid cackled in delight, now finally putting that glass away. “Okay, this I have to hear. How did you get around to it?”
“We just… did. I turned up at his door, dressed in a way so he saw a hint of what I looked like under the clothes… and I guess we’re a couple now.”
“Good. You two make a good one. He’s a good man. Drake. Whatever. You have enough spine in you to not let yourself be completely walked over. And you’re going back to places that you have every right to not even want to touch, ever again. I admire you. Just keep at it, okay?” Seon gave Anya a pat on the back, and the two women shared a smile.
She returned back to Kalgrin’s house later in the evening, giving a small knock, hoping he’d be in. When he answered, she stumbled into his arms and planted her lips upon his.
“Mmf,” Kalgrin said, gray eyes amused. Anya removed her lips from caressing his. “I could get used to that. I’ll feed you if you want, just don’t expect anything more than tomato soup.”
Anya smiled. “That will be perfect.”
“Obviously. I’m a perfect guy. Well, since you’re here, I don’t have to knock on your door about it. Fancy coming to see my parents tomorrow?”
“Uh…” Anya blinked rapidly. “Is that necessary?”
“They don’t bite. My mother, I bet, would love to see you. She sent me a letter a few days back, asking when I’d be coming over, asking if any nice ladies had wandered into my life. Bet she’ll love to hear how we met.”
Anya laughed, though she ran a hand nervously through her brown hair. Kalgrin’s parents wouldn’t be like human ones in the plantations. Likely they gave him a wonderful upbringing, a balanced one without him needing to work before he became the right age to do so. “Sure. But I admit I’m kind of terrified they won’t like me.” Or me them.
“I don’t mind. I want to introduce you to them eventually. It can be tomorrow, or it can be a little longer if you’re uncomfortable.”
She grasped his hand with her own. Steeling her stomach. This is Kal. If he turned out like this, his parents aren’t likely to be monsters. “I’ll do it. Can’t be scarier than running from a wyrm, right?”
He grinned before ruffling her hair and seizing her in another kiss. During the kiss, Anya forgot how to breathe. He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her up with him until her feet left the ground.
“Hey,” she gasped, the sound vibrating on Kalgrin’s lips. “Put me down.”
In response, Kalgrin lifted her higher, pretending not to hear. She flailed her legs and he grinned, holding her at arm’s length before him.
“Look at you. Small thing.”
“I’m not that small,” Anya grumbled. She wasn’t – she hit about average height with other women. Kalgrin wasn’t even that tall, either. He just wanted to show off his strength. Anya punched the air ineffectually.
“Oh, what fun we’ll have together…” Kalgrin purred, giving her a rather sultry gaze, gray eyes darkening in lust.
Anya twitched a smirk of her own.
That seemed to be the trigger, for Kalgrin hugged her close and dashed towards the bedroom, the tomato soup apparently forgotten. Clothes found their way to the floor fast, and their naked bodies entwined with one another as they lost their minds to the moment.
Anya wanted so much more of this. Her body had a lot of catching up to do, sure, but now that she knew for certain that Kalgrin desired her, and she desired him back, she needed to make up for lost time.
She arched her body, shivering as he glided into her, his length hitting her sweet spot, over and over. She gasped and moaned, and his hands seemed to be everywhere. Touching her cheeks, neck, breasts, hot and leaving a ghostly trail in her mind. She imagined all her skin that had been touched by his hands to glow a different color.
His mouth grasped her neck, licking and sucking hard, until a dull throb spread across it, next to where her pulse beat madly. Marking her. Those gasps of pleasure kept eliciting themselves out, and she wanted him to never stop.
Not just to feel his body moving over hers, to see those eyes dark and glazed, to see that smile upon his face or to hear those soft grunts of pleasure. She wanted him to never stop loving her.
Maybe a tall order, but she clutched him as if he were a life raft. In a way, he was. The one who pulled her out of that dark sea, before it swallowed her below water and snaked into her lungs.
The one who brought her the keys of freedom, allowed her siblings to be named early, and wanted her with all his heart.
The orgasm hit her hard, spreading a heated path through her veins, sinking her into bliss. Her contractions caused him to orgasm with her as well, and they lay side by side.
Yes. Anya snuggled up into him. Still not intending to eat just yet. I could get used to this…
The End
Seon’s Freedom
Found by the Dragon – Book 2
by Lisa Daniels
Chapter One
The wyrm stomped through the streets. His huge, scaly lips curled into a sneer, and his sinister yellow eyes scoured the shadows. Gas lamps lit the streets, but they provided no warmth from the cold atmosphere and little vision in the fog.
Seon watched through her house’s little window on the second floor, breath frosting over the glass. Curse these dragons. Couldn’t have a night of peace with them stomping about. Her heart beat fast, nervous at the thought of being discovered.
Of course, none of the wyrms had any reason to suspect a thing. She kept all her activities under lock and key, worked a respectable job serving ale at the nearest inn, and had never given wyrms any reason to track her movements. Yet, somehow, she couldn’t help but feel the wyrms were here for her specifically. Her friend, Anya, worried about being caught all the time, but Anya didn’t know that the woman she sometimes spoke to at the inn had her own fears of being caught.
The wyrms didn’t look specifically for Seon. They just wanted someone like her. Someone who knew the old ways. Someone who had something forgotten for centuries. Even if Seon’s gifts were less than impressive, they still touched at the magic no human was supposed to have.
No one knew about it. Not the people at the inn. Not Anya from across the street, or her drake partner, Kalgrin.
Seon didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t want to risk discovery. Didn’t want to lose the life she’d forged here, away from the slums of her former home, with the stench of stale beer and dirty floors. With the alcohol-filled breath of her mother. That past was long since gone, and good riddance.
Anya and Kalgrin trusted Seon with knowledge of their jobs, though. Even asked her to put up some of their rescues in the inn whilst sorting out where to place them. Each rescue resembling a pathetic, broken and trembling thing. In a town mostly inhabited by drakes and humans which promoted neutral and fair trade, the wyrms tended to get jumpy at the idea of humans living a serf-free life.
Went against the grain for them, made them snort fire out of their ears and secretly plot in their twisted little wyrm heads of enslaving all the humans. Wyrms didn’t see humans as worthwhile living creatures. They saw them as
lazy beasts that needed to be whipped into shape and bred like rabbits.
Seon continued to watch through the window as another wyrm joined the prowl. She mimed spitting and closed the curtains, moving away. She turned down the gas lamp so only a tiny light shimmered from the side of her bed. She spent fifteen minutes boiling a kettle on the stove to pour herself a hot drink of chamomile tea, and yanked out a few strands of her long, jet black hair which seemed out of place. Tugging the hair hurt, but she liked the pain. It provided a distraction to her thoughts and helped calm her down when the paranoia threatened. She also liked drinking the chamomile to keep her body healthy, her skin smooth and pale. She didn’t look a day past twenty.
I’m twenty-three. Though I already feel much older than those years. For those in the plantations and the mines, twenty-three would be an impressive age, even more impressive if you didn’t have at least two children by this time. Average life expectancies varied. The longest Seon had ever heard of a human living was maybe around sixty, but they tended to be ones in towns and areas of less conflict. In areas of hard labour, the age drastically lowered itself. Once people became too physically slow, the wyrms found excuses to bump them off.
At least Seon had never been born in one of those places. She lived in the town of Drakehill until she became old enough to separate from her mother.
Seon’s mouth puckered at the thought of her mother, before she pushed it from her mind. No sense thinking about that now. I’m not there. I don’t have to be like that anymore.
Normally, she spent the time concentrating on working the magic. The thing she wasn’t supposed to have. It might be useless now, but maybe with some practise, she might find something else. Without any reference to magic, without any clue really what it was or what she was doing, progress went at a glacial pace. Seon started to think that maybe this was the limit of her magic. With the shadows.
However, with the presence of the wyrms from the city, she didn’t want to risk incurring their wrath. She knew the punishment if magic was found. Even though wyrms and humans both claimed magic didn’t exist, the fact that the punishment of execution was stated so publicly in their laws meant that magic did exist. Just people didn’t talk about it. Or maybe they forgot about it for a while, before trying to pick up the pieces of a lost past.
The wyrms prowled the streets, following the rumors that magic had been spotted in Tarn. They wouldn’t find magic like that, though. No self-respecting human wanting to keep their hide would dare openly practise. They were uneducated, maybe, but not insane.
Which meant the wyrms had recently taken to knocking on doors. What did they expect, exactly? To find magical paraphernalia dotted about the place, shrunken heads and flickering candles arranged in a ritualistic circle? Seon traipsing around in black clothes and cackling like the witches of old?
Honestly, if Seon had her way, she’d vanish away to a safe place where no wyrms existed, and live out a life of happiness. Just a shame that humans were allowed to do shit fuck-all in this world. Had less rights than a damn dog. Work a life on the plantations and be lucky to make it past twenty, or live in the city and hope you escape notice long enough to have children to carry on your legacy.
Kalgrin had offered her to go in one of the fort towns, or the mountains to the north, but Seon didn’t want to live in a cold place. She’d have to walk around bundled in furs all day long, trying not to freeze to death. At least here she had the freedom of a good inn job and lively conversation, as opposed to the more reserved people in the north.
She sipped at her warm tea, swirling the pale yellow liquid around, taking in the warm, comforting scent. Yes. This helped with relaxing. She’d be alright. She had started drinking the tea upon arriving in Tarn, and now associated it with her increased freedom.
Seon’s heart leapt into her throat when she heard a loud, hard knock on the front door. She might have jumped out of her skin a bit as well.
Oh no. That must be the wyrms. Can they see my light? No. I turned it down. Gathering herself together, she considered not answering, until she heard, “Open up! We know you’re in there! We’ll give you one minute, or you’ll be accused of obstructing justice!”
Fuck. Obstructing justice was just an oily phrase for the wyrms to have an excuse to arrest you, repossess your home, and bang you into slavery. They itched to take away what little rights remained to a human in a drake-dominated town. And they tested drake authority at every step, knowing they were more numerous than drakes, but not quite wishing to instigate war.
Entering her calm place, she went to open the door, lifting her long skirt in a curtsey as two yellow-eyed men stood outside.
She also resisted the impulse to bare her lips in a disdainful sneer upon seeing the wyrms. Horrible, vicious brutes.
“Hello, good sirs,” Seon said, smiling in an ingratiating manner. “How may I help you? Would you like some tea? I’ve boiled some now. It’s good chamomile, it is. Takes the fire right out your bones.” She deliberately adopted simple country slang, so the wyrms didn’t think her in the least bit intelligent.
“No,” one of the wyrms said, staring at her with obvious contempt in his eyes. The other wrinkled his nose, as if she smelled foul, even though Seon put extra effort into washing every day, wanting to look good for the customers she served a few doors down. Obviously she didn’t have the luxuries of the richer ones in this place, with their fancy baths and preheated water. She made do with a bucket and water boiled over the fire.
Without waiting for any express invitation, the wyrms barged in. No manners at all. No respect. Hard-eyed creatures wearing the faces of men, though their faces held little mercy and little love. They began rifling through her house, flipping through the belongings. Murder flared in Seon’s heart.
“What on earth are you doing? Why are you coming in and looking through my stuff?” Seon puffed herself up. Part of her “stupid” persona had slipped. “How dare you!”
One of the wyrms, sporting dark brown hair, gave a snort. “We’re looking for evidence of criminal activity.”
“Don’t you think it’s a bit criminal, pushing past me and tearing through my belongings late at night?”
The wyrms ignored her, continued to rifle through her belongings. Just as well what Seon did needed no physical material to do the thing she shouldn’t. She suspected they wanted to catch her in the act of magic, somehow, or perhaps were just trying to catch a human in the act of something illicit. No contraband existed in Seon’s house, either. She kept herself as clean as possible, unwilling to risk herself in case the wyrms did something like this.
They stormed into her bedroom. One pulled out the bag of money she kept there.
Oh no. Don’t you dare steal my money, you cretin.
Seon pointedly watched him, and the wyrm gave her a long stare, before emitting an evil grin, pouring all of the coins onto the floor.
“Really?” Seon said. “That’s what I need to pay the rent. Why would you do something so petty? It’s not enough for you to ransack my house, you have to be cruel as well?”
“Watch your tongue, filth,” the taller of the two wyrms snarled. “We can arrest you for obstruction.” Even as he spoke, the other wyrm began tearing up her bedcovers, before yanking all her clothes out the wardrobe, carelessly ripping them in the process.
“Has to be a thorough search,” he said, smiling malice. “Can’t leave a single thing unturned, you know?”
Seon’s blood boiled. One hand closed in a fist, trembling slightly, white at the knuckles. She knew she couldn’t do anything wrong than to exclaim when they destroyed her goods, because the bastards wanted a reason to arrest her by goading her into action. Wasn’t there some stupid law that a wyrm could take a human as a slave if the human was found guilty of criminal activity or something? Seon supposed it was smart that the wyrms suggested through their laws that good humans might be able to stay innocent and free. Otherwise things might be a lot worse than they were now. After all, it w
asn’t the wyrms’ fault if they found something off in a human’s home, was it? Certainly wasn’t their fault if a human gave them lip, either. Should have had more self-control.
Seon carefully stepped out of the way, memorizing their faces to report to the other humans and drakes in the town for later. Reprehensible monsters who would wreck your home and potentially steal your money. She bit back any insults, and her eyes clung to their backs as they finally left the house. But not without kicking over the living room table that her cup of tea lay upon. The ceramic shards shattered, along with a splodge of yellowish liquid. The wyrms laughed as they left.
She bit her knuckle to stop herself screaming. Seon didn’t want to draw attention. Her cheeks burned red, her eyes itched from frustrated tears. With a heavy, leaden body, she spent the next two hours cleaning the mess they left behind.
I’m already so tired. Working for long hours, working on staying out of sight.
At least life is better in the towns, people said. Or maybe they said, the drakes protect you, right? You’ve got it made. You’re not being beaten on a daily basis, or cowering in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere.
Ha. As if. Maybe living in a town was marginally better than, say, being whipped to death on a plantation, or catching disease in the slums and losing large chunks of population at a time. Maybe the drakes offered some kind of buffer against the full wrath of the wyrms – but it was clear who held the power.
The drakes and humans hung onto Tarn by the skin of their teeth, and the casual wyrm “inspections” were rumoured to be increasing by the month. Scare tactics, some said. Trying to frighten the humans and drakes into moving elsewhere, so wyrms could buy up property and take over the town. After all, Tarn was a little too close to the wyrms’ capital city. They probably saw the town as a rat’s nest, a filthy eyesore upon their rule.
Just when Seon finally sat herself down, planning to brush her long black hair to calm down and fixing her green eyes in the tiny mirror in the bathroom, she heard another fucking knock at the door. She practically dropped her brush in fright.