Dragonel

by Tiegan Clyne

  He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but eventually he heard someone moving in the bedroom. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound. At some point, his fatigue caught up with him, and even though he was hardly on the most comfortable of beds, he fell asleep.

  A tap on the door awoke him hours later. The sunlight was gone, and the bathroom was in total darkness. He was stiff from lying on the floor, and his body hurt in ways he’d never known that it could hurt.

  “Sebastian.”

  It was Christopher’s voice, and he churlishly declined to respond. Instead, he slowly rose up onto his hands and knees, trying to find a way to move that wasn’t painful. He failed.

  “Sebastian, are you going to stay in there all night?”

  The dragonel crawled away from the door and into the shower. He turned on the water full blast, drowning out his captor’s voice. When he stood beneath the jets, the hot water was agony against his backside, and he could not suppress a yelp of pain when the first stinging needles of water hit his welts. He turned to face the shower heads and stood with his back half as far out of the jets as he could. Even the droplets running down his back that reached his injuries caused unbelievable pain, and he ground his teeth against the urge to scream.

  The door opened, and Christopher let himself in, depriving Sebastian of privacy once again. He looked through the glass shower door and watched as his captor walked to the vanity and leaned against it, his arms crossed. He had his medical bag with him. It was clear that he wasn’t going to leave, so Sebastian decided to make him wait. He shampooed his hair and washed the places that had been painted for the party, scrubbing at gilding that had already been removed just because it made him feel better.

  “You’re going to have to come out of there sometime.”

  He wanted to argue the point, but Sebastian had to concede the truth. He turned off the shower and opened the door. Christopher handed him a towel and stepped back out of arm’s reach again. The dark-haired man watched in silence as Sebastian carefully dried off.

  “It’s time for another application of the salve, and more pain medication if you want it,” Christopher said, his voice cool and professional. “I also need to drain your gas bladder and give you the suppressant injection.”

  “Need to?” Sebastian echoed, surly.

  “Yes.” He opened his bag. “Come here.”

  He obeyed reluctantly, covering himself with his hands even though they had already been intimate with one another, even if only for a misguided moment. Christopher busied himself with his medical supplies.

  “Turn around and brace your hands on the vanity,” he commanded.

  Again, Sebastian obeyed, pressing his palms flat on the cool white countertop. Christopher crouched behind him and gently probed his opening, and the touch made Sebastian hiss in pain. The other man clicked his tongue and straightened.

  “You’re healing, but slowly. He really did a number on you. I think we’re going to have to keep you on a liquid diet for a day or two to let that heal up.”

  He had no appetite, so the news barely made an impression on him. Silently, he nodded.

  Christopher applied a cream that smelled different than the salve he’d used before. It was cool against his wounded skin, and Sebastian had to admit that it was a soothing sensation. He let out a sigh of relief before he could conceal it.

  “Hmm,” Christopher said. “Is your pain terrible?”

  “It’s… bad,” he admitted.

  “I thought as much. It will probably take another few days before the worst of it heals.”

  Sebastian felt the words rising, and he chose not to stop them from being spoken. “Why did you let him hurt me so much? I thought you said you were going to protect me.”

  Christopher hesitated in his ministrations, then said, “There’s only so much that I can do where Lord Ashmar is concerned. He is a very powerful person.”

  “But I thought I belonged to you,” he argued bitterly. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “We all belong to someone.”

  He finished with the cream and stood up. His gloved hands capped the tube before he put it on the counter. Sebastian looked down at it, and the writing was in a language that he couldn’t read. He frowned. “What is that?”

  “Medicine.” He could hear the smirk in Christopher’s voice, and it annoyed him. “It’s from the Kingdom. It’s a special topical treatment that’s intended for full-blooded dragons.”

  He was interested in spite of himself. “How did you get something from the Kingdom? I wouldn’t think that the mythrics would want to trade with Pentepolis, all things considered.”

  Sebastian saw a strange flicker cross Christopher’s face in his mirror reflection. “They don’t.”

  “Then how…?”

  “You’re full of questions.”

  The quietly spoken comment was more than an observation. It suggested that his captor was becoming irritated, and Sebastian fell silent. Christopher prepared a long hypodermic and an empty tube, and Sebastian found he had another question that he had to ask, even if it drove his so-called master to distraction.

  “What is a gas bladder, and what’s in it?”

  Christopher opened an alcohol swab and swiped it over a spot on Sebastian’s back close to his spine, between two ribs. “Dragons have an extra organ behind the lungs that’s filled with a liquid gas that in its natural state is inert. Upon exposure to oxygen, however, it can ignite, and dragons can direct the spray like a flame thrower.”

  “Dragons and dragonels.”

  “Yes. The gas that dragonels have is less concentrated than that in a dragon’s gas bladder, but it’s still flammable when it hits the air.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous to take it out?”

  “Sometimes,” Christopher allowed, bringing the needle to Sebastian’s back. “It’s more dangerous to leave it in.”

  “Dangerous to whom?”

  Their eyes met in the mirror, and Christopher smiled coolly. In that moment, he looked not unlike the Countess, and Sebastian could well imagine that they were related. “Do you really need me to answer that?”

  He looked down. “No. It was rhetorical.”

  “You’re going to feel some discomfort, but I promise you, unlike that oaf at Crown Holdings, I’m not going to tear off one of your scales.”

  Christopher pushed the needle through his skin and the muscle beneath it until it penetrated his gas bladder. Sebastian heard and felt the same balloon-like popping that he’d heard before, and he watched in the mirror as the large, thick tube attached to the needle filled with yellow, glittering liquid.

  “What are those flecks?”

  “We don’t know yet,” he admitted after a thoughtful pause. “We’re still trying to study its chemical properties.”

  “Who is ‘we?’”

  “GenTel and Crown Holdings.”

  He asked another question, and it came out sounding both hurt and accusatory. “Did you work in the lab that created me?”

  Their eyes met in the mirror again, and Sebastian realized with a start that eye contact was how Christopher got into his head to alter his reactions. He looked away quickly.

  “No,” his captor answered. “I wasn’t there when you were conceived.”

  “Do you know who my mother was?”

  Christopher began to prepare another needle, this one with a smaller gauge than the first. “No idea.” He tore open another alcohol swab, and he cleaned off a spot on Sebastian’s shoulder. “This is the suppressant.”

  He wanted to know what traits Christopher was trying to suppress, but a better question came to mind instead. “Did I burn you?”

  This time, the other man did not look up. “Yes.”

  Sebastian held still while the drug was injected into his arm. He said softly, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I put you up to it.”

  He put the needle into the medical waste section of his bag and pulled the examination gloves of
f his hands. He was wearing gloves beneath them, and one tried to come off with the latex. Sebastian saw a hash of raised white scars before Christopher pulled the glove back on.

  “Why?”

  “More questions. Just be quiet, Sebastian. You’re far too curious.”

  Yet another needle emerged from the bag. Sebastian was starting to feel like a pin cushion. Christopher injected a red liquid into his hip, and it burned badly. His muscle tensed and pushed some of the drug back out, and Christopher wiped the excess away. Sebastian’s head began to swim almost immediately, and he swayed on his feet.

  “What…?”

  He couldn’t finish his thought. The room spun around him and he began to fall, unable to sense the difference between up and down. Christopher caught him and lifted him easily, once again displaying surprising strength. He carried him into the bedroom and put him in bed, arranging him so that he was lying on his stomach. Sebastian lost consciousness before he was fully in place.

  Christopher left his chambers and headed to the livestock barn to do his daily wellness check on the Countess’s cryptomorphs. The wolfring bitch was about to whelp, and he went to her stall first.

  She was lying on the cot when he arrived, her head pillowed on her arm. Her distended belly was painfully stretched around her six pups, and she looked miserable.

  “Hello, Luna.”

  “Hi, Doc,” she greeted.

  He put his bag down and took the stethoscope from around his neck. “How are you feeling today?”

  She shrugged. “Tired.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  When he approached her cot, she rolled onto her back and opened her legs so he could do a pelvic exam. He performed his examination quickly, changed latex gloves and did a standard examination as well. She kept her eyes lowered and cast to the side, not challenging him with her gaze. His last task was to ensure that her collar was still functioning and in good condition.

  “All right,” he said, signaling that the exam stage of his visit was over. “You’re very close. I’d be surprised if these pups aren’t here by this time next week.”

  “Will I get to keep one?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Luna…”

  “I know. They’re all going to Crown Holdings. But I was hoping…”

  “The Countess will not allow it.” Christopher prepared a vitamin shot for her, as well as the phase suppressant. They had learned ways of preventing the moon from affecting the livestock. “The sooner you heal up without a pup at your breast, the sooner you’ll be ready to be bred again.”

  “This is my tenth litter,” she complained mildly as he injected the vitamins into her hip. “I’m tired, and I want to be able to keep one of my babies with me.”

  His heart ached for her, but he schooled his tone to be hard and cold. “The answer is no.”

  She relented, closing her eyes and rolling onto her other side, her back to him. “Yes, sir.”

  Christopher sighed. “I’m sorry, Luna.”

  “So am I.”

  He stayed a few minutes longer to brush the patches of snow-white fur on her ankles and back, leaving her to groom her own wrist tufts. He brushed the hair on her head, which was as white and silky as the rest. She did not respond.

  “Rest well, and please eat when they bring you your meals,” he told her, tucking the brush back into his bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She offered no response, and he didn’t expect one. He simply moved down the line to the next stall.

  The Countess was a collector, and she kept and bred the best specimens of each species here at the estate. They were housed in heated stalls, given daily entertainment and enrichment, and each of them had access to their own specially designed enclosures. She gave them the best lives that captive cryptomorphs could hope for, as long as they were obedient and bred well. There were five stables, kept so distant from one another that he had to drive between them to see all his patients.

  The stable he was in now was for the wolfrings, the orsids, and the felids. The wolfrings and the felids were kept on opposite sides, since their mythric forebears were bitter enemies, and the orsids kept them separated. Even when all the cryptomorphs were out in their enclosures, the felids and wolfrings could not get near each other’s fences. The orsids, who were by nature peaceful, wouldn’t allow it.

  They had two wolfrings, a male and a female, but the male was not the sire of Luna’s whelps. He was a sable wolfring, and mixing a sable and a snow would have resulted in spotted whelps, and nobody but David Mexeil and some down-market customers wanted those. The true money was in the sables, and the sable male’s semen was a high-priced commodity. He had sired multiple champion sable wolfrings, and the photographs and ribbons from the wolfring competitions graced the hallway outside his stall.

  Christopher pushed open the stall door and found the sable wolfring in the process of filling a collection tube. He masturbated fiercely, his face contorted, holding the vial against the end of his rampant cock. Spurt after spurt of the precious fluid shot into the vial, and he looked up at Christopher in triumph. Still panting, he held up the vial.

  “Number four for today.”

  “Good job.” He collected the specimen tube and capped it carefully. “The Countess will be very pleased, Rupert.”

  The wolfring puffed out his chest, which was covered with a pelt of white-ticked black fur. He stripped the collection gloves from his hands and tossed them into a waste basket with several other pairs. On the shelf beside the door, a neat row of specimens waited in their vacuum-sealed vials.

  “You’ve been very busy,” Christopher complimented.

  “I’m in my prime. I need to take advantage of that while I can.”

  This wolfring was no fool, and he never had been. Rather, he was a talented opportunist, and his eager cooperation with the breeding program had made him one of the Countess’s favorites.

  “I have good news,” Christopher told him as he collected the samples, labelling them carefully and putting them into his bag. He was pleased to see that Rupert had already dated them all with the Sharpie they’d left in his stall for that purpose.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re scheduled for a live breeding.”

  Rupert flopped down onto his cot, wiping the tip of his penis with a tissue. “Who with?”

  “Solange.”

  The wolfring made a sour face. “I don’t like that bitch. She thinks she’s so above it.”

  “You like her plenty well when she’s in heat.”

  Rupert laughed. “True that.”

  Christopher came over to the cot. “Get up.”

  The wolfring obeyed, and he stood quietly for his examination, although he eyed his doctor’s groin the entire time. When Christopher draped his stethoscope around his neck again, Rupert grinned.

  Suspiciously, Christopher asked, “What?”

  “You liked watching me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t lie to me.” Rupert grinned. “I can smell your erection from here.”

  The veterinarian rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Watching you wank is hardly enough to give me a hard-on, and even if it did, you couldn’t smell it.”

  “But now you’re thinking about it. You wanna use me, Doc?”

  He let out an exasperated sigh and checked the wolfring’s collar. “No. I do not.”

  “Right,” Rupert said, his eyes sly. “You’ve got that golden dragonel locked up in your bedroom.”

  He frowned. “Where did you hear that?”

  Rupert shrugged. “People talk.”

  “And wolfrings shouldn’t listen. Any gossip that reaches the barn is just talk.”

  He laughed at Christopher. “Are you saying that he’s not in your bed right now?”

  He was getting irritated. “You presume too much, dog. Keep your mouth shut or I’ll muzzle you.”

  Rupert fell into sullen silence. Christopher gave him a hard look and set out
new sample tubes. He gave him his shots and then, with one last glare over his shoulder, he left the stall.

  Their orsid sow was out being bred, but the boar was in his stall, and he was Christopher’s next stop. The bear shifter cross breed looked up amiably as the veterinarian came into his room.

  “Hello, Theo,” Christopher greeted.

  “Hello, sir.” HIs voice was deep and stentorian, and the tone was rich. Christopher loved hearing Theo talk.

  The orsid stood and put aside the magazine he had been reading. His own selection of vials waited on top of a writing desk Theo had been given, neatly lined up along the spine of a book. Theo was a voracious reader.

  Christopher gathered up the vials and replaced them with new ones. He took the stethoscope from around his neck again, repeating the same examination he had given to all the cryptomorphs every morning.

  Theo glanced down at Christopher’s hands. “Your gloves are ripping, sir.”

  The brown gloves he was wearing beneath the surgical gloves were indeed beginning to fray, and he would have to repair them soon. He had spent too much time worrying at the seam. “Yes,” he nodded. “So it seems. Thank you. Have you finished your books?”

  “All of the ones on the desk, yes. I’m just starting the history.”

  “What did you think of the novels?”

  Christopher had shared a series of novels with the orsid, taking a risk on the subject matter. It was one of his favorite series, though, and he knew how much Theo loved fiction.

  “The tale of revolution and redemption was… inspiring,” the orsid said carefully. “But it was obviously unrealistic.”

  “Unrealistic? Why?” He picked up the stack of books and put them near the door.

  “The idea that a race of bear shifters would ever rebel against their masters… it’s…. unthinkable. We are far more law-abiding than that.”

  Christopher smiled and injected Theo with his vitamins and suppressants. “Don’t you ever want to be free?”

  “Not at the expense of the law, sir,” Theo answered quickly. “Never at the expense of the law.”