He swatted the spirited young woman's ass as she walked towards the kitchen with a "you promise?" shouted back at her grinning mate.
"She seems to have reached another level of courage, my love, she is going to be quite a handful for a while after your mating I see."
Smiling at the beautiful woman at his side he gave her a quick kiss before throwing out a quick message to meet in the audience chamber to the rest of his wives as they lounged around their home.
"I think I will enjoy our banter as much as she is my sweet. Now let's go see what has Solec britches in a twist."
Clothing them both with a thought Cade walked down towards the audience chamber with his sexy wife on his arm and five others waiting for his presence.
"I give not a single solitary shit if the emperor is threatening your business on this continent with censure and your little group doesn't have the balls to stand up to them. Regardless of your thoughts on the subject, the current emperor's days are numbered. His complicit ass is going to go the same way as the slavers of this city. The only reason he is still alive is the fact that I haven't visited him yet."
As his tirade ended the assembled guild council looked nonplussed as they sat in their gaudy chairs inside their gaudy headquarters and with the audacity to turn their noses up at him and his wives.
His irritation stemmed from Solec's insistence that he, Sabine, and Beth hold an audience with the leaders of the merchants guild in Krumash.
That little trip had been unexpected and even if he was going to make his way there eventually the gall of the group arrayed before him to demand that from him unconditionally made him want to put them in their place, violently.
His temper was held back by the fact that he would get to beat some catharsis out of the assembled army that was in the process of marching towards Opect with Duke Jance at its head.
Nodding to Beth and Sabine he made a seat and table for them both before he pulled a kitten-sized Laurith from his pocket and with a kiss to her small head set her on the ground.
"Make sure they understand the benefits of working with us my loves, Laurith and I are going to do a little hunting."
Shifting his body into his dragon form, luckily for the irritating group behind him only around the size of a large draft horse, he gave the still unimpressed guild council a draconic glare before giving a similar-sized Laurith a toothy smile.
More than ready to work off some steam he barreled through the ornate doors, smashing the expensive barrier to splinters.
The merchants guild would do good to remove the tree trunks from their asses before he returned from his hunt for the deserters from Opect's thieves guild or their time as the wealthiest guild on this world would end, painfully.
Dropping a lifeless minotaur from his jaws Cade instinctively swallowed the piece of the man he had torn off, before gagging at the long stiff hairs he felt go down his throat.
"I don't know how you do that with such ease my love, and the smell doesn't help either."
"I don't know if you noticed my love, but I am not human so your concern over the palatability of good meat doesn't extend to my tastes. Are you by chance going to eat that little cow? I am starving."
As his dragon wive tore into the dead being at his clawed feet with ravenous hunger, Cade had a couple of epiphanies even as pride swelled in his chest over providing for his pregnant mate.
One was the lust that burned in his belly over Laurith's husky mental laugh before she answered his question. Never in a million years would he have seen himself lusting over, never mind head over heels in love with a dragon, scales and all.
Ready to jump her figurative bones he thought over the next epiphany as a piece of minotaur hung cutely from her toothy jaws.
That other question was how their little one was going to fair with her size and shape changes throughout her pregnancy.
Settling down on his belly he waited for his mate to finish her meal in the lavish hallway they had discovered in the underground of the trading city, the ornate walls and ceiling at odds with the rundown passages they had been scenting their quarry through.
"A question while we finish our hunt, my love?"
After her lick to his scally face and loving purr, they began walking towards their targets and he asked his question.
"How is our little one going to handle your shape and size changes while he or she grows?"
"She will be perfectly safe for the first few months from my transformations, after that, I will most likely stay in human form until the birth of our Tandra. I don't think my instincts in my true form would allow our wives and mostly you to be near us. That being said I desire your attention when we return home my love, these hormone changes as Promena calls them are a... bitch."
Fighting the urge to mount her on the spot as he got a small whiff of her potent pheromones as she unconsciously lifted her tail Cade latched onto the name of his dragon baby's name with a toothy smile.
"I believe I got a little glimpse of our little Tandy, I'm sure she will be as beautiful and powerful as her mother."
Rubbing his draconic face against hers with an affectionate growl his pride along with something else swelled as he noticed her back legs quiver as a shiver went down her long body.
Sending out his awareness to their wives, he found them in a heated discussion with the merchant council and figured they had enough time.
"Quickie?"
Her lowered head and arched back was all the answer he needed as he mounted her roughly.
As she growled out her lust he firmly latched his jaws onto her neck behind her scaly head and spied the perfect spot to place his pet's marriage band.
As a curving black horn barely missed his slitted grey eye as she roared her first release he used the thoughts about the design of her "ring" to hold back his own completion.
He had tamed his dragon and as he lost the battle with her tight channel milking his length and began to fill her with his seed he smiled as he thought to himself he just needed to claim her for all the world to see.
Crushing one of the heads of their target in his maw he glanced over to his mate as she did the same to the other deserter.
The two men had been cowering in the back of the massive underground complex and Laurith and he had chuckled when they found them.
The two soon-to-be-dead men's terror must have been growing due to their admittedly loud quickie, his last roar of release had shaken the underground building a little.
"I don't want mine if you are a little peckish my pet."
Dropping the dead lizard man at her clawed feet he received a lick to his face for his kindness.
"You spoil me my love, a hunt and double portions for dinner. You might give a girl the wrong idea and make her think you are trying to fatten her up."
His chuckle was followed by her tearing into her meal before he checked again on his sweet and his little firebrands progress with the council.
What he found were quite a few guards that were pointing long spears and brandishing swords at them while the idiots seated before them yelled what he assumed were obscenities at his two wives that caused his blood to boil.
Sending the mental replay to his dragon mate he tore off back towards the merchant guild's headquarters, destroying anything in his path towards his wives.
Leaping through the hole he had left during his departure he shifted his body to his human form and let loose his ability over the smallest bits of the universe and captured the group surrounding his wives in a bone-crushing grip.
As the trolls assembled against them used the muscles in their massive fifteen-foot bodies to fight his grip on them Cade felt the same strain as his attempt to contain the massive hoard of orcs.
As his eyes began to glow with a golden aura the same excruciating pain as he had felt that day began to travel through his body.
Using the memory of his wive's broken and bleeding bodies to keep his focus and fight off the pain he broke down a few of the huge t
rolls and used their energy to shore up his slowly failing body.
Stabilized for the moment he looked to the two women that each shared a massive portion of his heart with concern as he scanned their bodies with his eyes and abilities.
Finding them and his growing children healthy and whole he gave a growling Laurith a loving look mixed with a message for her to wait on her punishment for the assembled men and women for daring to threaten what was hers.
"I am glad I made it in time to keep from having to kill these idiots out of hand for daring to hurt you my loves. Now that we have a moment I would like a reason why these fools deserve to continue to breathe."
Sealing the lips shut of one huge troll who decided Cade was talking to him and opened his mouth to beg for his life he kept his glowing gaze on his wives.
As their shock over their husband's arrival left them Beth and Sabine pulled him down for a quick kiss each before looking to the floating council and their guards with contempt on their faces.
"We tried to convince them that our deal made with Solec, who by the way tried to convince them that threatening us was a very bad idea, would be their best bet to keep their share of our mining business."
"And we even provided a pretty demonstration after we discussed their profit growth after they voiced their objections to the stated plan. We were trying to convince them that us stepping out for the deal would hurt them more than they realized, even after Beth used Qetch to deliver a message from the dwarven council."
As Beth then Sabine filled him in on the parts of the meeting he had missed, Cade made seats for them all, including a massive lounging chair for his dragon mate, before he sat and contemplated for a second how he was going to deal with the group of irritating trolls.
"I think your group doesn't understand your position..."
He was interrupted by the troll that until his arrival had been sitting at the head of their massive table.
"We don't accept your terms nor will we accept being dictated to by those two females. Our organization has survived other interlopers who thought they could disturb the status quo before and we will survive your little insurrection as well. Now if you were to provide us with a more substantial part of your business, preferably a controlling share, we can continue discussions with the assurance that when the emperor's forces erase your cabal from existence we will profit from this ill-advised deal made with Solec."
Glaring at the indifference on the troll's face Cade held back on just crushing the life from his huge body before giving the smug group a reality check.
"Do not mistake my kindness for weakness, nor my difference to my wives competence for a lack in my own knowledge of what they speak of. You seem to need to be reminded of two things. One you offer a service that while useful can be replaced with enough time and effort and two I and my wives will live long enough and have enough power to see you and your whole organization erased and replaced. The emperor and his forces survive by my lack of interest in them at the moment. They will be dealt with in short order and when I return after obliterating him and his forces you will reap the rewards of your decision."
Forcing a vision of the memory of his destruction of the slave camps into their thick skulls he gave them a moment to absorb that tidbit of knowledge.
"So will there be any other issues from the merchants guild or will we be able to continue our mutually profitable enterprise with no more sniveling and cowardice from your organization?"
Finishing his question he enjoyed their surprised and frightened expressions before waiting a few seconds in his seat for their answer.
The looks passed between them spoke volumes and caused him to suspect a mind mage was helping them come to their silent decision.
Flying through their minds he smiled smugly as his guess was proven right as he reached the chairman's mind.
Joining the discussion was simple thankfully as he opened a door into a massive board room with the assembled council surrounding a masterfully crafted oak table, barely noticing whatever mental shield their mind mage had thrown in place.
The heated discussion ground to a halt as he entered the room and sat cross-legged at the end of the massive table and waited for their response to his intrusion.
As he felt the mind mage that had enabled this little get together try to remove the group from the chairman's mental space Cade took control of the group meeting from the man he felt at the end of the tendril of power.
Finding more than a few nasty secrets in the council's minds he latched onto one that caused him a small amount of concern about a message they had recently received from the emperor himself.
Deciding to get their agreement on their previous deal first, he tucked the order for the deaths and bounties on his family in the back of his mind to simmer.
"Looks like we are stuck here together. Now I have made my ultimatum and I have a few pompous royals to kill and an army to decimate and make my own so I will either have your compliance or your lives will be mine to do with as I please. What say you chairman Astoth, will it be death or more Procs than you or your organization has ever seen before?"
Enjoying the shocked look from the massive troll Cade began to count down from one hundred to zero in his head, pettily enjoying the growing panic on the council's faces as they heard his voice counting down to their deaths in their minds.
"FINE!!!"
Arching his brow at the huge trolls outburst Cade was pleased as the look cowed the furious Astoth.
"We accept your terms Mage Cade, now release our minds... please."
Letting the petulant tone of his last word go Cade rose from his seated position and bowed mockingly, he had accomplished his task but he didn't have to be happy with it.
As he released all the minds in his grasp except Astoth he looked the troll in his beady black eyes with contempt.
"I find myself in a quandary Astoth. On one hand, I can rest the future of my business on your word of honor and hope you keep it. On the other, we were summoned to your council with the idea that our discussion about your concerns would be civil. What am I going to do about the message you received from the emperor Astoth? I don't feel we can continue our profitable relationship without certain... assurances as to your words worth."
Returning to his body his murderous mood was lifted somewhat as the chatter from his wives as they worked the numbers on what their mine would produce and how to maintain their profit as they flooded the mithril market with product.
Glancing back from the amazing trio of women he couldn't help his libido as it rose at the thought of them conquering the world at his side.
Some of his lecherous intentions must have bleed through their mental link as they gave him a simultaneous knowing smile before returning to their discussion.
Giving Astoth back his full attention the rage at the troll's actions returned with full force as he reminded himself that this troll's orders had almost resulted in his wives and unborn children being injured or killed.
"I have a little trick that has worked in the past to secure the loyalty of my more questionable business associates. I think I might make it a group deal this time though."
Scanning the area around him he grumped at the lack of mithril in the area even as the lack of it assured his family's future profits.
Deciding to use some iron for the task he held back a giggle of evil glee as he found a way to cement the healer's guilds' place in Krumash and keep an eye on the merchants guild at the same time.
Pulling the sparse iron deposits from the ground for miles around he collected the large ingot and suspended it in front of the floating trolls.
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