The final dragon to enter the room had an almost gray hue to his skin. She noticed that nobody looked at him, and that unlike the others, when he looked at her there was no measure of curiosity or desire. He simply seemed annoyed and perhaps faintly disgusted, as if she were a spider in his bowl of cereal. He seemed older than the others. His hair was thicker and marked with two streaks of gray, one on each side of his head. He stood just inside the doors, his arms folded over his chest, one brow faintly raised in a sneer. Unlike most of the other dragons whose eyes were in the green to gold range, his were a dark grey. Aria sensed that he was in charge, though whether he outranked Vyktor or not she was not sure.
Aria was distracted from the unpleasant dragon by Vyktor stepping up into the cage with her. He grasped her by the nape of the neck and drew her up to her feet, controlling her motionswith his incredible strength. Once she was standing, he once more chained her hands high, exposing the length of her body to the onlookers.
She had never been so very vulnerable before. Unable to look at all the dragon men who were drinking her in, she focused her gaze on Vyktor’s magnetic eyes. They were all handsome, but as she was once more confronted with him, his face just inches away from hers, she could not help but notice that he was the most handsome of them all.
“Be good, pet,” he murmured softly so that only she could hear him, “and you will be rewarded.”
“Die,” she growled between clenched teeth.
Vyktor chuckled and ran the tip of his forefinger over her cheek gently. “Your rebelliousness only makes this sweeter, pet.”
He turned from her then and addressed the audience. “Brothers, this is the human I took this very morning. I want you to observe her closely. Freshly captured, she is resistant, she is hostile physically and mentally. She is in a situation she cannot possibly control. Her hands and feet are shackled, her sex is exposed. And still she resists. We have encountered this before. And we have assumed that the human refusal to accept new masters must be met with violence… but I believe that is wrong. The strength of their resistance is, in fact, directly proportional to their capacity for submission. The more trouble they are, the better pets they will make. I will prove this by taking this female and making her my pet. She will learn to serve me eagerly without the need for any kind of chains or so much as a leash.”
There was a snort of disbelief from within the gathered group and a great many dubious looks. Aria agreed with the audience. She would never serve this lizard, let alone do it eagerly.
“The secret,” Vyktor continued, “is simple: you must treat them not as enemies, but as pets. They are much like us in many ways. They are capable of basic levels of communication, and they are certainly sentient. They are also creatures of instinct who respond strongly to basic cues like tone, posture, and touch.”
“Oh, my god, are you going to bore everyone to death? Is that how this ends?” Aria groaned as she grew tired of hearing Vyktor pontificate.
There was a small ripple of what could have been amusement among the dragons. It lasted only a split second before Vyktor responded with a hard slap to her bottom, forceful enough to make her cry out.
“Asshole,” she snarled.
He did not respond to her, instead he kept addressing the group.
“They are also impatient, which makes sense, given their short lives and quick metabolisms. Remember, a year to them is ten to us. Therefore one hour is akin to half a day. It is this quality which I believe will make them easier to train.”
As he spoke, he moved around her and grasped a handful of her hair. He pulled back, lifting her head and making her back arch as she was held on her knees. Her naked bottom stuck up and out, giving him ample surface against which to land his hand. Vyktor swatted her bottom, his hand leaving an immediate stinging heat that made her mouth open in an ‘O’ of surprise.
“See how sensitive they are when you remove their clothing,” he addressed the crowd. “This female’s bottom is already reacting to a single application of my palm. If I repeat the treatment, she will quickly become compliant.”
He proved his point by slapping her bottom several more times, ten swats landing on each of her cheeks. Aria gasped and writhed beneath his hand, still shocked by how his skin felt against hers. He had so many unfair physical advantages and in spite of her trained pain threshold, the sheer embarrassment of having her butt warmed before a horde of enemies made tears form in her eyes.
“In fact,” he said, pausing. “One actually needs to be somewhat careful not to over-punish. Humans are easily physically harmed, and though they speak and act as though they are invulnerable, they are actually very sensitive.”
He drew his hand back and brought it down in a hard swat that surprised Aria as it exploded across her already pink cheeks.
“Fuck!” She let out a scream and thrashed wildly under his hand, trying to pull her hair out of his grasp.
“As demonstrated,” Vyktor said. “Very sensitive to even the slightest increases in pressure—and highly motivated to avoid pain.”
She saw the smirks on the faces of her hated captors and wished she had the power to wipe them off. One good drone strike would be all it would take to blow this place to smithereens.
“Fuck you all,” she growled.
“She doesn’t seem very tame,” someone pointed out.
“It’s not instantaneous,” Vyktor replied. “But I believe this method will prove to be so powerful that even though this little human is very well aware of what I intend to do to her, she will not be able to resist it in the end.”
He wrangled her back into a kneeling position, smoothing his hand over her bottom. Aria continued to curse under her breath, hating him, and hating every one of the dragons around her. Vyktor continued to pet her, rubbing her sore bottom in slow circles until it started to hurt a little less.
“You can settle now,” he murmured in her ear. “It does not have to hurt that much.”
“It doesn’t have to hurt at all, you sadistic asshole,” she growled back at him.
“You’ve already lost sight of the greater point of this,” he reminded her. “I do this not to hurt you, but to change the minds of those who will burn your world to its core.”
“Our world is already burning at its core,” Aria growled, snapping her teeth at him.
