Page 14 of The Dragon’s Captive

Kate tried not to grin as she followed the man she had managed to baffle with her bullshit. It was amazing how a serious face and a bunch of big words could get you almost anything you wanted. She was not looking forward to another flight, but what had to be done, had to be done.

“Make sure to drop me right next to the portal,” she said. “There’s not a moment to spare, you understand?”

The dragon shifted, taking his flight form, a brilliant jet black tipped with yellow scaling. Not for the first time, Kate noted that this dragon was quite different from Vilka. In fact, all the others seemed to be. There were quite a number of small physical variations that made her wonder if Vilka’s form was different due to his dominance—like a Silverback gorilla, or if, perhaps, there were some other reason for it.

The thoughts were driven entirely out of her head as the dragon wrapped its claws around her and took to the air. This time, Kate managed to keep her eyes open as she was buffeted by the winds and swept over the foreign realm for perhaps the last time. If she was going to open another portal, it would have to be somewhere other than her apartment. It would have to be somewhere private and discreet, and hopefully outside Vilka’s territory. He had taken her virginity, but she would not allow him to claim the rest of her existence as well.

The portal soon came into view, a small circle of dragons standing around it in their human forms. She couldn’t make out what they were doing, exactly, but the sight made her stomach clench all the tighter with fear. They were truly going to try to close it, and if they did, she did not know how long it would take her to generate another one on this side of the divide. The dragons didn’t seem to use any kind of persistent electrical circuitry, which meant there was no generator or grid to draw from. If she had to make her own portal, she’d have to create a power station first. It would be a technical nightmare.

“Okay!” she shouted to the dragon carrying her, not knowing if it could hear her or not. “Right next to the portal! Right next to Vilka!”

The dragon began to circle down low, and Kate felt her heart thundering in her chest. The portal was still open. She could see the inside of her dingy little kitchen already as the ground came rushing toward them.

“Pull!”

She realized too late how they had decided to turn the portal off. They were using a mechanism much like a very small trebuchet that hurled rocks through the portal and into her kitchen. It was a stupid, brutish method to close the portal, but if they managed to hit the generators, or the power, it would probably work.

“Down! Let me down!” She started to squirm furiously in the dragon’s claws, though she was still twenty feet from the ground and would have mostly been squished if she’d actually fallen from that height. The dragon dropped the last few feet, wings out to slow their descent and deposited her right next to Vilka, just in time to see a rock fly through the air into her kitchen and knock the left-side generator over. She was less than an inch away from the portal when it disappeared, a howl of disappointment and anguish escaping her as she clutched as what was now nothing but grass in an empty field, falling to her knees with tears streaming down her face.

“No! Dammit! You assholes! You absolute bastards! You’ve… No!” She cursed and wailed, rolling about on the ground, grass staining her sheet dress as anger and despair washed over her in twin waves.

She was hauled up from the ground and given a swift shake by Vilka. She looked into his face with tears welling in her eyes and the expression she saw there would have been priceless if Kate had not just watched the doorway to her world, her only exit, be closed seconds earlier. Under less miserable circumstances she would have laughed out loud at the sheer disbelief written on his masculine features.

“What the blazes are you doing here?” He growled the words at her, then turned his ire on the dragon who had brought her. “Why did you take her from my chamber?”

“I did not take her from your chamber, m’lord,” the unfortunate dragon stammered. “She came to me in the grand hall and asked for my assistance to bring you important news regarding the portal. She said it was important that she got to you urgently. She had a lot to say on the matter and I believed her.”

“She had a lot to say…” Vilka growled softly, glaring at Kate with his gleaming golden gaze. “Oh, I can believe that. This one always has a great deal to say.”

“Like you’re an idiot for closing that portal,” Kate scowled at him. “You’ve just destroyed my life’s work, you’ve imprisoned me here for a simple mistake. I hate you!”

She did not care that there were a half dozen other dragon men standing around looking at her with various expressions ranging from disdain to pity. She didn’t care that she was melting down in a way that did not allow for much in the way of dignity.

“You don’t even know what you’ve broken! And by throwing rocks! Like some kind of Neanderthal. Is that how stupid you creatures are? You see something amazing and beyond your comprehension, and all you can think to do is break it?”

Vilka’s arms were folded over his chest as she issued her tirade, stamping back and forth over crushed grass stems.

“Are you quite finished, human?”

“No. I am not quite finished,” she sneered. “I don’t think I will ever be finished telling you how goddamn stupid you are. Go to fucking hell, asshole.”

If she had not been so very upset, she might have realized that she was being allowed enough rope to hang herself with many times over. As it was, she was too full of righteous indignation to consider anything other than the absolute certainty that she was right and he was wrong.

* * *

He shouldn’t have been surprised, Vilka thought to himself. She had never indicated any intent to obey him, and she was obviously inventive. Manipulating one of his own men into almost helping her escape was impressive. He didn’t have any time to stop to be impressed though; she was literally crying out for discipline—and she was going to get it.

Taking hold of his disobedient and reckless young mate, Vilka tore the sheet dress from her, leaving her naked before not just him, but all the men.

She let out a shriek of outrage and tried to cover herself, one hand cupping her sex, the other arm wrapped over her breasts. It did little to provide her with modesty, and if anything, only served to increase the shame she seemed to feel. Her face was flushed so bright red she would likely have glowed in the dark, her eyes filled with outrage and the glimmer of tears too.

“Give that back,” she demanded. “You freakin’ pervert!”

“You use your powers of speech badly, human,” Vilka informed her in those dominant, calm tones that were far more scary than his anger ever could be. “I told you before that you were spoiled, and I punished you then, but obviously it had little lasting effect. Perhaps a more public reminder will.”

He tore a strip from the sheet and used it to gag her, wrapping it around her head and settling it between her teeth several times so that she could not use her tongue to hurl any more insults. Kate squirmed and wriggled, fighting his bindings, but he made them secure and she could not find a way to escape them, especially when he pulled her hands behind her back and tied them with a second strip of sheet, which left her completely vulnerable to his touch—and utterly bared to all the dragon men, who were now watching with open interest. Kate tried to avert her eyes from the group, but Vilka was smart enough to make sure that she was unable to look at the ground and hide her shame that way. He held her chin and lifted it until she looked him in the eyes, her nostrils flaring with each angry breath she took.

“You have behaved very poorly,” Vilka lectured. “Screeching like a whelpling will not get you what you want in this world. It will only earn you punishment and pain.” He turned his head and looked toward one of the slimmer, darker dragon men. “Erias! Cut me a switch. This human needs a taste of wood.”