Page 7 of The Dragon’s Captive

The men exchanged looks. Vilka had earned his post and his rank, there was no doubt about it, but he was not a favorite of the elders, and there was little he could do to change that. His bloodline was viewed with suspicion, and at times, even fear. The appearance of a human would not help that.

“We have one small human female who claims to have come alone. We can handle such a matter ourselves. We are tasked with far greater, after all. A world eater sleeps at the foot of our beds. In the meantime, keep the portal guarded at all hours. Any other humans who seek to sneak through must be apprehended immediately. I will deal with our captive.”

CHAPTER 4

Kate opened her eyes to find herself in the dragon’s lair. Her faint had come on so quickly that it was as if one moment she were looking into the eyes of a dragon, and the next she was lying on a very large, very soft bed with a coverlet of silk that felt like warm liquid beneath her body. The fear that had claimed her senses was still present, but a new elation was growing.

She was inside a tectonic fortress. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all formed from a black rock with a shine to it that put her in mind of obsidian. It was an imposing place, and a very large room, around the size of a small lecture hall. There was not much in the way of furniture aside from the bed, and there were a few windows that looked out over the very plains she had been taken from and toward the great mountain in the middle distance. They were barred, though she did not know why. Surely the dragon was not worried about escaping from his own bed chamber.

That was her main priority however; she had to get back to the portal. As she got up and walked across the room, she could see the field where the portal had been. She was even halfway certain that she could see the location of it, though it was hard to tell at a distance.

She took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. The dragons had all her things. Her backpack. Her treatments. Even her umbrella, which they seemed to regard as a weapon now that she had used it ineffectively as one. She had known that there would be risks with coming to the dragon realm, but she had not figured on incarceration as being one of them. She had to get her stuff back, and she had to get out of this fortress, if only to continue her studies. There was little to learn about the dragon realm inside a bedroom.

Of course, little didn’t mean nothing. Kate began to walk around the room, looking into drawers and closets. There were not many clothes, but that was probably because the dragons seemed to be very comfortable nude. It would be a pain to have to change out of clothes before expanding a hundred times bigger than one’s original size, she imagined.

Kate was still afraid, but she distracted herself with her investigations. There may yet be a way out of this room if she could find a key… or perhaps… she turned and looked at the door. She hadn’t even tried the door yet! Perhaps it wasn’t locked?

Kate made for the door, a heavy dark wood structure crisscrossed with some black metal reinforcement, but before she could reach out to turn the handle, the door swung open and the dragon who had captured her stepped inside. He was still as naked as ever, aside from leather wraps around the lower parts of his forearms, and Kate averted her gaze as her cheeks flushed red again. He was so… very… anatomically correct.

“Hello, human,” he said, his voice making her squirm where she stood. “I see you have recovered from your fright.”

“Um…” Kate looked carefully at the wall, avoiding the sight of the very large, very nude man. “Would you put some clothes on, please?”

“Why would I clothe myself? I am not cold, or in any need of armor.”

“It would make me more comfortable,” Kate blushed.

“Your comfort is yet to be of my concern,” he rumbled. “I have questions for you, human, and you will answer them.”

He was arrogant and commanding and he rubbed her very much the wrong way, but she was also incredibly shy around men. Warring impulses of irritation and embarrassment left her tongue-tied and she continued to look everywhere but at him as he began to question her.

“Why did you come here?”

“I was interested…”

“Interested,” he repeated. “You breached the barrier between worlds out of… interest.”

“I’m a scientist,” she explained. “We like to explore.”

He looked at her with a suspicion she knew she had no way to assuage. He clearly had no understanding of a curious, academic mindset. He did not strike her as the academic or inquisitive type. He was a masterful leader, a dominant male who imposed order. If he did something, he probably did it for a reason, and he couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it just for the joy of learning. She was going to have to find a way to convince him.

“Look at the samples I took,” she said. “They’re in my bag. I have grass and some dirt… I just want to learn more about this place.”

“To what end?”

“To, um, well, any end. It’s not… there’s no end point to discovery.”

“So you broke the barrier between our worlds on a whim of interest, in order to discover something for no reason at all.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her with those golden eyes that seemed so wise and yet didn’t understand her at all. “You are lying to me, human.”

“I am not lying!” She looked him dead in the eye, impassioned with the hope that he would be able to believe her.

“We will see.” He reached out, took her by the arm, and drew her close as he had before, the hard lines of his body pressed against her soft, clothed curves. “I will be satisfied that you are telling me the truth when I know you no longer have the capacity to lie.”

“What do you… what?”

He began stripping her clothes from her body, her sweater disintegrating under his hand as if the very fabric simply melted away. He pulled the shredded remains of the garment from her arms and tossed it on the floor.

“Wait, how are you doing that?”