Page 44 of Flames and Blood

“The last one didn’t accept her role. Strong or not, we’ll see.”

Then a door closes somewhere below, and the voices are gone, and I’m kneeling on the floor of a warm room with my forehead against the window frame.

The first. The second. An order, and offers, and parties, and delivery after weaning.

Babies are weaned.

Oh my God.

Not one meeting. Not one male.

They’re breeding me. I will “meet” males who will get me pregnant, and then they’ll take my babies. And I’m not the first one they’ve done this to. The last one didn’t make it.

My hands have gone flat against the floor. My stomach turns over and keeps turning. I stay exactly where I am, and I breathe, in and out, slow, until it passes.

So now I know.

In the cells, they wanted my blood because they were testing me as a genetic match. They’re going to keep me here, taking my babies from me, until I can’t produce any more.

I have to get out of this valley!

The warm bed and the bandages and the polite questions are worse than the bars ever were. None of it is kindness. It’s about keeping me healthy enough to breed. They looked after the last one too.

Until she wasn’t useful anymore. Maybe that was a blessing.

I get up off the floor, and I search the room properly. I open the closet all the way. The two dresses I saw earlier hang at the front, in my size.

Behind them, there are more.

Dresses cut wide through the body. Made for a woman in the early stages of pregnancy. Behind those are dresses for a woman further along than that. A whole row of them, hanging in order.

“Holy shit.” I move the hangers, flipping through them. Some of them are not new. One has been washed enough times that the cloth has gone soft. Another has been mended at a side seam.

My mouth fills with a bitter taste.

I put them back exactly the way I found them, and I stand with my hand flat on the closet door until my arm stops shaking.

Then I sit on the floor with my back against the bed, and bury my face in my bandaged hands.

My dragon comes up hard.

She aims herself at one wall. The wall that faces the road we came in on. She leans into it and holds there, and she doesn’t waver.

“I know,” I whisper. “I want out too. Tonight, if I could.”

Then get out.

I shake my head. The creature within me lives on instinct. Acts on urges. Sees things in black and white. And right now, the image she’s latched onto is of a tall man with dark eyes looming in a doorway.

He’ll come.

The words are as clear in my mind as if I’d said them out loud.

“Don’t get your hopes up. We have to figure out how to survive this.”

No. We don’t just survive this.

Scales ripple up my arms. My nails lengthen and sharpen into claws.