Page 36 of The Dragon King’s Pet

“Please, m’lady, say nothing. You will only cause trouble for yourself, and this was my fault…”

Mika was not listening. She was already up on her feet, preparing to find the Lord Lazarus in question. She had been looking for something, or rather, someone to vent her frustrations upon. Lazarus, a man she did not know well, had now become the target of her irritation. And, of course, her desire to protect Lythia was also in play. Casimer punished Mika sometimes, but not in the way Lythia had been punished. Not hard enough to leave angry marks for hours afterward.

After several angry minutes stalking about the castle searching for her prey, Mika spotted the man in question heading from his chambers out across a foyer. Lord Lazarus had a lot of real estate inside Casimer’s castle, befitting his post as second in command, or whatever the dragons called it. Mika had kept her distance from him. There was something about him she just didn’t trust, and given that their first interaction had led to a thick plug and a tail being inserted into her bottom so she remembered her place as pet, she was not keen to make his acquaintance with any kind of regularity. Fortunately he was usually silent when he was in public with Casimer, a dark shadow behind the throne.

“Lazarus,” she said. “Are you Lazarus? You are, right?”

He stopped mid-stride and turned toward her with what could only be described as a look of dragon elegance. His eyes swept down, as if it took some considerable effort for him to lower them to her stature, significantly shorter than his own.

“I am Lord Lazarus, human.”

“My name is Mika. Not human,” she said, taking the same irritated tone as he had. “And I’m here to talk to you about what you’ve done to Lythia.”

“The servant?” He cocked his head at her. “You have some problem with a servant, human?”

“Mika. My name is Mika,” Mika growled. “I have a problem with you, not her.”

“What are you babbling about?” Lazarus snapped impatiently, the force of his irritation almost equaling hers. Almost.

“I’m babbli… talking about you being a bully and a brute,” she said. “I’m talking about what you did to her. I’m talking about how you took a cane to her ass and made it look like hell. I found her crying in the dirt after what you did. She was sobbing in the flowerbeds like a wounded animal.”

“I am sure she was upset,” Lazarus said, unconcerned by what Mika had told him. “It was intended to be painful. Punishment should be.”

His dark eyes seemed to hold extra intention as he spoke about painful punishment, but Mika was not listening. She was far too interested in making him admit that he had done wrong, and promise not to do it again.

“So you don’t even care about her, well, that makes sense,” she said. “You have girls you barely know doing your menial work and if they make a mistake, then you just beat them until they cry. It’s so simple for you, isn’t it.”

“Disciplining wayward young women is a simple matter, yes,” Lazarus ground out. His jaw was clenched and he seemed very annoyed now. Good.

It briefly flashed across her mind that although Lazarus was not as large as Casimer, he was still much larger than she. She was banking on the fact that he wouldn’t dare touch her. She was the king’s pet. He couldn’t do a thing to her.

“Well, if you ever lay a finger on her again, you will be hearing from me,” Mika said. “And I might not be some big dragon man, but I can make your life unpleasant if I want to.”

“Of that I have little doubt,” Lazarus intoned. “Of course, you are forgetting that you are also subject to the king’s law.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Mika said. “Hey… where are you going?”

He had turned and was walking away from her, ending the conversation without so much as a word. How… rude! Mika followed after him, dogging his steps as he left the castle interior and stepped out onto one of the great marble circles that reminded her of helicopter landing pads. Except here, of course, no helicopters landed on them.

“Hey!” She had to run to get around him, stopping him mid-stride as she positioned her body between him and his destination. “I’m talking to you!”

“But I am not speaking with you,” Lazarus drawled. “There is little to say. Take the matter up with your master. I certainly intend to.”

“Oh, you’re going to tell on me, huh? I bet you are. That’s exactly what cowards do.”

Lazarus stiffened, his brows rising toward his hairline with impressive speed. “Coward?” He drew the word out in an icy slow question.

Suddenly, Mika was aware that they were very alone out there. She did not know where Casimer was, but he wasn’t there to save her if this dragon lost his temper. And he did seem to be on the verge of losing it. There was only one thing for it—for her to lose hers faster than he could lose his. It was not hard to find the sparks of fury. She needed only think about her own captivity, and the marks poor Lythia wore on her beautiful skin.

“Why don’t you clean your own damn room!” Mika shouted. “Hitting a girl like that, you should be ashamed of yourself. Only cowards hit girls. She’s half your size.”

The dark-eyed man stared down at her wordlessly. She could tell that he was about to dismiss her again, walk away as if she were nobody, as if her words meant nothing. That made her even angrier.

“You hear me? You touch her again and I swear I will get you,” Mika growled, her temper uncharacteristically high. “I will…I’ll… I…” Her mind was searching for a phrase that would encapsulate what she was trying to convey, but her anger was clouding her mind and there was something else too, a feeling she had not experienced before. As she stood there, stammering with rage, words suddenly came to her, strange words, words she would never have said on her own. She fixed Lazarus dead in the eye and a rough growl came from between her sweet lips. “I will tear you apart… I will rend you limb from limb… I will unmake you and you will regret the very moment of your conception…”

It was much too much, what she was saying, far out of proportion with what she was trying to convey, but the words kept coming, and with them a feeling of power rushing through her body. She didn’t feel small anymore. She didn’t feel weaker than this Lord Lazarus. She felt a growing strength that made her inflate in some arcane way.

Lazarus took several steps back, a worried expression on his face. For the first time, she was seeing some genuine reaction of concern, and she liked it a lot. This was how you had to talk to a dragon. You could not appeal to his better senses. You had to find the visceral thing of it and speak the words that should never be spoken.