Chapter 7 #3
‘You could have asked Dominick,’ I say, though by the way my aide suddenly looks even more shifty, I wonder how many times she did, and he didn’t pass on the request.
‘Was even one fucking thing in those reports the truth, Dominick?’ I ask quietly. ‘Or has every piece of information I’ve sent to Brax and Tor about their female been a lie? Has she even seen Del like you said?’
He stutters.
‘Tribute,’ I say, not able to remember her name right now.
She tilts her head back to look at me.
‘Have you seen Del?’
She looks at me blankly.
‘The doctor,’ I add. ‘A female with long curly blond hair and violet eyes?’
She shakes her head, and I turn on Dominick angrily. He lied to me.
‘Get out,’ I growl. ‘Your services are no longer required.’
He splutters. ‘But, Commander!’
‘Silence!’ I boom and he makes himself small as I feel my eyes change in the first instance of pure indulgence that I’ve allowed my dragon in over a hundred years.
I know he sees it because I smell him urinating on himself a little. He thinks I’m losing control, that I’m going to rip his throat out.
Good.
‘Be grateful that’s all I’m doing,’ I bite out in disgust at the weak male cowering in front of me. ‘I could banish you for this, Dominick. I might still once I’ve spoken to the human and found out how deep your treachery goes.’
‘But she’s just a human,’ he wails.
‘She’s Tor and Brax’s Tribute!’ I thunder. ‘You knew that and you still…’ I look over her body again, noting the many injuries I can see. I just hope they’re all superficial and that she doesn’t have any internal bleeding. She sure as hell looks like she’s half dead right now.
‘Get out, Dominick,’ I snarl in my dragon’s low timber, the words slightly garbled as my jaw starts to elongate. ‘Or I’ll let him rip you apart.’
He scampers across the floor like an insect and disappears out the main door after fumbling for his keycard which I bark at him to leave on the floor.
The female and I are alone. Her breathing is slow and steady.
I kneel in front of her, forcing the dragon back so I don’t scare her.
She still startles when I touch her arm though and my jaw clenches.
She’s terrified of me and my kind. And for good reason.
I still don’t know why I care. But I do, and more peculiarly, so does my dragon, a creature that hasn’t even interacted with a human since I can’t even remember when.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, cringing internally at my stupid question.
She nods but keeps her eyes on the floor. ‘I need to get to the kitchen, or I won’t get fed.’
‘There’s food in my fridge,’ I say, but she shakes her head.
‘They said not to use your kitchen, or anything here or I’d be punished.’
What the fuck?
‘You understand who I am, what my position is here?’
She inclines her head a little, still not looking at me.
‘Then you know that what I say goes, and I’m telling you to treat my home as if it was yours.’
‘And the overseer won’t find out?’ she whispers with wide eyes.
I frown. What the hell have they done to this girl?
‘No, sweetheart. He won’t find out.’
‘Okay.’
‘How about you go grab a shower and I’ll make us something to eat.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you…’ I swallow hard, my fingers flexing at the thought of touching her. ‘Need any help?’
When she shakes her head, I feel like I’ve never been more disappointed about anything in my life before. What is wrong with me?
I stand abruptly and take two steps back.
‘Come to the living room when you’re done.’
‘Okay.’
I back out of the room and then go briskly to the kitchen to find something quick to make her.
I bypass the joints of meat and settle for some tomato soup from my freezer.
I heat it up on the stove and get a couple of fresh baguettes out of the food hamper that gets delivered to me every morning.
I smother them in butter and then dish the soup up in a couple of bowls, setting them on my breakfast bar just in time for her to walk into the open-plan living space.
Her movements are slow, but she seems to brighten when she notices the food and sits on one of the high stools.
I stand across from her and hand her a spoon.
She murmurs a quiet thank you and takes it from me, her fingers lightly brushing mine.
My heart skips a beat as a zing travels through me.
She swallows hard like she feels the same, but before I can ask her if she did, she’s dipping pieces of bread into her soup and shoving them into her mouth with little noises of pleasure that go straight to my dick.
My eyes take in every movement, and I can’t do anything but watch her and hope she doesn’t look up and see me staring like a creep.
It’s like the weeks of smelling her, of the tiny glimpses of her, of hearing her light snores in the room next to mine every night have culminated in this moment and all I want to do is jump across the countertop, pick her up, slam her against the wall and bury myself inside her so deep she’ll never not have my scent on her. In her.
But then I see a dark bruise forming on her jaw where Dominick must have slapped her this morning, and it’s like a gust of snowy wind against my naked human front. I drop my eyes, call myself a heartless bastard, and I eat my fucking soup.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She looks up, but her gaze only rises as far as my chest.
I stifle a curse. She’ll have been told not to look at her betters.
‘You’re allowed to look me in the eye,’ I say.
She lets out a breath and her eyes find mine. They’re steely and determined. Strong.
My fierce female is nowhere near broken.
Where did that thought come from?
I turn inward and find the dragon there, much closer to the surface than usual, but he seems content to look at her through my eyes and hear her through my ears. At least for now, so I don’t try to lock him down. He chuffs almost happily that I’m leaving him be.
My dragon, happy? That’s not normal.
I look at her again. She’s finished the soup and the bread and sighs contentedly, closing her eyes as she props herself up on her elbow on the counter.
‘I didn’t know,’ I say quietly, shame coursing through me that she was being treated like this right under my nose.
She looks at me and where I was afraid I’d see censure, I see mild curiosity instead.
‘Could have been worse,’ she says softly.
Could it?
I swallow hard, needing to ask the question even though I’m afraid of the answer, and I know that for once I won’t be able to keep the dragon inside. He’ll break free and he’ll kill any male here who smells like her.
‘None of the males… None of them… I mean, did they… Were you...’
She blinks at me and tilts her head, frowning at me as she shakes her head.
My relief is palpable. I stand up and walk to her side where I sink down to one knee.
I say the words I should have said, the ones my dragon wanted me to on that very first day. ‘I, Dreythos of the Stormriders Faction, do hereby swear to protect you, Mari of the south, from my kind as well as yours until your dragons return to your side.’
She gives me a smile and her fingers flutter down to touch the crown of my head.
My dragon feels it and preens at her touch.
My heart bursts with something I can’t name, but it feels like joy and light and everything in between.
I’ve never felt so elated, yet so unworthy of anything in all my thousand years living on this earth.
I look up, smiling. The muscles in my face aching a little from disuse. She leans toward me. Is she going to kiss my forehead in some adorably human quirk? I hope so. She’s so beautiful. I stare at her as, in slow motion, she bends closer, her lips parting.
And then she throws up on me.
Her apology is choked and mortified as she stares down at me with wide eyes, taking in the pasty pieces of masticated bread in my hair and all the red, undigested tomato soup running down my face.
‘It’s fine,’ I choke out, but she’s already sliding off the stool and sprinting to the bathroom where I hear her heaving whatever’s left in her stomach into the toilet.
When she doesn’t return after a few minutes, I go find her, hesitantly peering inside to find her sitting by the bowl with her head in her hands.
When she notices me, her eyes move over me, and she cringes.
‘Sorry,’ she says, standing up slowly. ‘I didn’t know that was going to happen. I was feeling better.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say.
‘I’ll go clean up,’ she says, trying to sidle past me, but my arm shoots out to the other side of the door jamb, stopping her.
‘No need. Someone’s already handling it.’
She looks like she wants to say something, but instead she sways on her feet, and her eyes roll back in her head.
I catch her easily, swinging her up into my arms awkwardly because I’m still covered in her vomit, and I don’t want to get it on her… stained human slave uniform.
Jesus I didn’t even notice that’s what she’s wearing.
I’m glad she can’t hear the snarl that comes out of me because it would surely terrify her.
I put her in her bed, covering her with the blanket gently, then take out my phone. Luckily it’s not covered in stomach soup.
I message Del, telling her to get here as soon as she can.
That done, I hop in the shower and try not to be disgusted that the dragon doesn’t want me to wash off because he likes being covered in her scent, no matter where it comes from.
I ignore his annoyed pacing and snorting as I let the power shower do its job.
When I get out a few minutes later, I grab a bathrobe and see that Del messaged me right back. She has a keycard, so she’s probably already here.
I go out to the living room and smell her immediately. She’s opening a bottle of lemonade in the kitchen.
‘You don’t mind, do you, Commander?’ she asks flippantly. ‘I was in surgery from one am. One of the younglings decided to sneak out last night before the hunt to bag himself an elk and got his shoulder impaled on a length of old pipe in a botched landing.’ She shakes her head. ‘Dumb kids.’