Dragon Bond Read online

“Talon.” He turned those compelling eyes toward her again.

  “What’s your real name?” she asked curiously. “Your dragon name.”

  Even if dragons and humans never chatted, she had learned a few of the names of the more important ones, the same way they must have learned the names of key human commanders.

  “Talon,” he said again.

  That was all she would get, eh? Oh well. It wasn’t that important. Her next question was. “What would you give us if we freed you?”

  The taskmaster gasped softly, his eyes growing round. Vorkan’s eyes had gotten large too. He opened his mouth, but must have remembered that she was his commander and an officer, for he didn’t voice another objection.

  “I’ve already told you,” Talon said. “I’ll help you kill the overseer.”

  “And I’ve already told you that we don’t need your help in that matter.”

  He stared into her eyes, as if he were reading her mind. She couldn’t be positive he wasn’t.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “There used to be tunnels under Mount Slash—the mountain your people have taken to be their base. Do any of them connect to the upper levels that the dragons use as their headquarters and meeting place? And is the rumor true that the portal your people arrived through was moved into the heart of Mount Slash?”

  For the first time, Vorkan’s expression grew approving. He might not understand sparing an enemy for no reason, but he could understand wanting to get intelligence from someone in the position to know it.

  Talon blinked slowly. “You want information.”

  “I’ll free your leg right now so you can come with us to kill the overseer, but if you want the collar off, you’ll come back to my camp, draw us maps, and give us information on your leaders and your headquarters.”

  Talon’s gaze locked onto her again, his eyes having the same intensity as before, the intensity that made her want to squirm. She lifted her chin and stared back at him, refusing to show him that she had any fear of him or of any dragons. Even if it wasn’t true and even if only a fool wouldn’t fear someone so powerful.

  “I am not a traitor,” he said eventually, and looked away, his nostrils flaring.

  Zala sighed. Perhaps it had been too much to hope for. Her people had never managed to capture a dragon for long, not long enough to interrogate one or even learn how an effective interrogation might work against their kind. What information they had, they had gained because of the sacrifice of human beings.

  “Yet you would kill the overseer if I let you,” Zala said, not sure why she bothered to try again. She had a mission here, one more important than he was, and every minute that passed increased her odds of being discovered prematurely. Yet, she could see part of his back now that he’d turned from them, and she could read the pain in the scars there.

  “That would not be a betrayal,” Talon snarled.

  “It’s your decision.”

  She waited a moment to see if he might reconsider. His face was hard to read, but she thought he might be mulling over her offer.

  A clang came from somewhere on the far side of the pit. Slaves shouted, then dropped to their knees, covering their heads.

  At first, Zala did not see the reason for their alarm, but then she spotted it: a dragon soared out of a cave and into the air, its powerful silhouette visible against the darkening sky. It flapped its wings and flew straight toward them.

  Chapter 2

  Talon tensed as Scarkoft approached. Had he been in his dragon form, he could have defeated the overseer easily, torn his throat out and felt his life’s blood pour from his veins, spattering Talon’s scales with its warmth. But he was stuck in this puny human form, as he had been for the last year, and he could do nothing as the overseer flew toward them.

  For once, Scarkoft wasn’t coming for Talon. He arrowed toward General Shaylinor and her two comrades.

  The humans appeared no match for the dragon, but Talon reminded himself that he had seen the general fight before, that they had battled once, just over a year ago, and that she had been the one to launch that trap that had nearly killed him. As she’d been questioning him, he had expected her to recognize his eyes and see through the human guise to know who he was. A part of him might have relished it. If she had recognized him, she would have stabbed him then and there and ended this travesty of a life into which he had been forced.

  But she hadn’t seemed to know who he was. No, she had even offered to free him. Ah, but what a price for his freedom. He loathed Scarkoft and hoped she could indeed kill him, and he wasn’t feeling that friendly toward the king anymore either, but to share information that would betray the rest of his people? All so he could fly again? And escape Scarkoft’s brutal torments? He did not think he could stomach such selfishness. Better to die than to betray his kind.

  When Scarkoft reached them, he dove for Shaylinor, right away picking her out as the most dangerous in the group. Her people spread apart, the two women crouching and prepared to use their swords, while the man stood back with his bow ready to fire. Talon kept an eye on the archer, Vorkan; he wouldn’t be surprised if the human used that bow on him when his commander wasn’t looking.

  But his first arrows flew toward Scarkoft’s glowing green eyes. They bounced off the dragon overseer without doing harm, but they did distract him, causing him to shake his head. His claws stretched out toward Shaylinor, and Talon stepped forward, as if he could help, but he came to the end of his chain and could not move the weight holding him down. In dragon form, he could have slung it a mile, but he was helpless to even tug the heavy ball an inch through the dust.

  Shaylinor ducked to the side, using Scarkoft’s distraction to slip away before he landed. The younger woman dodged in the other direction, but did not go far before darting back in, her blade whipping through the air toward Scarkoft’s left shoulder. Meanwhile, Shaylinor raced up a pile of rocks with impressive speed. When she reached the top, she launched herself without hesitation. She sailed through the air toward Scarkoft’s back as the dragon focused on her comrade, batting aside the sword blow, careful to avoid the edge. The overseer did not seem aware of Shaylinor, and she soon landed right where she wanted to—on the back of his neck.

  Again without hesitating, she wrapped her legs around him and drove her blade down into his scales. They cracked, the supple dragon armor sounding brittle under her sword. Scarkoft howled and flung his head back. Though Shaylinor tried to hang on with her legs, the power of the neck flick sent her flying. Somehow, she twisted in the air and landed on her feet in a crouch, almost like a feline instead of a human. Talon hadn’t realized humans could be so agile and found himself staring, his eyes unblinking as he watched the fight.

  Her comrade continued to attack Scarkoft from the ground, aiming at his legs and trying to keep him from spinning back toward Shaylinor. This woman, too, whose name Talon did not know, was graceful as she leaped and dove, avoiding the slashes from Scarkoft’s deadly claws.

  The archer kept peppering the dragon, uselessly, Talon thought, until one of the arrows found Scarkoft’s eye. He yowled and whipped his head back again. The shaft quivered, the arrow’s head embedded in his eye. While he pawed at it, trying to rip it out, Shaylinor jumped onto his tail, which was whipping about even more than his neck. Somehow, she stayed on it and ran up his back. How she kept from falling off while Scarkoft thrashed about, Talon did not know, but she made it to his shoulder blades. He thought she would drive her sword into his neck again, but she raced up it as if running over a bridge. Gravity should have thwarted her, and she should have fallen, but her momentum carried her all the way to the back of Scarkoft’s head before she slipped.

  The slip hardly seemed to bother her. She went with it, landing astraddle the back of the dragon’s head. She gripped her blade with both hands and drove the tip into the top of his skull.

  Almost immediately, Scarkoft’s thrashing ceased. His entire body went rigid, and the glow in his eyes
vanished. After a long pause, his head fell to the ground, Shaylinor leaping free before it struck.

  The younger woman ran in, and they hugged briefly before checking to make sure Scarkoft was truly dead. Talon barely noticed. An unexpected surge of emotion flooded his body, giddy satisfaction at seeing his tormentor dead, and another emotion he struggled to place. As he watched Shaylinor move about the dragon, a sense of gratitude came over him, along with admiration. Those emotions did not puzzle him—when they had fought before, he had admired Shaylinor then, even as she had being trying to kill him—but a new emotion mingled with those this time. He found it difficult to take his gaze from her and was aware of heat rushing to his groin. Lust? That was the emotion he was struggling to identify? It seemed so base for what he felt. As his penis swelled, he tore his gaze from Shaylinor to look down at the appendage curiously.

  He had been aroused while in human form before, sometimes by the sounds of other slaves coupling and sometimes—disgustingly so—when Scarkoft had been tormenting him. As a dragon, his only interest in mating had been to produce offspring. Like all of his kind, he had felt the biological imperative to do so when females in heat had approached him. But his libido as a human was more vigorous and quite stupid, as far as he was concerned. What Scarkoft had been doing to him had nothing to do with mating, and Talon had always found his own reaction shameful.

  “Your dragon is pleased that you won, General,” Vorkan said, glancing down at Talon’s erection as he walked past. “Either that, or he’s extremely happy that his boss is dead.”

  From the man’s sniggering, Talon sensed that he should be embarrassed, but his only concern was what Shaylinor’s reaction would be. Would she find his response inappropriate? She wouldn’t think he was contemplating forcing himself on her, the way Scarkoft had forced himself on the slaves, would she?

  Shaylinor cleaned her sword and walked away from Scarkoft. Between Talon’s nudity and Vorkan’s comment, there was no chance of her missing the state of his penis. She glanced down at it, but didn’t react noticeably.

  “I would be excited if my tormentor was dead,” she said, then turned to Vorkan, the situation apparently over as far as she was concerned. “We’ve got hundreds of people to free before any more dragons come to check on us. The overseer might have telepathically warned others that we’re here, so we have to hurry. Salena and I will free as many as we can by cutting through their bonds with our swords, but if you can find keys, that would be ideal.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go look.”

  “There’s a cave on the back side of the pit.” Talon pointed in the direction, though the night’s deepening shadows hid the mouth from his weak human eyes. “Keys would be in there. Also, we’re too far away for him to have contacted anyone back at headquarters.”

  Vorkan hesitated, looking to his commander.

  Shaylinor nodded shortly. “Go.”

  The archer ran off. Other slaves cheered and stomped their feet as he passed. Judging by all of the adoring faces turned toward the women, Talon doubted he was the only one experiencing intense feelings for Shaylinor.

  “Start cutting them free, Lieutenant,” she told the younger woman. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

  The young woman—Salena, she had called her earlier—jerked her gaze from Talon and ran toward the closest chained slaves. She had been sneaking glances at him since the archer drew everyone’s attention to his state. Talon judged her sexually inexperienced and curious. He found himself wishing Shaylinor was more curious. As ludicrous as it was, he felt an urge to puff himself up and turn so she could see all of him. He could proclaim that his interest was for her, not for the dead overseer, as they had joked.

  Such strange thoughts. He had been in human form far too long. Besides, what would she want with some battered slave who’d allowed himself to be abused so? This last year had been nothing but shame and humiliation, one that made Talon detest himself as much as he had detested Scarkoft.

  Shaylinor walked up to him, ignoring his penis, much to its chagrin. Before, in his dragon form, he had only noticed her competence in battle, barely registering her gender or what she looked like. But now that he shared her form, he responded much differently to her. All of his senses were duller than they had been as a dragon, but he could still smell her, smell that she was a woman, and he found himself struggling to look away from her face, wanting to drink it in. Her uniform shrouded much of her body, but he wondered what lay beneath it and wished she were as naked as he was. Even without a closer look, he found her attractive, appealing. His appreciation for the litheness she had shown in battle turned into an appreciation for her entire being.

  She looked him in the eyes. “Have you reconsidered my offer?”

  Her offer? He knew that he should know what she was talking about, but he struggled to pull his mind from thoughts of her naked body. He did not have the sense that she wanted to mate with him. Unfortunately. But what more could he have expected, after the taskmaster had spoken so bluntly of Talon’s shame?

  “The information,” he said slowly, his brain starting to function under her expectant gaze. He hoped that she would think he was new to the language, not that there was a deficiency with his mind. In truth, he hadn’t spoken it often, even if he had been hearing human words for the last year.

  “Yes. Your freedom in exchange for information about your headquarters and your leaders.” Shaylinor had not put away her sword, and she lifted it now, sighting along the blade, as if to bring his attention to it. She looked down at his manacle, then up to his collar, her gaze pointed.

  He closed his eyes. Could he do this? Should he? Perhaps it would teach his kind humility if the humans struck a blow at Hul and the other leaders, attacking them in their headquarters. Humility had been in short supply since they arrived on this world. But could Talon stand to be labeled as a traitor by every one of his kind? He would be an outcast for the rest of his life. But then, what was he now? A slave. Perhaps a slave for the rest of his life.

  If Shaylinor left without freeing him, another overseer would simply come. Talon had no way of knowing if the new one would be as bad as the old. For all he knew, the king had ordered that he be raped regularly, to make sure his punishment was as severe as it could be, to make sure he wanted to come back and lead his troops. Numerous times in the last year, Talon had been tempted to do just that, to plead that he was ready to return, to have his old life back, to have his body back, but he had loathed Scarkoft so much. He never would have pleaded to that bastard. And the king had never come to visit him personally. Did Hul care about his former first commander? Did he even remember Talon?

  Talon opened his eyes. The only one here offering him freedom was this woman, the woman who had slain the dragon who had been tormenting him for the last year.

  “Remove my collar,” he heard himself saying, as if he watched from somewhere outside of his body, “and I’ll take you to those tunnels personally.”

  He meant it, but she couldn’t know that he was honest and spoke the truth. Her brows rose in skepticism.

  “I already told you the deal. Today, I free your shackle. You come back and provide the intel we need, and then I’ll remove your collar.” She lowered her sword and stuck her hand out for the clasp that humans favored. “You have my word.”

  He should have been considering her deal rather than thinking about how close her hand was to his penis. Were he to shift his hips just so, he could brush against her.

  “How long?” he asked, anchoring his hips in place. “If all you need is a map to the tunnels, I can draw one right here. Or as soon as we find paper.” The overseer’s cave might have some, though he did not mention it. Perhaps because his penis wanted him to go with her, wherever she might lead. An utterly ridiculous appendage. He wished it would calm down and grow less noticeable.

  “I need the map, but my people will also need time to verify that the map is accurate. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m wary of you. I can’t a
ssume that you’ll give me the truth. I can see how badly you want that collar off.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but I must also be wary of you.” He glanced toward the fallen dragon. “I must trust that you will remove the collar once I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain and that I won’t be held indefinitely for torture and interrogation by your people.”

  Her eyes flashed with indignation. They were a stormy gray, not unlike her sword. It was the first time he’d seen much emotion from her, and he found it fascinating rather than unappealing.

  She calmed quickly, and he was almost disappointed.

  “I understand,” she said. “You don’t know me, don’t know that I wouldn’t go back on my word. You also don’t know the rest of my people, but I’m sure you can guess that I am not the commander over all, and that I might struggle to keep my superiors from taking the decision from me.” She stroked her jaw. “Two weeks. We should be able to get a team into the mountain in that time, and my reports back to... our headquarters would not have had time to reach our leaders and for them to send a response. Nobody in my own camp outranks me, so you’ll have my word that you’ll be safe with me for those two weeks. Is that acceptable?”

  She seemed genuinely interested in working with him. Of course. She could get the information her people craved. Nothing else motivated her, he was certain.

  “Two weeks and a map. I accept.” He clasped her hand.

  He kept expecting his erection to fade, especially as they spoke of such business-minded topics, but a charge went through him when their skin made contact. He felt the warmth of her flesh all through his body, noticed the callouses on her palm from her sword, and again that thought flashed into his mind, that he wanted her fingers wrapping not around his hand but around—

  “Good,” she said and released his hand.

  With a swift motion that surprised him, she hefted the sword overhead. Even with his slow human reflexes, he could have jumped to the side, moved away from her, but he found himself trusting her. He did not flinch as she slashed down with the blade. With a thunk, it cut into the iron chain next to his ankle, severing it as neatly as if it were made of twigs rather than metal.