Auctioned to the Dragon Page 6

  The woman’s eyes were methodically flicking through the crowd, and eventually, they reached him. Art felt a jolt of something he couldn’t identify—something he’d never felt before, something he’d never even heard of. Her eyes were golden—not light brown, not hazel, but the rich, golden color of honey, or rich morning sunlight. He stared back at her, the rest of the world falling away, and some part of him realized that her gaze hadn’t moved on—that she was staring at him, too, microscopic shifts in the muscles around her eyes betraying that she felt something, too.

  One word from the dragon on the stage split his reflection down the middle, and he almost staggered as his eyes were wrenched away from hers.

  “Sold! To King Val himself!”

  A rousing round of applause went up. Art couldn’t raise his hands to participate, even though he knew he shouldn’t draw attention—that name, the woman’s eyes, everything was rushing together, turning his mind around, drawing him closer and closer to the most dangerous part of him. He could feel it there, and to his horror, it was stirring. The bear was never banished, Noah had taught him. You could coax it into hibernation, but it would always be there. That was why he meditated, why he’d spent so much of his life training his mind to stay calm in situations like these, situations that challenged his emotions, situations that coaxed the bear out.

  But for the first time since he’d met Noah, all those years ago… he was losing the battle.

  Chapter 5

  She spent a restless night on the floor of her cell. Having slept in the van, it wasn’t easy to drop back to sleep now. Especially with the dull, sick pounding in her head that must have been a result of the chemical they’d used to knock her out. Helena had had bad headaches before, of course. It often got stuffy in the passages of their home. But she could always clear her head on the highest reaches of the mountains, shifting form and flying up to her favorite spot before letting the bracing mountain air chase all the cobwebs out of her head. God, what she wouldn’t give to do that now. She’d never missed her wings so fiercely. Was this how her family felt when she insisted they join her in human form? Trapped and imprisoned; small, powerless, and miserable? She felt a pang of guilt for how often she’d demanded they join her in this shape. But she’d never forced them—never locked a collar around their throats and locked them away.

  And besides the thumping of her head and the sick feeling in her gut, there was her environment. It was cold down here, in this room that had been hollowed out beneath the settlement, and there was a dampness in the air that made her skin crawl. It felt claustrophobic in a way that even her rocky mountain home had never managed to be. Something about the sensation of the earth, pressing in on her on all sides… and, of course, being there against her will. She hated the bars, hated the cages more than she thought she was capable of hating anything. And there was nobody close enough for her to speak with. The nearest fellow prisoner was three cages away—she could see her through the bars, sitting on her cot with her shoulders hunched, a torn cardigan clutched miserably around her shoulders. Her fingertips kept tugging again and again at the collar around her neck, but her eyes were closed, and Helena couldn’t tell what kind of shifter she was.

  “Hey,” she’d whispered, as loudly as she could—but within seconds, one of the men had appeared at the bars of her cage. She didn’t recognize this one, but he had the same white eyes as the dragons who’d taken her prisoner, and he glowered down at her.

  “No talking,” he spat. She nodded, putting on her best Meek Captive expression, and, seemingly satisfied with this, he’d moved on.

  The shifter in the cage had opened her eyes, though, and Helena saw that they gleamed silver even in the low light. A wolf, then. A wolf like Angela and Jessica… god, this poor girl barely looked older than Angela. They looked at each other for a long moment, powerless to offer any comfort. Helena pressed her hand to her collar, and the wolf did the same. They shared a helpless smile. Then the wolf turned away, curling into a ball on the cot, and Helena was alone again.

  What was the morning going to bring? Were they truly going to be auctioned off like cattle? They were all shifters, from what she could tell. Too powerful by far to be contained without these wretched collars. Was there some way of getting the thing off? Left to her own devices, she spent an hour carefully mapping out every inch of the thing with her fingertips. Sure enough, there was a narrow seam in it, but for the life of her, she couldn’t find a keyhole. Helena resisted the rather grim thought that perhaps the collars weren’t designed to ever be unlocked. Would she be trapped in it forever? The claustrophobia that rose up in her stomach almost overwhelmed her, and she yanked desperately at the collar, as though if she pulled it hard enough it would magically open and free her. But all she accomplished was a bruise on the back of her neck.

  She fell into a fitful sleep some time later. It may have been dawn, it may have been midday—they had no access to natural light down here, and it was impossible to tell how much time had passed. All she knew was that she drifted off into horrible nightmares in which her limbs were removed, one by one until she was completely powerless to even move her own body. Then she was jerked roughly awake by a hand on her shoulder. A man, looming over her—behind him, the door to her cell was ajar. But he seized her by the wrist before she could even think about doing something about that, and bound her hands in front of her with the same rough cloth binding they’d used on her in the van.

  “I’d think about putting a smile on,” the dragon informed her as he yanked the bindings tighter. “You’ll be meeting your new owner today if you’re lucky.”

  Determined as she was to play along with their demands to lull them into a false sense of security, no power on Earth would have moved Helena to smile at that moment. Instead, she played at drowsiness, staggering a little as the man dragged her towards the door. Let them think she was disoriented, powerless. They were taking her somewhere. That meant a chance to escape. At the very least, she was desperate to see sunlight and sky again.

  The other shifter women were being dragged out as well. She saw her friend from the evening before, noticed that she was limping noticeably as she was poked and prodded towards the staircase. And her tattered cardigan covered a number of healing wounds. It seemed she’d put up quite a fight before she’d been taken. Good, Helena thought grimly. She hoped she’d drawn plenty of blood from their captors.

  “You’ll be first. What an honor,” the dragon muttered into her ear, his lips far too close to her skin for her comfort. He seemed to relish the way she shuddered at the feeling of his breath on her ear, leaning in even closer. “The king himself is fighting tomorrow. He’ll want a fine woman to spend the night with. Smile and stick your tits out and it might be you.”

  Helena fought to control herself—and heard, to her surprise, a low growl rumbling behind her, the same growl she’d heard from Angela once or twice when her sister ordered her to stop reading and get to bed. It was the woman from the night before, the wolf who’d been in the cell closest to her. Helena felt a rush of gratitude for that sound of support—and a pang of fury as she heard the wolf’s guardian rebuke her for her insolence.

  The sun was blinding as they stepped out of the cabin, and Helena’s golden eyes took a moment to adjust. The place looked very different in daylight. She’d been right about the summer camp vibe, though—the large building she’d noticed the night before was definitely a dining hall. And it was crowded. There were dozens of people milling about, walking back and forth, eating and drinking and chatting with one another. A regular convention. She felt a burst of hope—perhaps these people would notice what was happening, come to the aid of the line of obviously captive women? But her heart sank as they moved down the path towards the dining hall. Again and again, people looked at them with mild curiosity—then looked away. The most attention they got was from men, who leered and whispered to one another, pointing at various women in the line. Helena felt a dizzying calm descend on her.


  She wanted absolutely everybody here dead.

  They lined them up along the back of a raised stage that had been erected in the empty space outside the dining hall, and the dragon she’d met the day before—Jack, one of the ones who’d captured her—emerged to take the front of the stage. He hardly looked at her, no glint of recognition in his eyes, and she knew she was just another body to him, just one more trapped shifter in his collection. One more person to sell to the highest bidder. The rage burned in her, and she knew that if it weren’t for the collar, she’d have transformed whether she wanted to or not. Strong emotion could do that to dragons—they tended to revert to their natural forms at times of high emotion. When her mother had died, Helena had stayed in draconic form for a full month—the longest she’d gone without a sojourn to her human body since she first learned how to change shape. She could feel the collar starting to heat up with whatever magic it used to contain the shifters’ power, and she gritted her teeth against it, trying to calm herself. There was no sense in getting third-degree burns on her throat. That wouldn’t help her escape.

  She tried not to listen to the putrid garbage the man at the front of the stage was shouting to the crowd. Something about virgins, ritual sacrifice, and sex, sex, sex. It was poison, and she hoped the other women in the line weren’t listening either. They could cloak it in magic, ritual, and tradition all they liked, the fact remained that men liked to own women and would do almost anything to make that happen.

  As promised by one of her captors, she was up first—he nudged her in the ribcage as Jack shouted an introduction. She didn’t listen to what he said about her, either—just stepped forward, proud and defiant, and set about scanning the crowd. She wanted to memorize the faces of absolutely everybody here, for future reference. Once she was free—free of her bindings, free of the collar, free of this place—they’d see just what a dragon could do. As she scanned the crowd, she realized it was only shifters that were present—lots of wolves, but many white-eyed dragons, too. Were these the smaller, more savage dragons Angela and Jessica had mentioned coming to blows with sometime in their pack’s ancient history? Well, if they were smaller than her, all the better. She wondered how many she could take down by herself.

  But she wouldn’t be fighting by herself. She knew her family would come to her aid soon enough—once they realized she was missing, of course, they’d figure out the connection to the festival and come to get her. She let herself imagine, just for a moment, the appearance of great glimmering dragon wings over the treetops… and then she returned to her work. Her family would come, she was certain of it. But until they did, she would do everything she could to make the work of getting her out of this horrible place easier. And she’d make sure she knew every repellent face in this place so that, if they needed to, they could track down every single captive shifter woman and release her.

  As she scanned the crowd, her eyes rested on a man for a moment. Initially, she was caught by the arresting way he was staring at her—not at her body, in the lascivious way most of the other men present were staring, but directly at her eyes. It was what dragons did to recognize each other in their human shapes—but this man couldn’t be a dragon, not with dark brown eyes like that. She’d never seen eyes like that on a shifter, but what else could he be if he was here? He was terrifically tall, she noticed, taller even than her and her brothers, who usually had the height advantage in any room of shifters. But those weren’t the eyes of any dragon she’d ever met. Or any wolf.

  And there was something else about those eyes, too. Though the man’s body was still and relaxed, every bit as casual as the men around him, there was an emotion in his eyes that set him quite apart from the others. There was horror there, and disgust, and anger—feelings that mirrored her own. He was the first person she’d looked at who didn’t seem to agree with what was happening here. The first person she didn’t immediately want to tear apart with the razor-sharp claws that the collar around her neck was preventing her from manifesting.

  “Sold!” The word split through her focus on the tall man with the brown eyes, and her eyes flicked to the crowd, which seemed to be parting to let someone through. The air of reverence made her suspicious—and those suspicions were confirmed when Jack added: “To King Val himself!”

  King? These dragons had a king, too. Of course. Foolish of her to assume her brother was the only king in the country, especially when they had no contact with the outside world. So her purchaser—her nose wrinkled involuntarily at the very idea—was the monarch of this little settlement? Perfect. This offered her an excellent opportunity. If she could trick this man—play her role well, let him believe he’d broken her spirit—perhaps she could find a way to his throat with a blade one night. Where was the man? There he was, strutting up to the stage to claim his prize. Shorter than she’d expected. She was going to loom over him, she thought with amusement—best to slouch a little in case he was sensitive about his stature. He had white-blonde hair that stood up as though he’d been electrocuted and a wiry yet over-muscled frame that suggested a bantamweight boxer. A mean looking guy, all told, with a sneer to his mouth—and a wicked scar running down the side of his face. It looked fresh, to her eye. Shifters healed quickly, but she could tell from the color of the wound that it couldn’t be more than a month old. Interesting. A warmup fight, perhaps, before the big festival? Well, if whoever had done that injury had gotten around his guard, then she could too.

  But he was looking at her. She hoisted an expression of fear onto her face to disguise the savage joy that was thrumming in her chest, trying to calm her adrenalin. It would be absurd to make an attempt on this king’s life here and now, surrounded by his loyal supporters, her hands bound and her powers suppressed. She’d need to play the long game. Pretend to be frightened, pretend to be subservient, maybe put up a bit of a fight to make him feel like he’d tamed her. She’d need to be calm, and patient, and—

  A sudden roar of sound yanked her from her reflections. The king was staring around wildly as the crowd suddenly surged and scattered. It was easy to pinpoint the cause of the chaos, and Helena’s eyes widened as she saw the man she’d been looking at earlier—the tall man with the dark eyes. But he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was swinging at the shifters in the crowd with impossible speed, his fists flying, a groaning heap of downed shifters already at his feet. She took an involuntary step back, alarmed as she realized he was headed for the stage, hurling people out of the way bodily. He leaped onto the stage beside her, and she looked up into his face. It was unusual for her to have to look up at someone. This man was monstrously tall. He looked at the line of women behind her, then back to her, fear warring with confusion on his face. He was breathing hard, but strangely, as though he were trying with all his might to control the pace of his inhalations.

  Was this an attempt to free her? It was ludicrously poorly planned. There had to be fifty shifters in front of them, and who knew how many more in the rest of the settlement? It was incredible that he hadn’t been seized already. But as she looked into the crowd, she noticed something strange. Everyone was hanging back, gazing up at them both with something like fear. Why? Did they think he was going to remove her collar, set her free to kill them all? No—they weren’t looking at her. They were looking at him. What would half a hundred shifters have to fear from one man?

  “Stay back,” the king snarled to his followers, his voice smoke-roughened but booming. “You know what they’re capable of.”

  And before Helena could think—before she could question the man beside her, or leverage this strange situation to her advantage, she felt herself being yanked off the ground and hurled over his shoulder. She yelped, an undignified sound, and thrashed against his grip—but he was holding her as surely as the collar was binding her throat. Furious, she fought against him as he leaped down from the stage and started running, looping around the crowd and heading up the paved street—faster, and faster, heedless of the weight of her o
n his back. Accelerating even when they left the path—and soon, all that surrounded them were trees, and the distant shouts of the shifters giving half-hearted pursuit behind them.

  Chapter 6

  Art stared into the fire. The heat of it felt good against his skin, but it didn’t do much to chase away the bone-deep ache in his muscles. He’d overdone it today, he knew that. Taking on so many shifters, even in their human shape… that had been stupid, and he had a few minor injuries for his trouble. His knuckles were torn and bruised, and there was an ache in his forearms that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since he was a teenager, sparring with Eric to pass the time. Eric had always been the stronger of the two, for all that Art had two years on him and twice that in inches. More, by the time they were done growing. But Eric was quicker, with a lower center of gravity, and he had a supernatural edge for picking Art’s next move before he’d even thought of it himself. Still, more fights ended in laughter than in knockouts. He’d never been angry with Eric in his life. And he was a better fighter for all their sparring. It might have saved his life today. And it might have saved Eric’s life if he’d been home when that dragon bastard and his henchmen came to visit.