Dragon Bound

--

Chapter Ten

--

Jason did not take them back to his chambers. Instead, both dragons were taken to the stables. When Lune went to follow Damon into his stall, Jason stepped in front of him.

‘No. You will be staying in your own stall for now,’ he said. Damon spun around. He had opened his mouth to argue when Jason slammed the heavy door shut in his face. Lune was glaring at him, those lilac eyes almost iridescent in the low light. They looked pitifully wet.

He stamped into his own stall and turned his back on Jason as the rider closed the door. He felt the prickling all over his body and had to hurry to remove his clothes as his body was forced to transform into its original shape.

He dropped onto all fours as the white scales flowed down his spine. He stood for several moments, shaking off the horrible feeling of the sudden change. He hadn’t expected to be separated from Damon. He lifted his nose, sniffing the dusty air. Damon was close but there were no windows in the walls, and he couldn’t see the black dragon.

His wings drooped. He didn’t understand this new hardness in Jason. This new colder, more distant man. He hadn’t been able to hear what the forge master had said but he had seen the shadow pass over Jason’s features. What concerned him more was what he had felt coming across the link he shared with the rider. It was like a tightening of the chains. He felt the iron will and the decided resolution in Jason’s mind.

Lune didn’t know what was about to happen to him. But he had a horrid feeling that this was only the beginning.

--

Lune did not see Damon once for the next several days. His own anger, misery and indignance were so great that he refused to acknowledge anyone who came near his stall. Even Gabe’s sugar cubes went unnoticed as Lune brooded on his heating mats, curled up tight.

‘I needed you to see what you had agreed to,’ Jason had said to him. Lune had thrown a tail quill in his direction. Unfortunately, that had been the last thing the rider had said to him. Jason had come to collect him for grooming, feed times and short sessions but not once did he say anything. Lune hadn’t realized how much he had enjoyed the quiet words and soft touches of the man. Now he was only touched by the brush or the leather head straps of the bridle. Contact was brief and verbal communication was non-existent. He almost missed it. Still, he didn’t want to admit that out loud.

Underneath his emotions of anger and misery, Lune felt lost. He didn’t know what to do. He knew the chances of escape were practically zero. To even stand a chance he would need to get out of this stall, to get up in the air but even the thought of flying with the riders made him shudder with disgust.

It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t understand how the human could treat the little dragons so different to their riding dragons. Just because they were smaller, they were viewed as less valuable. It was awful.

He missed Damon’s company. Jason had closed the mental link they shared, completely cutting off his connection with the black dragon. He wondered just how long this could go on. How long would Jason confine him? Lune was aware of the other visitors that came by his stall.

Other riders.

They all muttered in low voices how they would best handle Lune’s negative attitude. Attitude. As though Lune was a misbehaving puppy instead of an imprisoned and enslaved dragon. He didn’t want any of them to touch him. He squeezed his eyes shut. Could it be that Jason would give him away to one of them? Had he given up on trying to train him?

Lune just didn’t know what to do.

--

Jason didn’t know what to do.

The last week had been hell. Lune was refusing every order. He now only moved if Jason forced him to. He still took Lune out, groomed him and fed him. He had the little dragon walk laps of the arena if only to make sure his muscles didn’t weaken from so much inactivity inside his stall. He had tried to be stricter, to limit what he said and how he touched. The idea was that his touch would be the reward for Lune’s performance but far from trying harder, the little dragon just shut down.

Damon was in a foul mood as well and consequently, every practice session with Jason’s squad had been a stressful and difficult ordeal. Damon’s terrible mood made him more likely to snap at the other dragons in the squad, much to everyone’s annoyance. He even got into a scrap with Amara’s lapis filly whom he usually got along well with. His anger with Jason was secondary. What he really wanted was Lune back by his side. He was torn between his loyalty to his master and his desire to have his mate.

It was exhausting.

Jason had spent the last few days poring through his father’s old journals. His father had broken in many dragons during his career. He had recorded every location, every species, and every week of training. His father had never caught anything as rare as a Kagame, but he had laid out careful notes of the temperament of each beast he had brought in. He had decades of experience with dealing with difficult dragons. The Sun King had seldom allowed a capture and release, especially for an animal of rare breeding. There had to be something helpful in these books. Jason read with almost feverish desperation.

His greatest worry was that if Lune could not accept his captivity, then he would simply shut down. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. It was a warning all young riders were given when training their dragons. In his father’s most recent journal before his death was a story confirming Jason’s worst fears.

He had written of the capture of a small Ziemia filly from the outskirts of the Desert of Glass. The filly had been utterly unwilling to obey. Collared and returned to the king’s stronghold she had refused to be domesticated in any way.

Jason read with a growing feeling of dread how his father had attempted to ride her. Only by activating the collar had the filly been ridable. She attacked anything, man or beast that came near her stable and had broken several teeth from constantly chewing on the bars of her enclosure. After several weeks she stopped doing even this. She stopped moving and stopped eating. She would not function unless made to by the collar. By the end of the third week, she had begun to lose her scales and the rider understood that further captivity would likely result in her death. Now too weak to fly, unwilling to eat or drink on her own, his father considered simply euthanising her.

Jason flipped through the pages rapidly, scanning days worth of entries for the resolution. His knee was bobbing up and down almost violently as he pored over the book. Finally, he found the page he was looking for.

With little other options his father had decided to try one last idea. He took the filly and released her into a breeding enclosure. He released a male dragon into the same enclosure. His writing described his worries that the male would attack the weakened filly. When an animal was in such poor condition it wasn’t unusual for another of its kind to turn against it. He didn’t though. An experienced stud, the older male had been able to woo the filly out of her misery. She had never become a riding dragon but with the king’s consent, Jason’s father had the filly become a breeder. Her first clutch of eggs had been good.

One of the hatchlings had become Sir Fredrick’s riding dragon, a knight from Jason’s own flying squad.

Jason sat thinking for a long while. He knew Damon may very well be the best way to win both Lune’s co-operation and his obedience but how best to use this information, he wasn’t sure. Slowly, he closed the massive journal and stowed it away on the old shelf. He knew Damon wanted the little Kagame. He knew that the two would pair and form a mate bond. He closed the book and ran a hand through his hair. It was tangled and greasy. He sighed.

‘Come on,’ he murmured.

Damon looked up from where he had been brooding by the fire. ‘Where are we going?’ he grumbled.

‘To wash. Then you and I are going to have a long conversation about your mate.’

--

It was the seventh day since Lune had told Jason he hated him. Two days since the last time the rider had come to see him. Lune was bored, hungry and quite miserable. Gabe hadn’t come to see him either. At this point he would have enjoyed seeing the forge master. Any familiar face really. He felt sure that people snuck past his stable. Even in the middle of the night he would wake, his scales creeping with the feeling of eyes on him. Woken from half dreams he would rock his feet, smoke curling from his nose as something moved outside.

Peering through the slits in the wood, a thick indefinable presence.

Occasionally dragons would call out in their stalls. None of their voices were familiar. He missed the calls of his old clan mates. Of his mother. He wondered how they were. If they ever thought of him. He doubted it really. Dragons like to live in the now. As far as his mother was concerned, Lune had grown up and flown away as young males should when starting to hunt for a territory and filly or two of their own. He let out a breath and found the air he drew in to be strange and bland.

The sound of heavy boots woke him from his half doze. He stretched gingerly, tail wavering from side to side. He was ready to warn off whoever it was when he paused. The hot wind brew threw the dusty railings and with it, a familiar scent.

Jason looked older. It was ridiculously really. It had only been a few days, but the rider did look older. Or maybe it was just the unkept wrinkles of his uniform and dusting of stubble. The two looked at each other. Dragon and rider.

‘Would you like to come out of here?’ Jason asked. Lune shifted, his stance stiff. He didn’t want to speak to him. He turned up his snout in a bratty gesture. He heard the man sigh and it sounded almost angry. Lune didn’t care.

‘The king won’t allow you to be set free. I would be lying if I said that I want to let you go. I don’t. I won’t and I can’t,’ he said. The silence stretched on again. The rider took a breath, let it out and continued. ‘If you follow me now, I will take you to a new pen. Depending on your behaviour, you can share it with Damon.’ Lune’s head lifted just a little, but he didn’t get up. He didn’t want to show just how anxious he was to see the black dragon again.

‘Will you come on your own?’ Lune gave a low hiss, but Jason’s face was like marble. Hard and utterly set. It was then that he understood that this wasn’t really a conversation. The white dragon stood and after one more moment’s hesitation, followed Jason out of the dark stable. The walk felt longer than any Lune had ever done. He glanced nervously from side to side. His tail kept bumping off the walls and into buckets. Every time it did, he jumped.

The new stable was far larger, similar to the one he and Damon had shared. He didn’t even wait for Jason, desperate to be outside, he trotted out the double doors to the open enclosure.

There was sunshine, there was grass. Lune unfurled his wings, delighted to feel the blazing sun on his scales and the hot wind around his body. He tried to forget the metal bars all around him for a moment and took in the fresh air. He paced a little, clawing up the earth just for the fun of it. A sound caught his attention, and he looked around. There was another enclosure beside this one with a large gate between them.

Slowly, from the depths of the stall on the other side of the bars, emerged Damon.

Lune couldn’t contain his excitement at the sight of the black dragon. He hadn’t really acknowledged just how much he had missed his company. Damon let out a puff of thick coiling smoke, his eyes bright. He strode towards the fence line, the hot sun reflecting off ebony scales.

‘Stop.’ Jason’s command cut the air like a bull whip. Both dragons froze. In his excitement, he had almost forgotten Jason was there.

‘You are out here because I need to see an improvement in you Lune,’ Jason said, his voice uncharacteristically hard. Lune shot him an angry glare. He turned back to the fencing, intending to call Damon but when he did, the black dragon did not come. He stayed where he was, his muzzle turned towards his rider.

Lune called again. Still Damon did not come.

‘He is mine. Just as you are. Unlike you though, he obeys me,’ Jason snapped. The Kagame looked from Damon to Jason and back. The joy he had felt at the sight of the large male was shrinking inside him, shrivelling away like water through cracked earth.

‘Your freedom revolves around whether or not your behaviour improves. Do not forget that. You can go to him,’ Jason said with a sharp nod to Damon. The black dragon seemed almost to cringe, but he came forward toward the other enclosure. The black dragon stuck his snout through the bars, trying to snuff him but Lune was already striding around, his wings snapped tight to his body and his tail quills rattling. Damon gave a low commiserating whistle, but the white dragon refused to come any closer to the bars.

The first signs were not as promising as Jason had first hoped. He knew that their separation would not have been easy but Damon’s obvious choice to follow Jason’s order then go to Lune’s side had made things worse. It didn’t seem to matter that Lune had sworn to the king that he would never force Damon to choose between them.

Jason’s fingers were bloodless where he tightly clenched the stall door handle. Every day he wasted trying to get Lune’s cooperation was another day that would be used against him. Every day the other riders made comments about his lack of progress. It was only a matter of time before the Sun King learnt of this new resistance.

Who was he trying to fool?

Undoubtedly, the Sun King already knew. In which case, it was potentially only days before the king ignored Jason’s wishes and decided to find other uses for the Kagame. He was running out of time. With that thought firmly in mind Jason closed his eyes and snapped his fingers.

Lune jerked upright at the first feeling of Jason’s magic. The sigils along the collar glowed and his body began to change. After a week of staying in his true form, to go back to a human was incredibly unpleasant, more so than usual. His height vanished as his bones shrank. Hair flowed down his back. He folded his pale arms across his naked chest, shivering. He felt smaller than ever as Jason came towards him. Was the older man always so towering? Did he always have those hard lines across his face? Lune flinched when Jason grabbed his arm.

‘Come,’ Jason said. He dragged the dragon back into the stall and away from the sunlight. Damon watched them go, his wings limp at his sides. Lune tried to pull his arm free.

‘I can walk,’ Lune snapped. He let out a yelp when Jason forcibly swung him around in front. His fingers were bruising, his eyes dark with anger. The first true hints of the rider’s frustration were finally leaking through.

‘I know you can, but you won’t unless I make you, so I removed that choice.’

‘You always removed the choice! I didn’t ask to be captured!’ Lune shouted, firing up at once.

‘Well, you have been and it’s about time you accepted it.’ Jason snarled.

Lune bared his teeth like an angry cat, shoving uselessly at the larger frame. ‘I don’t want to!’

’I don’t care what you want!’ Jason roared. It was so loud that it cut through the mundane noise of the stables. The shuffling and rumblings of the other animals went quiet. Magic leeched from Jason’s body, coiling in the air, making it thick, making it difficult to breathe in. Lune had never seen the man so angry before. The fingers around his forearms were digging in painfully.

‘You’re hurting me.’ Lune rasped. Jason shook him then, hard. His head snapped back and then forward.

‘I don’t understand why you keep playing at being so fucking thick so let me lay it out for you. In a couple of months’ time, if you are not on form, then I will lose my title. Damon will be sold off to another rider. You will either be publicly executed or tortured by another rider until you are little more than a toy for breeding purposes. Do you understand? Those are your choices!’ Jason shoved him then. The force was so violent that Lune was hurled back. His naked frame hit the ground hard, skin scraping. He stared up at the rider, his eyes wide.

‘I’m done with this Lune. Make your choice. Keep your word to the king and start your training or stay here and wait for someone else to come get you.’ Lune shook from head to toe. His fingers nails were digging into his bleeding palms.

‘Fine.’ It was all he could manage. He glanced up and flinched again. Jason looked like he wanted to hit him.

‘Fine?’ Jason snarled. He was about to really lose control. Lune could see that now. Not even the connection they shared with Damon was helping to relieve the rage.

‘I will keep my word to your king and train as a strike dragon,’ he croaked. He hated how meek he sounded, how pathetic.

‘Then get up,’ Jason snapped. On trembling legs, Lune managed to stand. This time Jason did not drag him. He just turned and stalked out of the stall and Lune had to run to catch up. He was still naked, but he didn’t bother to ask for clothes.

As he ran, he clutched at his own arms, trying to rub away the dark purple bruising.

--

END

--