Page 8 of Consorting with Dragons

I thought he wouldn’t answer at first and then he snarled down at me. “I know exactly who you are. You’re a thief and now you’re my prisoner. That’s all either of us need to know.”

My friends surged forward to help me, but his men pushed in front of them and suddenly we were in a standoff. All of his people were bristling with weapons, while we had left ours on board the ship, thinking we didn’t need them for the simple pickup of a crate. All, that is, except for one disruptor, which I suddenly remembered I had stuck down in the waistband of my trousers before we left the ship—just in case I needed it. It looked as if this were definitely the case, so I pulled it out and held it up for him to see.

“Let me go!”

He became incensed at the sight of my disruptor. Angry words—I didn’t understand them, but they sounded angry, anyway—flew back and forth like stinging insects between him and his men. What I thought were threats of violence filled the air, along with some totally unnecessary shoving and name calling.

Okay, maybe that was mostly on my part, but I felt it was more than justified. King Travon and his men had all vanished, and we were alone with these big brutes who wanted to arrest us.

He knocked the disruptor from my hand, and it fell to the floor. A huge fight would no doubt have broken out, because my men were so loyal to me, but then one of the Lycan officials finally came charging over to break it all up. It was too little and way too late, in my opinion. Things had rapidly gone downhill.

The official took me by the arm to pull me away, yet as soon as he did, the blond man holding onto me yanked me back toward him and stared directly down into the official’s eyes like he was challenging him now, and his gaze was suddenly fixed and threatening.

“Leave him to me.He’s mine!”he growled, tucking me into his side. He hadgrowled, like some kind of animal. And why did that make my typpid go hard as a rock?

The Lycan official looked alarmed and began speaking intensely to him, and this time in Lycan—in fact, most of the rest of the rest of their exchange was conducted in the Lycan language, which always sounded like a series of snarls and grunts to me, and I didn’t understand any of it. The official gestured down at me in his arms, and the entire time they were speaking, the insufferable man kept pulling me closer and closer and refusing to let me go, snarling at any of my friends who tried to come closer to help me. He actually snapped his teeth at one of them and pushed another one of them to the floor. I was almost literally wrapped up in his arms by that time, and he showed no signs of letting me go.

The Lycan official asked him a question, still looking from him to me with a shocked expression, and Fortina answered with an up and down jerk of his head. He still looked furious for whatever reason, and the official reacted strongly, first looking equally shocked and then leaning in to speak softly to him, saying what sounded like the same phrase over and over, like he was trying to calm him. Other Lycan officials had come running over to help by this time, and I was surrounded by all these huge men. Slowly, however, they convinced Fortina to let up a little and stop crushing me to his side. One of the officials even reached out gingerly and pulled me away, and he let me go, glaring at both of us suspiciously.

When I was finally free, I stumbled over to my guards, straightening my jacket and shooting him a resentful look back over my shoulder. He was watching me closely as I bent over to pick up my weapon, and I had the feeling that if I tried to make a run for it, he’d be on top of me before I made it two feet. I was embarrassed and really angry, but mostly my heart was racing, and I felt humiliated. In fact, the more I considered it, the madder I got. It was then that I lost all reason and pulled the disruptor up to aim it right in his face.

It was all bravado and temper, and I would never have actually shot him. He gave me such a contemptuous look that I did consider it though. Everyone was yelling, and he held out his hand to me, indicating that he wanted the damn thing—wanted me to just hand it over to him.

That’s when it happened. I meant to brandish it at him and try to scare him a little—to let him know I wasn’t weak. But to my horror, the damn thing went off! Everyone jumped back with loud cries as the general ducked, and the charge zinged over his head. His men started yelling loudly at me and rushed me, knocking me to the floor.

I didn’t mean to shoot him—but I was upset and somehow, I must have knocked the safety off. I was a little out of control and immediately frightened by what I had done, but having gone this far, I wasn’t sure how to get out of it.

Several of his men rushed me, tackling me to the ground. I yelled because I was frightened that they’d kill me, but suddenly, the general was there, dragging me out from under the weight of them and thrusting me behind him. He snarled at his men to back off, apparently, because they all moved away, but if I thought I was in the clear, I was sadly mistaken. He turned to me and roughly began to pat me down, checking to see if I had anything else on me. As bad luck would have it, he felt the knife I kept strapped to my thigh and began jerking down my trousers to get at it.

I began fighting him in earnest then, but the trousers were tight, the way I liked them, so he was basically ripping them off me to get to the knife. By the time it was done, my trousers were hanging off me in tatters, and I was left with mostly just my breka, which was a kind of underwear that only covered my typpid and my balls, as my omak called them.

His eyes widened as he looked down at me, and I stared back up at him as well. To my surprise, he took off his long red capeand wrapped it around me to cover me. I felt the strangest urges sweeping over me, and I had no idea where they were coming from. He looked as rattled as I felt.

Just in time, more Lycans arrived on the scene, shouting at us and pulling us away from each other. He looked stunned, which was the way I felt.

The Lycans finally managed to get him moving away from me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Even though I’d been shocked by his actions, I felt somehow safer when he was near me. At least he was protecting me from his men, who were shooting me glances that should have killed me on the spot. They surrounded him and led him away, speaking urgently to him, and it seemed like he was beginning to come back to his senses, just as he had robbed me of mine.

Holding me by my arm, one of the Lycans began reading something to me, though I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. Finally, I realized he was reading me my rights and that he had just arrested me. All around me, my guards were standing around looking shocked and scared, not knowing what to do or how to help. Kareb was shouting at the officials, but they were ignoring him.

I was so angry and embarrassed that I was pretty speechless at that point and almost naked under the general’s cape. I glared up at the Lycan while he finished saying what he had to say. He began to march me out of the building and onto the outside docks, holding tightly to my arm. It wasn’t terribly cold on Lycanus 3, but it wasn’t exactly warm either, especially when I wasn’t wearing any pants. I stumbled along beside the Lycan, helped by his grip on my elbow, and he led me to a ship. It was a huge, older model star cruiser, which was often used to transport heavy cargo.

He took me inside the alien ship and hauled me down a passageway to the lifts. I was far too angry—and scared—to saymuch. I noticed him staring down at me, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. I was too proud to beg him to let me go. I didn’t think it would have done any good anyway.

When we reached the lower deck, he took me into a small jail cell that had a kind of rack attached to the wall for sleeping and a thing I recognized as a toilet. He put me inside and closed the door. Then he left me there all alone.

It took a moment for the truth to sink in. I was under arrest and being detained on an alien ship. I didn’t know where they were taking me or what they were going to do to me. I sat down on the rack and felt tears spring to my eyes. I dashed them away angrily, folded my arms over my chest and just waited for someone to come and save me.

Chapter Three

Quinn Fortina,

Marshal General of Horvath

I had the beautiful boy arrested because I couldn’t bear to part with him. No more reason than that, but I couldn’t let him know it just yet. I had to keep up this pretense that it was because he’d been caught in an illegal action regarding a vetami egg and then he’d pulled a disruptor on me, even though now that things had calmed down, and I’d had a chance to think, I knew the truth.

Travon had misrepresented his ownership of the egg, and the boy or, more likely, his family had purchased it. As for the disruptor, I knew it had discharged accidentally. I’d seen the look of utter shock on his pretty face.

I’d easily disarmed him. He’d been waving it around like a child would do, and it had been little threat to me. But I would use that as an excuse if I had to. I had to have some good reason for keeping him. And I couldn’t tell him the real reason that he wasn’t going back home. Not now at least. Probably not ever.

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