Page 79 of Claimed by the Savage Dragons
He turns up the sound and listens to everything they say before he rewinds it and does it again.
‘Sonofabitch,’ he mutters.
His arms are suddenly around me, pulling me into his lap. I let out a squeak as he buries his face in my hair and breathes me in. ‘Good call hiding, sweetheart.’
Sweetheart?
‘If they’d have got you, Aziel would already have had you moved to somewhere I would never find you. Fuck! I promised you you’d be safe. I’m a liar, Mari. I’m sorry. I’ve done everything wrong since you got here. Maybe even before that.’ He heaves a sigh.
‘He’ll try again and next time you might not be so lucky. I need to get you out of here.’
I look back at him, noting the tortured expression in his dark, tired eyes. I‘m drawn to this one as well and he is to me too. I’m sure of it.
‘Where is there that’s safe?’ I ask.
‘From Aziel? I don’t know. I had no idea that three of those guys weren’t loyal to me. Hell, I didn’t know that he was planning to lock our females up to breed them. Jesus, what is he thinking?’
‘Maybe it’s better that I stay closer to you, then,’ I say quietly. ‘You’re still the Commander for a reason, aren’t you?’
He nods. ‘My dragon is more powerful by far than Aziel or any of his followers. But that won’t matter if he stages a coup, and all of my warriors are on his side. I can’t fight everyone.’ He puts his head in his hands. ‘I wouldn’t want to. They were my friends once, dragons I grew up with, fought with side by side for hundreds of years. For them to turn on me… even though our numbers are dwindling… I knew Aziel was dangerous. I just didn’t realize how far he’d go.’
‘What does he want?’ I ask.
‘A return to what he calls the old ways. Humans enslaved. All humans, not just the few he flaunts around the mountain. He wants all the humans working for our gain. He says it’s their fault that the world is toxic, that our females don’t breed much. He lost his female and a youngling in the Fall. He wants to punish humans for that.’
I stand up. ‘You said that the past few months have been hard for you, that there’s so much to do. Was it not like that before?’
‘Not like this. It just seems like everything I try to achieve as Commander fails. Every trade route is attacked, every outpost is struck with sickness. Bad luck.’
‘Is it?’ I ask, frowning at him as a suspicion starts to unfurl in my mind. ‘You know, our town had a really bad year once. I wasn’t all that old. Water in the well went bad, bridge to the mainland collapsed, animals got sick, there were some fires that seemed natural. We thought it was bad luck until we caught one of the boys from a couple towns over dumping a bucket ofsewage in our well. He admitted to us it was all on purpose. They wanted our fields because they flooded every year. They were really fertile, so we had better harvests. They wanted what we had, but they knew if they came to take it, they’d have a fight on their hands, so they pretended it was just bad fortune. They knew that we’d get tired and leave sooner or later. Maybe that’s happening here.’
He’s silent for a few minutes and then he looks at me incredulously. ‘Jesus. You’re right. You’re fucking right. Of course that’s what he’s doing. Why didn’t we see it? Why didn’t I?’
‘Because you and Brax have been so busy trying to put out fires that you can’t see they’re being started on purpose for all the smoke that’s around,’ I guess.
I frown. ‘You said you’ve been really tired too.’
He nods. ‘Well yeah, there’s always something and all I do is work. There’s not much down time.’
‘But would you say you’ve beenweirdlytired?’ I look at him meaningfully. ‘Like ‘sewage in the well’ tired? Maybe your food isn’t as safe as you think.’
Hi brow furrows. ‘No… He wouldn’t go that far. Poisoning me? No…’
But I can see he’s not quite convinced.
‘Is there something that would do that to you? Weaken you so that when it’s time, he can fight you and, when he wins, it looks fair and square?’
‘Yeah,’ he says after a moment, anger in his tone. ‘There is.’
‘Can you figure out if you’ve been given it?’
He shakes his head. ‘But I know who can.’
He’s grim as he pulls out his phone and presses some buttons.
‘I need you in my office. Quietly. As soon as you can,’ he murmurs to the person on the other end of the line. ‘And bring thespecialmed kit, would you?’
He stares at the screen of his computer for a long time in silence. I ease myself off his lap and sit by the bookshelf on the small red couch as we wait. I can see he’s lost in thought, and that he can’t believe he didn’t see these things happening around him.
