Dragon Bound
Chapter Two

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Chapter Two

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Lune opened his eyes very slowly. Memories of the day before replayed like some fantastic nightmare. The storm, his fall, then his mad flight through the trees whilst being pursued by a human rider and his monstrous black dragon. Lune swallowed. The metal around his throat was tight.

Gods.

It hadn’t been a nightmare.

‘Good to see you’re awake. It’s time to go,’ a voice said inside his head. Lune growled. The light filtering through the trees told him it was late morning. His joints felt stiff but to his surprise, the aching had eased a little. Lilac eyes looked over his own wing. It was wrapped in cloth.

‘Eyes on me,’ said the voice. Lune turned his head towards a small campfire and beside it, a man. This was his first time seeing a man up close. He was tall for a human with a strong jawline and messy bronze, almost rust-coloured hair. The massive form of the black dragon stood behind the rider. Lune shifted nervously. The black was looking at Lune as though he were prey.

‘This may take some explaining and unfortunately, we lack time. This will be difficult for you to accept but accept it you must. You belong to me now, dragon.’ Lune’s growls got louder. He ignored his protesting muscles and rose unsteadily to his four legs, his wings shifting. This collar may make him a prisoner (at least until he worked out how to get the darn thing off) but he was no human’s property!

‘That would be where you are wrong,’ the human said, and Lune started to hiss. The man was reading his thoughts. He felt deeply invaded. His scales crawled with the horrid sensation of foreign magic.

‘You are mine until the day I decide to release you. I will bring you back with me to my king and train you to obey. That process does not need to be unpleasant so long as you remember that your place is now under me.’ It was ludicrous. All of it. Lune could not call his dragon fire but that didn’t mean he was helpless. This man barely came up to Lune’s shoulder!

The white dragon’s tail began to whip back and forth with his anger. His mental presence was so different to Damon’s. Where Damon was a wall of rage and fire, this dragon was like ice and fog. The feathers along the creature’s body began to fluff out and the spines on its tail stood straight up like a blow fish.

Damon thought briefly of an angry hissing cat with its bristled tail. Jason quite agreed. The wild dragon hissed loudly, flicking its tail. Its spines knocked together to produce a rattling sound not unlike the rattler on a snake. Jason knew what was about to happen and mentally warned Damon not to interfere. It needed to happen for this young one to fully understand.

Lune lunged for the human. The man sidestepped with a grace Lune had not really expected a human to possess. He brought his tail up to impale the rider’s torso.

‘Stop.’ The word, spoken out loud, activated the collar. Blue runes exploded like fire along the hot metal and Lune was frozen mid stride. As though struck by lightning, Lune’s entire body tingled with magic from nose to tail tip. Magic that wasn’t his. The metal band around his throat pulsed faintly. He struggled against its presence, thrashing like a fish in a net. The magic was like a living thing. It moved and it flexed. It was his own will pressing against the rider’s.

What Lune did not understand was that it was not just his will against Jason’s. It was his will against Jason’s and Damon’s. He could not win but that was a lesson he would need to learn on his own. This crucial moment was why the very first riding dragon a rider takes on was so important. Then it really was one on one. It was a fight that Jason had nearly lost against his fiery ebony dragon. It was a fight that many inexperienced riders lost and paid for with their lives and why so many young riders chose hatchlings. But Jason had prevailed, and Damon had finally accepted him as master. This dragon would too.

Lune still couldn’t move. His whole body vibrated. He wanted to move, needed to move, but all he managed was to pull his wings in against his body, screaming in frustration.

Impressive.

Jason had to take slow even breaths to keep the magic in check. Even injured, the beast was powerful. Jason suddenly wondered if he would have been able to control the creature without Damon’s help. It sent a little jolt of adrenaline and arousal through his blood. This was the challenge he’d been waiting for for all these years.

Lune went limp in his ethereal bonds, gasping for breath and shaking with rage and fear. A plaything to a human. His life could not result in this.

‘Not a plaything,’ the human said smoothly. The man reached a hand towards Lune’s neck. Lune could nothing to stop him but growl.

‘You won’t be my plaything. You will be my dragon. I will be your master, your trainer, and your protector.’ Protector. The word was so foreign to Lune. If he could have, he would have shaken his head. Get out of my mind!

‘You will have your own thoughts when you can be trusted with them,’ Jason said and the white dragon roared again, its tail twitching dangerously. Jason turned his back on his new dragon. Damon eyed him, his irises gleaming. He lowered himself to allow his rider to swing easily into the saddle.

‘Up,’ Jason ordered and with a simple snap of his fingers, the magic sigils on the ground broke apart, allowing the dragons to fly.

‘Damon, you will need to fly without my guidance. It’s going to take everything I have just to keep him beside us,’ Jason murmured privately to his dragon. Damon huffed but made no argument. He could feel Damon’s eagerness to get home. Lune shrieked as he leapt into the air. He flapped his wings madly, trying to put as much distance between him and the insanity that was the human rider. He was rising faster than the black dragon could.

Suddenly it was like a leash going taut. Lune was wrenched around in mid-air, the collar about his throat glowing. The pull was so violent that Lune nearly fell out of the sky again, choking as he tried to orient himself.

Damon felt Jason lurch in the saddle. Controlling a dragon on the ground was one thing but controlling a moving dragon in the air was far harder. The easiest thing for them to do would be to force this new dragon into a humanoid form and tie him up. That way Damon could just carry Jason and the brat back home easily. The problem was that the first transformation to a human form was always rough and potentially dangerous. Not every dragon could make the change without complications. It was always best for the first transformation to be done around plenty of trained magic users and medics just in case. He knew Jason would never forgive himself if he forced the little dragon to change only for it to die.

Damon concentrated on flying. He kept as close as he could to the white dragon though the other dragon’s constant thrashing and long spines made Damon nervous. He didn’t particularly like the idea of getting one of those spines lodged in his wing or flank. But the closer he flew; the easier Jason could cast his magic on the other beast and Damon knew his master would soon need all the help he could give.

The flight was painfully slow.

They had to stop several times. When they landed it was Damon’s size and strength that stopped the white dragon from fleeing. Jason had to use the time on the ground to rest. The white dragon was doing little better. Its breathing were laboured, and it flew slower and slower every hour as its injuries began to play up. Jason didn’t have the strength to force the beast to be immobile when they next landed so he had to rely on Damon to pin it down whilst Jason applied more ointment to its wounds.

Damon too was reaching his limit. He had been flying for hours and having to wrestle with the wild dragon every time they landed was making him irritated. He was both pleased and infuriated with the little dragon’s rebellion. It was ridiculous but Damon remembered his own capture in his youth and knew he would be doing exactly the same.

He had met his own capture with raw hot fury, but he could see the look of despair in the little dragon’s lilac eyes as they travelled. They had left the lush wild valleys and were moving closer to more civilised lands. They had already begun to fly over the first of the neat patchworked crop fields. The river had been dammed and was now a more controlled little stream they followed northwards. There was the scent of cattle and their waste as well as the scent of more humans.

Despite his clear exhaustion the white dragon’s struggles got more and more frantic the closer to civilisation they got. Damon regarded the little dragon beneath him, feeling the little one’s limbs shaking. The large black dragon lowered his head and began to gently groom the short feathers between the white’s wings, trying to give comfort if in only a small way.

Lune didn’t have the strength to lift his head from the ground. He had shuddered at the feel of the grooming. A sound escaped his throat, somewhere between a groan and a squeak. He had tried everything he could to break the magic bond with the rider. Nothing worked. He could not see the man from his position, and he didn’t bother trying. He wanted to pass out again. Soon it might not be a choice. He might just pass out anyway.

‘Bring him here,’ Jason sighed wearily. They were all exhausted. He had spent the last half hour laying sigils into the earth. He had no chains to physically bind the white dragon so he would have to do it with his remaining magic reserves. He checked and double checked his work, confident it would hold. He watched with a stunned expression as Damon had to basically dragged the smaller dragon over. It’s stubborn refusal to cooperate was something Jason had hardly ever witnessed.

The sigils activated as Lune was tossed into the circle. He flinched away from Jason’s hand, hissing weakly. Jason sighed.

‘Try to find something for us to eat. The sigils will hold him until morning,’ Jason groaned, swaying on his feet a little. Damon glanced once at his master then at the trapped white dragon before nodding and taking flight again. Jason slowly built a fire and was happy and relieved when Damon came back with a large buck not more than an hour later. He cut off a large slab of meat for himself before letting Damon rip the carcass apart.

Damon dropped the back half of the stag in front of the white dragon. The little dragon just glared up at him. Damon let out a snort and took his own meal off to eat beside his master. As he turned away, he heard the tell-tale crunching to say that the captive was eating.

The next day was just as exhausting and painful as the first. They would have to travel much further today. They could not stop as the human population below was becoming too large to simply land anywhere with a wild and untrained dragon with them. Damon began to think fondly of the deep hot springs that lay underground around his home. He imagined laying in the water to soak, letting his wings spread out in the steaming water.

‘Damon.’ Jason’s weak voice broke through his musings. His master was tense in the saddle again.

Lune was barely able to stay in the air. It was now his own desire to stay airborne though. The sight of the cities below filled him with a deep dread. He childishly thought that if he could just keep flying then perhaps, he would never have to go down into that world of humans. The collar still glowed about his neck. In the distance his fuzzy sight made out shapes. At first, he thought his exhausted brain was just making them up but… no. They were definitely getting bigger.

Other dragons. His head lifted a little higher. His spirits plummeted at the sight of the figures riding them. They were not wild dragons. Each dragon had a plate of armour across its torso with a design of a crown inside a blazing sun. The riders each wore a light brown leather uniform. They were closing in fast. Lune became distantly aware as they pulled in that they were calling out in their language, talking to the rider on the black dragon.

Jason fought the urge to groan. He tried to pull himself up in his saddle and make himself more presentable. He had known the other knights would fly out to meet him. Any dragon flying this close was going to call attention to itself although Damon’s black colouring was easily identifiable. At least they wouldn’t get shot at.

‘Gods, Jason. You look like shit,’ Garret laughed. Garret was a powerfully built man in his late thirties. He rode a bulky grey and green stone dragon. His dragon was all about brute force and not much else, just like his rider.

‘It’s about time you dragged your skinny ass back. I was getting ready for the king to order us to go retrieve your corpse,’ Kyril sneered. Jason ignored him. His white dragon was looking worse for the wear. He needed to get him to the ground.

‘Sorry to disappoint. Now, if you are quite finished, I have a new dragon to land,’ Jason said, silently congratulating himself that his voice came out strong. The other knights then looked at his travelling companion. Kyril let out a bark of laughter.

‘That thing looks half dead too. Would be kinder to put it out of its misery.’ Kyril slung his bow off his back and nocked an arrow. Damon let out a roar.

‘Fuck off with you, Kyril,’ Garret barked.

‘Just a jest,’ Kyril laughed, though he looked at Jason’s red face with a malicious grin. Jason spurred Damon towards the keep and Damon dove. The little white dragon was forced to go too.

Lune didn’t land so much as he simply crashed into the gravel courtyard. There were humans and dragons alike. People talking, people yelling and Jason’s voice.

‘Get out of the way. I need a medic!’ Lune was vaguely aware of Damon’s snout against his own and then nothing but blissful blackness.

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‘So, you have returned to me at last. Cutting it very fine, aren’t you?’ The Sun King prowled around Jason’s kneeling form. Jason was deeply grateful that he had been able to return to his quarters for a much-needed bath, shave and change of clothes. He had eaten his supper and made sure his uniform was impeccable before coming to the throne room. He had dismissed Damon and his dragon had very eagerly gone to the stables for a large meal and sleep. Jason’s new dragon had been taken to the stall next to Damon’s. The medics had done all they could and now the young dragon would need to sleep. Fortunately, the little dragon was finally in a place where he could sleep all he liked. Jason could keep an eye on him.

‘My apologies, my king,’ Jason said, respectfully keeping his head bowed.

‘My knight Kyril tells me you have returned with a dead dragon.’ The king sounded amused. Long sharp fingers traced the back of his neck. Jason shivered.

‘He sleeps but he is very much alive,’ Jason growled. He was one of the very few people in the land that could give any sought of attitude to the king and live to tell about it. His impudent if frank nature was somehow endearing to the king. Jason risked the man’s wrath now and looked up at him.

‘Would you like to see him, my king?’ he asked, keeping his gaze as steady as he could under those gold eyes. The king regarded him with a sly smirk.

‘Lead the way.’ The king gestured towards the massive marble double doors. Jason got to his feet and led the way to the stables. The king’s desert gold dragon followed silently behind them. The staff scattered. It was getting late and the sight of the king, walking through the courtyard at this unusual hour caused alarm. Jason’s boots clacked against the cobblestone floor of the stables.

They were called stables but really it was a mockery of the word. The building was utterly massive, the floors heated, the ceiling high and each ‘stall’ was its own masterpiece. The higher in rank the rider, the better the stall. They passed Damon and Jason was unsurprised to see his dragon fast asleep. The ebony beast didn’t even stir as they went by. They came to a halt. Jason hardly dared to breathe as the king stepped in close. The man said nothing, just opened the door and walked in.

‘We only found him two days ago. Barely got him back here,’ Jason murmured. The king slowly walked around the unconscious dragon. He reached out a gold hand and ran his fingers over the gorgeous white pearly scales. He touched the feathers, the wings and the creature’s muzzle.

‘Do you understand what you have captured?’ the Sun King asked.

Jason swallowed. ‘I’m not familiar with the exact breed, my king,’ he admittedly a little sheepishly.

‘He is a Kagame Dragon. There has not been one like it in captivity for… several hundred years,’ the king mused. He would know. Jason had never dared ask but he was sure the king was several hundred years old himself. That was the power of the magic the man possessed.

‘I have not seen one since I was a teen,’ the man added. Jason stepped closer and the king turned to him, gold eyes bright.

‘You have outdone yourself. Again, it would seem,’ the man said, and Jason fought hard not to grin. The king’s hand came up to cup Jason’s chin.

‘Be sure you look after him Jason. He is worth more than you are,’ the king purred. Once again there was a flicker of fear and desire in Jason’s belly.

‘I will sir,’ he promised.

‘Get some rest my knight. I get the feeling you will need your strength for what you have embarked upon.’

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Lune didn’t rise on his first day in the compound. He was aware of humans. He could hear the sound of moving water. He was strangely comfortable and wasn’t sure he was able to move even if he wanted to. He had A strange dream the night before. He had dreamt of a golden godlike creature or maybe a demon. It had stood inside his cage with him and touched him on the muzzle.

Hands were grabbing at Lune’s snout. He gave a weak annoyed growl. Mouth pried open, a tube was placed between his teeth. Bitter liquid spilled across his tongue. He nearly choked as he swallowed. Then a thick salty broth poured over his palate and Lune drank it down. The broth was strong and good. His stomach had been rumbling for a while. When the tube was gone, he became aware of the man’s scent, the one who had captured him. He could also smell the black dragon close by too.

There was the slosh of a bucket and Lune hissed faintly as a hot soapy cloth touched his shoulder. The man was washing him. Lune closed his bleary eyes and surrendered to the feeling. It was pleasant to be clean. His scales were scrubbed and polished. Hours may have gone by with Lune drifting in and out of sleep. His wounds were cleaned and rewrapped, and Lune was left in peace to sleep more deeply.

Jason watched his new dragon carefully. He had been worried that the beast would spit out the feeding tube when the medics arrived. The dragon needed to eat in order to heal. Of course, the sheer amount of broth made in the large cauldron for the dragon would have been enough to feed a small village. He brushed his hand over the silky scales. The medics had dosed him up pretty good. Thankfully most of the dragon’s injuries had been superficial. With some good rest the wings should heal without any ill effect. Jason had personally washed his new dragon from nose to tail.

Grooming was vital for dragons living in colonies in the wild. They groomed each other to bond. Jason’s father had taught him to groom his own dragon to establish a bond and Jason had always enjoyed the process. It was therapeutic in an odd sought of way. When he was done with his white dragon, he went next door to Damon’s stable. Damon had slept most of the day as well and greeted his master with a quiet snort. Jason had already organised for a smoked bison to be brought to Damon for his supper. Expensive, but Damon had more than earned it.

As he began to brush down Damon’s inky black scales Jason thought about tomorrow. With his return, he knew the news about what he had brought back with him would soon be passed to every rider in the country. It had been bad enough when he had captured Damon. This white dragon would be another level entirely. Hearing his thoughts through the bond, Damon chuffed in agreement.

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When Lune woke the next day around noon, he felt far more lucid.

He was able to lift his head without the room spinning. He felt very relaxed. Lune stretched out his legs, his talons clicking against the warm ground. The cobblestone floor was heated. The sound of running water he had been hearing was a deep stone basin against the wall. Water ran from a gap in the stone roof, into the basin. From the basin it flowed down a hole in the corner, like his own little creek. He liked the sound. It reminded him of the waterfalls back home. Lune felt a pang of sorrow. Despite his best efforts he still wore the damned collar. He shuffled to get up, muscles stiff.

Lune sniffed at the water. It smelt fresh and good, so he dipped his nose and drank. The area of floor he had been sleeping on was on covered in woven bamboo mats. In the mountains, dragons would normally build nests from fronds or other soft vegetation. He wondered briefly how the humans had managed to heat the floors. His prison was at least decently sized. It was big and high enough for him to completely stretch out his wings and long enough for him to walk and roll. The enticing scent of blood drew his attention to the massive steel door at the entrance of his stable.

Half a dozen fat chickens had been laid out neatly, already plucked of their feathers. Lune crept over, his eyes darting nervously back and forth. When he was convinced something wasn’t going to jump out at him, he arched his neck and sniffed. Again, there was that scent. Buttery leather, cedar, and honey. It was the rider’s scent, and it was clearly he who had plucked and left the chickens for Lune to eat. Lune grumbled to himself. He was definitely hungry, but he didn’t want to take food from that man. Heck, he didn’t want to take food from any man!

Lune prowled slowly around the stable, sniffing carefully. He bumped his nose along the wall, scenting for the smallest of mouse holes. Cracks in the mortar, rust on the hinges, anything that could reveal a weakness he might exploit. Around and around he went, unknowingly watched.

‘He’s very thorough,’ Garret mused. Jason nodded, fascinated.

‘He’s checked the hinges again,’ Jason murmured. The little white dragon was running a claw against the edges of the door.

‘Going to have to keep a sharp eye on that bastard,’ Garret sniggered. Jason had to agree.

Lune sat back on his haunches with an annoyed snort. Nothing. The short bit of exercise had helped loosen him up if nothing else. Outside he could hear a roaring wind. There was a scent of rain in the air and Lune inhaled slowly. His stomach rumbled loudly with hunger.

Well.

If he was stuck, he might as well eat the damn chickens.

Once he was done, he curled up comfortably on his warm mats and began to groom himself. He was a fastidious eater and made sure to clean every last drop of blood. He was already drowsy as he dragged his talons through his feathers, and it occurred to him in a sought of haze that there was a good chance the meat might have been laced with something. That was about as far as his thoughts got before he was asleep again.

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END

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