Bonds of a Dragon (Book 3 of the Northern Territories Series)

Chapter 3

Bonds of a Dragon

Chapter 3

Ilayda’s POV

I wake up the next morning around 5am and stretch. I take a quick shower and brush my teeth, choosing another pair of athletic shorts and a sports bra. It’s easier to move in and it doesn’t get near as hot. I put on my running shoes and walk toward the kitchen. Apep is there cooking something and Ormr is making coffee. They’re speaking in Draconic, but it sounds like a light hearted conversation.

Apep turns to me, I can feel the heat of his gaze as his eyes wander over my body. I try to control my arousal, I don’t want him to sense what he can do to me with his eyes. He is so freaking gorgeous and he looks delicious in his shorts and fitted shirt, outlining every muscle.

“Good morning, Aziza.”, he greets me with his deep sexy voice.

“Good morning, stalker, Ormr.”, I reply, grabbing the kettle and brushing by Apep as I fill it with water and place it on the stove. His breathing changes when I touch him.

“Good morning, Ilayda.”, Ormr returns.

Anavrin walks in and smiles, grabbing the box of teas from the cabinet, picks one and places it in front of me at the table. I pick one as well and she puts it back up while I collect the fruit bowls from the refrigerator. I fill 2 cups with the steaming water and return to the table, passing one to her.

Ormr and Apep join us shortly after we finish steeping our tea. We eat breakfast, agreeing to separate out and start searching again once we are done. Anavrin and I rinse out bowls and cups. I start grabbing stuff for lunch and throwing it in my bag. I pack the sandwiches I made last night, there are a few for Apep also. He takes the bag as we walk out.

“Are you going to be able to keep up with me, stalker?” I ask him.

He smiles, “Run if you’d like, little one. I won’t lose you.” I grin and take off into the forest, jumping into a tree and carrying myself through the branches quickly to the marker I left yesterday evening. When I reach it, I slow down and start searching the area. I’ve felt Apep’s presence the entire time, I have not lost him, though I’m not sure where he is.

Apep’s POV

We’ve run for hours. She moves so quickly and gracefully, I love watching her. I know we are supposed to be searching. It is a good thing she is because she has been my entire focus. I don’t sense anything out here anyway.

She slows again and squats low on the branch. I smirk as I study her scanning the area. “Are you hungry, stalker?”, she calls out.

I remove my concealment so she can find me. “Come down and eat, Aziza.”, I call back to her. She locks eyes with me and jumps down, moving gracefully to me. The things I’m going to do to her as soon as she accepts me. She accepts the backpack when I offer it to her. She walks over and sits on a fallen tree, I sit beside her. She places a stack of sandwiches in my lap and continues digging in the bag. She grabs 2 waters from it before setting it on the ground, giving me one of the waters and taking one of the sandwiches back.

“Those are for you.”, she tells me as she opens hers and throws the wrapper into the bag.

“You only want one, Aziza?”, I ask her.

She smiles, “I cannot eat near as much as you, stalker.”, she replies before taking a bite of her sandwich. We sit and eat, throwing all of our trash back into the bag.

I wave the bag away when she says we are to continue searching. The bag and all the wrappings were conjured by Ormr. Only the food and water, which we’ve consumed, were real.

We continue the search well into the afternoon when I feel another dragon, it isn’t Ormr. I immediately conceal Ilayda. She looks surprised and stares at me questioningly as she hops down from the tree and approaches me. I step into the concealment with her. “There is another dragon here.”, I tell her.

She looks around, “I only feel you, stalker.”, she replies. I take her hand and pull her alongside me as I move toward the dragon I feel. She can’t differentiate between our power, it is too similar and she doesn’t recognize me as hers. If she did, she would easily be able to tell me from him and she would be able to find my concealment. I would never be hidden from her eyes.

I stop her when I hear voices. She can sense them now. She starts to move toward them and I try to slow her. She turns quickly to me, “What is it, stalker? We need to go check that out.”, she says irritably.

“Aziza, we need to be cautious.”, I tell her.

She glares at me, “You’re not in charge, Apep. I’m going to go check that out and you can come or stay here, I don’t care which you choose.”, she turns to walk away from me.

Anger roars through me, I grab her by her shoulder to yank her back and push her against the nearest tree. She tries to kick and push me away, I catch her arms and yank her up the tree to my eye level, careful not to drag her skin over the bark, forcing my thigh between hers before leaning my hip against her so her kicks are useless. She struggles against me and I wait for her to realize she can’t escape me. She stops fighting, though her body remains stiff as she angrily tucks her face into her bicep to avoid me. She is so feisty and too cute. My anger dissipates quickly from the touch of her skin.

I cup her chin and force her to look at me. “Let me make this clear, Aziza. I want you to be happy, but never at the risk of losing you. If you do as I tell you and allow me to keep you safe, we can run around like vigilantes saving whoever the hell you want to save… for as long as that pleases you. If you aren’t listening and endangering yourself, I will yank you out of here and before you tell me you would just do it without me, you’d never get the opportunity.”, I warn, inches from her face still cupping her jaw. She glares angrily at me, but doesn’t speak. “Are we on the same team or are we leaving, Aziza?”, I ask her.

“Same team.”, she grits out. I release her arms and balance her weight on my thigh, holding her at her waist before stepping back, setting her on her feet again.

“That is a large underground facility. We don’t know how big it is, what’s in there, or if anyone is coming. We do not barrel in there and hope for the best. We watch and we see what they’re doing. I’m going to conceal us and we’re going to go check it out. Give me your word you will stay by me, you will not try to run in.”

Ilayda’s POV

He wants my word that I won’t run in. I’m not sure I’m willing to give it. “What if we decide that it is safe to move in?”, I ask him.

“I will summon Ormr as soon as we know that this is the place we are looking for. We will wait for them. I’m not trying to stop you. We are going in, let’s go decide how first. We don’t just have us to worry about, what if we scare them and they kill the women they’re holding, Ilayda? You can take any man in there, but how many men are down there and how long can you control that many? What if the dragon returns and blocks the exit? I can’t fight him, protect you from the others closing us in, and protect the women if you can’t hold them anymore. There is no reason to take the risk. Ormr and I will get you in and keep you safe.”, he says while studying me.

“I will stay with you.”, I tell him. With his concealment bubble already around us, we start moving toward the facility.

“You can talk to me, they can’t hear you. The bubble conceals our presence only, things around us can still be affected. They will hear it if you knock something down or you don’t move quietly. They can walk into our bubble so avoid their immediate area and stay close to me so we can keep the bubble as small as possible. If they are gifted sight, they will feel my power. I can’t dial it back and hold the bubble, we will have to wait and see if the other dragon has been here. We can get closer if he has, they’ll assume my power lingers from him.”, he tells me.

It feels so weird to walk right in their line of sight, looking at them through the iridescent bubble. Apep takes my hand and pulls me against him “When that door opens, we are going to run through before it is closes again. Move with me.”, he tells me as he scans the area.

The door opens and Apep moves quickly, pulling my back to his chest, dodging stealthily around the men coming out of the building and slipping in as they close the door. We look around the steel building, it looks like some sort of storage facility. There are at least a dozen fae men in here. Some men are monitoring cameras along the back wall, others sitting at tables playing cards.

Apep releases me from his chest and takes my hand, moving toward the monitors. “That will tell us if this is our place and give us an idea of what is in there. It feels like the entrance underground is back there, just beyond that door.”, Apep tells me, gesturing slightly to a set of double doors in the back.

We get to the monitors and see 4 women chained, standing with their arms over their heads and legs shackled to hooks in the floor. Apep studies each of the monitors, I pull my gaze from them to look at the others. It looks like there are 16-20 men here. That shouldn’t be a problem for Apep and I, but I agree to wait.

He says we have to go back out to summon Ormr, because the fae will feel him do it in here. He swears to me that we are coming right back before we move back out the same way we came. We walk the short distance into the trees that surround the little building and further into the forest. I feel the pulse when he summons Ormr. It takes minutes for Ormr to land in front of us and remove his concealment bubble, Anavrin stands beside him. Apep extends his concealment to enclose them with us.

“The entire building and cells are a conjuring, the iron there is pure though. It must have been added after the conjuring. The dragon hasn’t been there in some time.”, Apep tells Ormr.

“If he hasn’t been there, how did you feel him.”, I ask Apep.

“I feel his power, Aziza. It lives in the conjuring.”, he replies.

Ormr explains further, “They won’t be able to tell the difference between our presence and his conjuring. It is too difficult to distinguish. How strong is he?”, Ormr asks Apep, he replies in Draconic. Ormr begins saying something to Apep in Draconic and Apep responds.

I get annoyed, why do they always do that. I feel Apep’s eyes on me when they switch back to speaking in our language. Ormr says he is going to step out of our concealment and create his own, then we are moving in. He instructs Apep to take lead as he has already been inside the building. We separate and they disappear.

“Can you tell where he is?”, I ask Apep, imagining us bumping into each other and giving ourselves away.

“I can feel him, not see him. I can link him as well. We don’t share group links or pack links like other shifters, but we can choose to open a connection to another dragonian nearby and they can choose to accept it. They can hear everything we are saying right now and I can hear them.”, he replies.

I obviously can’t because pixies do not have mind links. As we move back toward the building, I can’t help but compare Ormr’s relationship with Donovan to Apep. Ormr is friends with Donovan, but would never follow him into a place like this. He would take lead even if Donovan had been there a million times. He would just have him give him a memory of it.

That changes into comparing Donovan to Apep. Donovan is graceful, but he doesn’t move the way Apep does. Apep glides over the earth, as if he were a part of it.

Donovan and Apep are both observers, but Apep does so silently and asks few questions. He interprets and acts aggressively, confident in his decision. Donovan is slow to action and leans toward negotiations.

Everything about Apep screams untamed, lethal, predator. Donovan exudes intelligence and power. We make it back to the building and Apep picks up a stone before moving me against him again as we slip inside. I try not to let his body against mine distract me, but he feels so good.

We wait for quite some time, watching the monitors. I focus on the women, but I notice he studies each monitor equally. He tells me Ormr and Anavrin entered once the door was opened again. Apep moves toward the double doors waiting for them to be opened.

It takes several minutes, but Apep pulls me to him and passes through, squatting and wedging the stone under the door quickly and jumping back out of the way. I smile, realizing Apep had already worked out not waiting for Ormr a second time.

The man turns back to see why the door hasn’t closed and spots the stone, stepping back in to kick at it and unblock the door.

“Ormr and Anavrin are in.”, he says as he takes my hand and guides me to move with him down the corridor. The door closes as the man walks away, never realizing he was passed by 4 people. Apep leads us down the stairs and points up at the camera, telling me which monitor each is. He has created a map in his mind that he is using to lead us down into the cells?

“When we get in, they’ll know we are here freeing the women. I’m going to keep you concealed with Anavrin. We will free each woman and you will keep them in the concealment with you. We will keep the captors back and clear a path for you both to move them out. Keep the bubble small by staying close together and get out. Ormr and I will be fine.”, he tells me.

“Does my power work in and out of the concealment?”, I ask him.

He smiles, “Yes, little one. You may use your power whenever you feel it is necessary, but if Ormr or I aren’t right beside you, they will immediately know you are here. Be wise about using it and remain concealed for as long as you can. It is safer for all of you if they don’t even know you’re still here.”, he tells me.

Fae power doesn’t do much to dragonian and most of these men are going to be ready to run once they realize there are 2 here. “I don’t want them all to escape, Apep. We need to keep as many of them as we can for interrogation.”, I tell him.

He pauses for a moment; I assume listening to Ormr. “You go, I will protect your mate, you have my word.”, Apep says aloud.

This is just freaking great! Ormr isn’t going to leave Anavrin in an unsecured area to catch any fleeing and Apep isn’t going to leave me. We are going to have these 2 arguing about who gets to play defender and everyone will escape.

“Ormr will capture any that have escaped once we get outside.”, Apep tells me.

I’m shocked to say the least. “He is going to leave Anavrin with you?”, I ask, confirming Ormr agreed to this and it isn’t just Apep attempting to force Ormr.

Apep tilts his head at me as we move down the corridor. “Of course, it’s the logical choice. You’re unmarked, you’re not leaving my side. He and I have chosen one another. I’m just as capable of protecting his mate as he is and I’ve given my word to do so. No one will touch his mate. This is the door, they’re on the other side. Have Anavrin move forward into my concealment with Ilayda, I’ll open the door and they can enter between us so they aren’t detected.”, Apep answers me and instructs Ormr, reminding me again that they can hear every word we are saying.

Anavrin suddenly steps into the bubble with me and Apep is no longer in it. I glance back as we enter behind Apep and Ormr is right behind us. Apep immediately launches into attacking the 2 men in the room. Ormr stands at the door, looking down the corridor. Apep is quick and lethal, they didn’t even have a chance to call out for help.

Apep picks up the keys and a baton one of the men had on him, turning and flinging the baton at the corner of the room, smashing the camera, then tossing the keys to me before checking the next door. I unshackle each of the women, Anavrin pulls them into the bubble with us as they’re freed. Two of these women are pregnant, why are they still shackled here?

“They’re running, let’s get to the surface.”, Ormr calls out to us.

“This corridor goes further down. I didn’t see anything on the monitors, but I’ll take the rear in case there are others coming up behind.”, Apep returns and waits in the center of the room for us to follow Ormr out. We’re met with little resistance, half of them run the second they see Ormr and Apep, wanting no part in fighting 2 dragonian.

When we reach the surface, Ormr takes off into the sky, concealing himself as he goes after the men fleeing. Apep drags the iron chains out behind him, throwing them on the ground.

“Stay away from the door, the building isn’t cleared”, he tells us.

We move, in his concealment, around the side of the building. Anavrin tells me she sees Ormr returning. All I see is 2 men falling from the sky not far from Apep. Apep shackles the 2 and runs the chain, connecting them to one another, holding the other end so they’re stuck with him.

“What is the other dragon’s name?”, I ask Apep. He tilts his head, but doesn’t look back at me. He doesn’t want them to know anyone, other than the 2 they see, are here.

“What name does the dragon answer to?”, he asks the men chained, growling loudly when they don’t answer immediately.

“Vritra.”, one of them shakily answers.

“Do you know who that is?”, I ask Apep. He studies the men cowering before him.

“Don’t know him.”, he replies simply, never looking away from them.

“Did you expect to?”, the other asks confused. Apep tilts his head at the man, but doesn’t respond.

“Is he who you are looking for?”, the other asks. Apep looks back up and 2 more men fall, crashing hard on the ground. He drags them over and shackles each of them, running the chain through.

The man asks Apep again and he turns locking eyes with him, “Silence or I will eat you, fae.”, Apep growls venomously.

The man leans away, looking straight down at the ground. The fae are terrified of him. He thought Apep might be social, mistaking his softly spoken response to me earlier as him attempting conversation with them.

“Apep, I really want to know where Vritra is if they know.” He looks straight ahead and exhales heavily. I know he is getting annoyed with me, but I want the answers.

“Where is Vritra, how do you reach him?”, he growls out at them.

“C-captain has a number he messages to reach him. We d-don’t know how to find him.”, one of the newest drop-ins respond. 2 more fall and Apep shackles them, running the chain through. Ormr lands and drops his concealment, shackling the man he drug behind him to the others. Apep pulls the chain through.

“That’s all the survivors.”, Ormr says to Anavrin without looking our way. I know by the softness of his tone that he isn’t talking to Apep.

“The other dragon goes by Vritra. Captain has a number in his phone to reach him. Who is Captain?”, Apep asks them. None of them respond. “They can’t find him anyway. Do we need to keep all of them?”, Apep complains to Ormr.

“Might as well, what do you want to do with them?”, Ormr replies bored.

“They aren’t talking so they’re worthless. You’ve drug us in circles for days, only to find his f*****g conjuring. I’m hungry, Ormr!’, he growls out angrily, causing the fae to all flinch. “We can spare 2-3. We will have lunch, then take the others for interrogation. Just keep all the phones and it won’t matter if we eat Captain.”, Apep gruffly finishes.

Ormr growls softly. “Fine. Pick a couple of them, try to choose cleaner ones and I like a nice layer of fat on mine.”, Ormr replies turning to start separating them.

Anavrin giggles, the women are terrified and covering their faces, and I look at her disgusted. “Apep just got here yesterday, Ilayda. Don’t look at me like that. Their conversation is all for the faes' benefit. Similar to vampire, dragonian do have a taste for blood. They don’t require it though and they’ve both eaten multiple meals today. They aren’t hungry enough to want to eat anyone.”, she assures all of us inside the bubble. I find myself wondering if Apep’s bite brings pleasure or pain.

Apep grabs one and pulls him up, moving to pull the chain from his shackles. He starts freaking out and trying to talk Apep out of it.

Ormr says, “The one next to him too, he looks crunchy.” When Apep reaches for the other one, he lets out a high pitched girly scream.

Apep drops his hand and his head jerks back and tilts. Ormr chuckles and turns to study the man, “Dinner theater?”

Apep looks back at him and laughs, “Remember that Opera in Hemsworth?” Ormr throws his head back laughing.

“He is Captain! He is!”, the man squeals as Apep grabs him again, pointing down the line at a man glaring at him. Apep lets him go, dropping him back on the ground with the men chained to him. Ormr moves to the man and stands him up, Apep checks his pockets, tossing everything on the ground until he finds his phone. Ormr pushes him back onto the ground when he sees the phone in Apep's hand.

“The code.”, Apep demands and the captain gives it to him begrudgingly. “Go call your friend to come collect them for interrogation, if he isn’t here in the next hour, I’m eating someone.”, Apep growls out, punching in the code and unlocking the phone, searching through the contacts.

Ormr calls Rayne and tells him our coordinates and listens to Rayne for a second before responding, “4 women and 7 prisoners, possibly more. I still have to clear the building. Better hurry, Apep is hungry and bitchy. He is probably going to eat a couple.”

Apep continues scrolling through the phone and calls out mockingly to Ormr, “I’m offended, Ormr. Here I am, being so kind to your friends.”, and Ormr chuckles.

Apep expands our bubble and conjures chairs inside it for all of us, Anavrin had already conjured clothing for all the women. “Get comfortable, it will be a little while before the others get here.”, Apep calls out, conjuring chairs for them. The softness of his voice indicates he was speaking to us.

We sit and talk to the women as we watch.

Ormr gathers phones and electronics from the men, dropping them in Apep’s lap. Apep sits, leaning back in his conjured chair, his foot down holding the chain and looking through all the phones collected. Ormr went back in the building to search more.