Dragon Bound

Chapter Eleven

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Chapter Eleven

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As far as conversations went, that really couldn't have gone much worse. Damon felt as though he were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Despite their outward appearances, Damon could feel the inner turmoil between them. Jason was frustrated, angry and a little ashamed. Lune was also frustrated, angry and ashamed. It would have been funny if the situation wasn't quite so dire. The white dragon and the rider were pointedly ignoring each other as they marched, and Damon was left to sigh.

He could neither pacify his angry rider nor comfort the upset Kagame without getting his head damn near bitten off. So, Damon said nothing. This confrontation had made things very real for the little dragon. He now knew that his captivity could be a lot worse, that his freedom could shrink further. It still might.

One of the larger problems that Jason had yet to even address with their new charge was that Lune would need to be accepted by the other dragons in Damon's squad. It they did not accept him; they could very well attack him and that would be bad. Primarily because Damon would have to put himself in between. Flying squads grew and trained together for years, decades even.

New dragons could be added but it had to be done gradually. Lune was too big to be a strike dragon, was without a rider and had no knowledge of dragon squad etiquette. They didn't have years for Lune to get used to their scent, and them to his. They had months. To say the odds were against them was a hideous understatement.

And that was without the added... complication.

Lune finally looked up from the cobblestone he had been glaring at to look at Damon. 'What complication?' he asked. Damon blinked. He hadn't realized he'd dropped his mental wards. Jason opened the door to his rooms and the two dragons stepped inside after him, Lune looking expectantly from Damon to Jason.

'We may as well tell him. He'll hear about it soon enough anyway,' Damon sighed. Jason shot him an angry look, but the black dragon only stared back, unruffled. Jason stalked over to his decanter and poured a healthy measure of scotch into a glass.

'The new riders that went missing during patrol,' Jason said darkly.

'You found them?' Lune guessed. He nodded.

'More or less.' Damon said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.

'Let's go with less. The bodies of the three apprentices were found. Their dragons were gone,' Jason growled. Lune frowned. Had the dragons escaped? Thrown off the control of the collars against their younger, less experienced riders and fled?

'I know what you're thinking and no. We don't think so. At first sight it appeared that the dragons may have escaped but the wounds on the corpses were from animals far bigger. The collars of the beasts were not recovered. There were claw marks, blood, and scales. All from the young dragons that are missing not from wild dragons or the dead humans.' Jason refilled his glass. Damon padded over to his human, growling in a low purr that usually helped soothed the man. Jason shot him another nasty look but didn't rebuke him.

'So... what? They were attacked by someone else?' Lune asked quietly.

'They were taken. It would take multiple riders to steal three young training dragons. Several foreign riders entered the Sun King's land with the intention of stealing dragons. It's as good as a declaration of war.' Jason stared into his glass as he spoke, his shoulders tense.

Lune hesitated then asked, 'Who?' Lune knew little of the human world. He knew vaguely that humans, like dragons, had territories. He understood that the human kingdoms were large and segregated from one another.