Dragon Slayer Saga

The smell of sulfur was strong at the mouth of the damp cave. The smell was intermingled with that of freshly disturbed loam, earth, and the unmistakable sweet cinnamon scent of dragon. The beast he had come to dispatch to the seven hells was present.

A hard swallow of nerves caught in his throat. He swallowed saliva gone thick with nerves down and tried to get past the knot of air coming fast from his lungs. This beast had eluded him for many a year, he was determined this time it would not outsmart him. They’d shed each other’s blood, a particularly problematic thing for a Slayer to have happen. It produced a bond that allowed for the dragon to have a way into his thoughts. He hoped his prey was sleeping.

He knew his heavy breathing had been heard when the scream that had shattered many a man’s sanity came forth. It was the scream of torture, desire, anger and promise of death all rolled into one long sinuous sound. The knot he’d been attempting to swallow down went suddenly liquid and dropped into the pit of his stomach and into his bladder. He backed up a few steps and stumbled briefly before righting his balance and dropping to a low crouch and pulling a dagger from the sheath at his waist.

He narrowed his whiskey brown, gone black from dilated pupils eyes slightly as he gazed earnestly into the mouth of the cave trying to discern the shape of Si’Notha. He’d learned the name of his foe after the battle that had seen blood shed on both sides and bound them together as surely as a man with a maiden engaged in an illicit tryst. The brief thought of a tryst tightened his body uncomfortably under his breeches, he shifted around until it was comfortable. Now was not the time to deal with a stray cock stand.

He glanced at the far horizon trying to gauge the time between now and nightfall. The dark half of the year when daylight was only a scant few hours of tepid sunlight gone hazy with the cold, was not in his favor. He had at most only another hour before the beast would be freed from her cave to wander the countryside to her heart’s delight. Not enough time this night to take on Si’Notha. She was too old, too cunning, too mesmerizing.

The Slayer heard the beast exhale long and slow. He could feel the warmth of her exhaled breath from his crouched position outside the cave. He sighed deeply and rubbed a hand over his whiskered face and pulled his waist length wavy black hair into a knot at the nape of his neck, exposing the faint scar that marred the skin there at the base of his throat. The scar had a vaguely heart shape. A fact not lost on him as it had taken on the characteristic coloring that made such marks, faint or not stand out like a beacon. A mark that always attracted attention, a mark that made the long hair not seem as remarkable as it was in a land where men kept their hair shorn tightly to the head. His mark was the same color as his aura, and the exact shade as Si’Notha’s pearlescent indigo scales.

A muffled voice thick with air came caressing out of the cave, “You should go home now, Rhy.”

The words so faint, he pretended to not have heard. In actuality the sound of Si’Notha and her smell caused reactions wholly baffling to Rhy.

He was a slayer, the thirteenth of his family to have the ability to track the beasts, and until he had sons, the last of his name. A slayer simply did not and should not get hard as a rock below the waist by the smell of a dragon or her voice.

He wasn’t sure, but he suspected the mark they each carried from combat had rewired him. It was a thought he did not wish to dwell on for long. It was a thought he pushed aside. For now, despite the warm smell of the dragon, evocative though it was of the spices from his childhood hearth, Si’Notha must die and with her the link they shared.

“Go home, Slayer!” he heard the beast hiss.

“No”, Rhy answered in a voice much stronger than he felt.

A faint sound of amusement filtered from out of the darkness to him on the wind. It sounded suspiciously like the dragon version of a giggle.

Dragons shouldn’t giggle. It felt wrong. Yet sounded so light and teasing, he felt the stirrings of another erection begin. The sound had wrapped down his body so sensually it was more than a sound, it was a touch made real.

The setting sun was inching downward to the earth. He felt her grow stronger with every lost ray of light.

Dragons were bound by their aura to a time of day. Golden dragons were locked into caves when dark fell, Indigo dragons were freed when the last golden ray departed the sky. Indigo dragons were always female and the males were always Golden. Their auras always matched their color. The outer tinges of the aura showed their emotions to any who could see such things. If a dragon was injured and blooded and survived after shedding the blood of the one who blooded them, it bound them together. This was usually something that only happened during the mating ritual. It was what bound a dragon to their mate for life.

A bonding between a slayer and a dragon was unheard of. Rhy could only guess that one of them must die to be freed of it. Si’Notha was unable to attract a mate, and Rhy, he so bound to her that he couldn’t feel emotion for any but the beast he was determined to be free of.

Rhy had suspected, but held faint hope he wasn’t, he was bound to her the first time he came awake in the middle of the night tasting raw meat in his mouth. He awoke startled from a dream of flying to the scent of blood in his nostrils and the taste of a faint metallic copper sliding down his throat. He hadn’t realized it fully that first night, he’d thought it was a particularly vivid dream brought about by not eating for the last several days and being beyond hungry. He’d begun to suspect something had gone wrong when the occurrence only got stronger the more he healed laying in a lean to make shift shelter he’d concocted while trying to not bleed to death from the claw puncture at the base of his throat.

Si’Notha, purred another peal of dragon giggles and moved around in her den, the time to be free and stretch her wings for the night and languish in the cool darkness was almost here. She could feel the last of the setting sun getting ready to die in a blaze of red and purple glory spread across the sky. Soon, she’d be free to leave the cave and fly. Or leave the cave and bat the stupid slayer with her tail into a tree.

Either one worked for her.

She was tired and lonely this night, the shunning from her kind because of her mate bond with a slayer made her a risk to all the rest. He was an attractive human, his youth was troubling. The young of all species were inclined to be bold and brash and act first, think later. She hoped her young and mate bonded slayer was different. All her tired heart wanted was to not be alone, to be a mate and be loved. Instead, her mate was seven hells bent on killing her. Her horror at finding herself bound to a human had come when she heard his thoughts and felt him take another in the heat of lust. She’d realized with a dawning trepidation, that they were both royally screwed, when he’d tried to finish the act and couldn’t because he felt her heartbreak and disgust.

Every night she felt his dreams, and every day he held hers. They both were failing at shielding from each other. The mate bond was acting correctly in keeping the bound mates connected and safe, only dragons were most definitely not supposed to be bound to slayers.