“He won't find us.”
“What if the spell didn't work? Dragons can track their mates. Even through air. If he tracks the human here, we're dead. He won't give us a trial. This is his mate. He will kill us.”
“The spell worked. I tested it.”
“How?”
“I shifted in the garden while they were asleep. Walked around for a bit. When they came down this morning, the King didn't smell me. None of his guards did either.”
Someone grunted.
“It held,” another man said. “Those Dragons would have been all aflutter at the scent of a Tyasmoran in the King's private garden.”
“So, we don't have to worry about the King tracking his mate. But if he gets close enough, he'll still scent him.”
“Under three feet of stone? I don't think so.”
“We should be prepared for any possibility.”
“He'll tear apart the city to find his mate. We should have moved him when we had the chance. The plan had been to leave the city.”
“That wasn't possible in daylight.”
“That's why you were supposed to take him at night.”
“Oh, certainly. I should have just slipped him out of the King's arms while they slept and leapt off the balcony.”
“Yes, well, why did we plan it if it wasn't possible?”
“Because we thought it would be. We didn't know what we were dealing with until he went in.”
“It won't matter where we are once he teaches us about his magic. Then we'll have the strength to stand up to the Dragons.”
“At last,” someone muttered.
So, this was a rebellion. But wait. What were they talking about? Who was going to teach them magic? Surely, they didn't mean me?
“Hey!” A loud metal clanging came. “Human! Wake up!”
I guess that's all the reprieve I was gonna get. I pretended to wake up—groaning as I opened my eyes. I was on a narrow bed in a room with a dirt floor. A toilet sat in the corner with a stone sink nearby. The walls and ceiling were stone as well, but the walls weren't smooth like the sink and ceiling. Big rocks, piled on top of each other, formed them. One of the walls of my guest room was your standard metal prison cell bars. Through those bars, I saw the rest of the room. Most of the furniture was out there, including several work tables crowded with stuff that looked more ominous than the last tabletop collection I woke to, back on Earth. A group of Tyasmoran men stood just outside my jail cell. One of them was the man who I thought was a cat.
That fucking furry traitor.
I sat up and stared at him. “No one told me you guys could shapeshift.”
“No one knows,” he shot back. “And we like to keep it that way.”
“That sounded like a death threat.”
He shrugged.
“Stop that, Enor!” One of the others pointed at the ex-cat. “He is not our enemy. There's no need to scare him.”
“Oh, wow.” I chuckled. “I guess 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' is universal.”
The nicer guy frowned but stepped forward, folding his wings behind him to make himself smaller. “We don't understand what you just said, but that is precisely why we took you, Duke Demetrius. We're not going to hurt you.”
“Not unless we have to,” Enor added.
