Page 19 of Dragon Exposed

What was going on with him? He almost sounded like he cared. But why the fuck would he care, if he was just going to kill me?

I couldn’t reconcile the voice in my head to the guy I’d spent time with. Dragons were monsters, right? Just like vampires. I should be running or finding a way to protect myself, but I just felt like I was having a war within myself.

I didn’t respond, not trusting my voice to maintain the strength I’d had downstairs. Instead, I sunk down on the bench at the foot of the bed, trying to stay calm. If he left, maybe I could find a phone, a computer, some way to communicate with the outside world, and get the fuck out of here before he came back.

As I waited for any sign that he’d left, I searched the room. It was clearly his space. The dresser was filled with men’s clothing, but there was a section of the closet that looked like high-end women’s fashion.

Did he have a wife? A lover? Or were these trophies of the other women he’d snatched and brought out here?

I closed the closet before I let more fear in.

The kitchen. I could arm myself there.

Slipping my heels off, I cautiously tip-toed back to the door, listening against the thick wooden surface for a minute before I eased it open.

The cabin was empty, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from sticking close to the walls, staying as quiet as possible. I couldn’t trust that he wasn’t hiding somewhere, waiting to catch me out in the open, waiting to do whatever it was he wanted to do to me. He brought me here for some nefarious reason, right?

Would he toy with me? Keep me alive long enough to torture, torment, break, before he finally snapped and devoured me? Or was he the type who just wanted to destroy? Who needed to kill, like Viktor?

Viktor. The vampire whose name I wouldn’t know without Levi.

None of this made sense, none of this fit together. The man I’d met in that club, the one who had made sure I was safe, had made sure I didn’t end up the main course for a murderous vampire, wasn’t the same one who kidnapped me.

I wasn’t scared of Levi before.

Now, though? I didn’t know what to think. It all felt fractured, broken, and the harder I tried to make sense of it, the worse my headache got, until just standing in the kitchen made me woozy.

Had I been drugged? Is that what was causing this migraine? How would Levi have even gotten drugs into my system? All I’d had to eat or drink all day was that cup of coffee from the craft services table.

The weight of it all felt oppressive, and with a sigh, I grabbed a knife from the block on the counter and slunk back upstairs, hoping that I could sink down into a bath, or into that soft, beckoning bed, without being caught unawares by a killer dragon.

Back in the bedroom, I barricaded the door with a chair before I unzipped my skirt and let it fall to the floor in a pool. Why did I have to get abducted in work clothes? At least if I were in yoga pants and a tank top, I would’ve been comfortable.

But no, I had to get nabbed in a skirt and button-up that made me feel too exposed, too rigid, and nothing on the face of this Earth could convince me to even consider slipping into one of his shirts or a pair of his boxers. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

A remote laid on the nightstand next to the bed, and as I got comfortable in between the sheets, with the knife tucked into the folds of the comforter, easily handy if needed, I flicked on the news, wondering how much more damage the fucking dragon did at the set before snatching me.

“The world is shocked today with the footage I’m about to show you. Audiences were horrified this morning as what appeared to be a suicide jumper fell from the roof of one of the buildings in Times Square, but their worry for the jumper quickly became fear and panic as he appeared to shift mid-air into a large, fire-breathing monster.” The anchor delivered the news with the same poise and seriousness she would have used to announce a dip in the stock market.

Somehow, watching the footage was worse than living through it live, like all the emotions, all the fear I’d suffered being there was being compounded upon with rewatching.

The dragon swooping over the crowd again and again, getting lower, dropping closer to the audience who were only there because of the show I worked on, with its vicious teeth, low, rumbling snarl, and tendrils of smoke snaking out of its nostrils, looked too big, too fake to be real, and if I hadn’t been scooped up by it, if I hadn’t been flown to god only knows where, I might’ve believed this was all a hoax.

But here I was, and there, on film, was his claws wrapping around me like a vice, closing in to seal my fate.

Fuck, why had I even thought I could fight against that?

Even now, just watching, I felt frozen in place, in fear.

If I’d fallen, I would’ve exploded from the heights he quickly carried me to again.

I wouldn’t have just died. I would’ve been eviscerated.

An on the scene news reporter started talking, interviewing audience members, other reporters who were on stage, feet from where I was grabbed, but it all sounded like it was coming at me from underwater, and I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying.

I’d been abducted by a dragon, and it was only a matter of time before he decided I wasn’t worth keeping around anymore.

Pulling my knees in tight against my chest, I gripped the comforter in my fists, holding on tight, trying to maintain some level of control over my own life, my own fate, even as I felt like it was all just slipping further and further away from me with every ticking second passing.

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