Page 46 of Phoenix Burn

She smirked at me. “I am growing the market, now that I can supply more of it.”

My eyes narrowed. No way the average underworld specimen could afford to buy pheromones. “Black market sex is alive and well among Empire Dragons?”

Xumi trailed a talon along my thigh. “Aren’t you a clever boy. My pheromones are as pure as they come, and they command high prices. You are a lucky Dragon to be getting them for free.”

My jaw clamped so tight that my teeth hurt. I glanced over to the other set of chains in the room. “Kevit does not seem to have benefitted from your generosity.”

The other Dragon hung in them as though dead. The time since I’d last seen Kevit had not been kind to him—I could count every rib. He had almost no flesh left. The fact that he hung so limp with the room redolent in pheromones was not a promising sign.

Xumi pouted. “He’s become rather a bore. Either unconscious or babbling. That’s why I prefer to buy Guild. Their slaves are so much stronger.”

Like me, Kevit had been born to an enslaved Dragona. But he was raised as a slave laborer. Which could have been my fate if the Guild hadn’t bought me. The Black Guild either honed you to perfection—or finished you. If you survived their training, it turned a part of you to stone.

Xumi had leased me from them as a personal bodyguard. But that wasn’t what she had wanted from me. Not that my owners had particularly cared, so long as they were well paid.

The Dragona’s rich pheromones permeated the room, prodding at my beast, inflaming my lust. Xumi’s taloned fingers cupped me, sliding the thumb over my rigid flesh. I ground my teeth and held still, but my fool body yearned to lean into the caress.

Her mouth curved upward as she continued. “Now that you are back, I’m giving Kevit to the guards. As you know, they tend to break their toys.” She shrugged. “I would so loved to have kept Haki. Having the two of you—” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “But Kala promised to bring the wrath of the Legion down on me if I tried it.”

I breathed in and out, focusing on keeping my rhythm even and slow. Xumi’s guards were a ruthless, brutal lot. It would be a gruesome end for poor Kevit. He’d shown signs of breaking before Haki rescued me. We’d freed him too, but he’d bolted when Xumi’s guards found us.

I’d hoped he’d gotten away. Obviously, he hadn’t.

Kevit wasn’t as unconscious as he seemed. Behind Xumi’s back, his head slowly raised. His eyes gleamed feverishly at me.

And then his wings sprang from his back.

“No, Kevit!” My horror was automatic, but also useless. Faced with a drawn-out death more tortuous than anything he’d been faced with so far, my fellow captive Dragon was taking the only possible way out.

Xumi turned to watch, eyes lighting with murky green fire as Kevit embraced his beast. Her nostrils flared as the Dragon tried, and failed, to break free from the metal around his throat and limbs. Instead, it crushed the bones as they expanded.

Kevit’s eyes bulged in agony as the collar all but severed his head from his neck. The wings arched above him, quivering, before his entire body collapsed in a gory, contorted mass, still suspended by the chains.

Over in the corner, the distiller vomited into a pail. My own stomach churned, not so much at the gore—I’d seen much worse—but at Xumi’s reaction.

One of the underworld Dragona’s hands drifted over her breast, the other had slid between her legs. She almost panted as she surveyed the wreckage that was Kevit. “What a glorious mess.” Her voice had dropped, and it rasped with lust. She lifted damp fingers to her lips as she strutted toward the distiller, and his entire body flinched as though he wished to bolt. But Xumi merely waved at the prone Dragona. “Finish up with her and then fetch someone to remove what is left of him.”

The man nodded and began removing tubes with shaking hands while Xumi paused before a container of Dragona blood. She disconnected the tube and let the fresh blood gush over her hand until it dripped with gore. Then she spun and stalked back to me.

Her gaze pulsed with lust as she wiped the pheromone-rich blood across my face. I held my breath until she fastened her talons in my thigh, and my first gasp pulled the aroma deep into my lungs. My body ratcheted up painfully, and she smirked as she stroked me.

“My boys will be so disappointed—they had planned some last-minute entertainment before handing him over to the guards. You will have to provide them with suitable alternatives, my pretty one. They are sodifficultwhen horny.”

She finished wiping the blood all over my face and turned to the control panel in the center of the room. Despite what had just happened with Kevit, my cursed body leaned after her. I had no more influence over it than anything else in this place.

She activated the controls, and the chains hauled me along the tracks. I was all too familiar with the apparatuses. Struggling might be futile, but I couldn’t help myself. My wings burst from my back as I fought, lifting me off the ground. But I merely crashed up against the chains, which continued to drag me across the room.

“My sons were eager to join us,” Xumi told me as she manipulated the controls. “But for this first session back, I wanted you all to myself.”

Her sons were twisted bastards, and primarily responsible for breaking Kevit. For a moment, I envied the other Dragon—that he’d been brave enough to pursue the only way out of this nightmare. But I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet. No matter that I knew it was futile—something within me still wanted to fight.

My wings strained against the ancient, creaky apparatus as it pulled me in fits and jerks toward the flat metal table. My body fought, but my mind clung to the fact that Haki and Kala were safe. That would help sustain me through what was to come.

That, and the memory of citrus scent and bicolored eyes.

14

Anna

---