“There are chutes in the cages,” Sebastian said, “and usually I just drop the food down, but today seemed like a special occasion.”
Iz the human never ate steak tartare. She had never even really completely gotten the hang of ordering sushi. For the most part, dragons didn’t eat raw meat. Even when they hunted in the wild, they charred their prey before they fed.
And when they ate in that form, their rules about food weren’t just a strong cultural leaning: they were ironclad. You didn’t just eat cooked meat, you ate meatyoucooked with your own breath.
Sebastian was offering her choice cuts of meat. This was probably Kobe beef, and it looked delicious.
But he hadcookedit.
He was asking her, a dragon in dragon form, to eat meat someone else had cooked. It was even worse because of who he was—not a trusted friend, not even a stranger who had innocently not known her people’s customs. Hercaptor, another dragon who knew exactly what he was doing by offering her this.
He knew that she must be hungry, and he knew that the thought of eating this made her recoil with nausea.
“Do you know why our inner dragons always insist on cooking their own meat?”
Iz glared at him.
“It’s all about control. Who has it and who doesn’t. Using your dragonfire asserts your control, shows your capabilities. If you can’t even control your own food, your own prey, whatcanyou control?” He leaned closer to the bars. “Nothing. This is my home, and you’re simply part of my collection. So while you’re here, you’ll eat what I feed you.”
He thought he was scaring her.
But beneath all the suave composure, he was just a brute. There was nothing subtle about this smile or this latest gesture of showy, petty dominance.
She wouldnotbe cowed by him. She refused. She just stared at him levelly, steam uncurling from her nostrils, until he just tossed the steak in her cage and gave up on her for being boring.
He turned instead to Logan, who had been growling the whole time. It was as ineffective as her dragonfire, but probably offered him the same kind of minute satisfaction.
“So ill-mannered,” Sebastian said, tsk-tsking. “But I shouldn’t expect anything else from an animal like you.”
Logan was twice the man Sebastian could ever be. A hundred times more. Watching Sebastian condescend to him was making her blood boil.
But it seemed like Sebastian was less interested in Logan now that he wasn’t his shiniest new toy. He doled out Logan’s own share of meat—cooked again; Iz didn’t know if that offended hellhounds in the same way that it did dragons, but she hoped not—and then moved on to the animals.
They all shrank back into the shadows and bristled when he came around. The air-snakes made flute-like hissing sounds, musical but sharp, and the fluffalo trundled to the furthest corner of his cage to try to stay away from Sebastian’s scrutiny. Iz didn’t even have to brush up against their minds to sense their fear and hate.
Sebastian did a tiny, routine bit of gloating in front of each cage. Iz could tell he was even less interested in them than he was in Logan, but he still wasn’t completely bored: no dragon ever gotthattired of his hoard. Iz had been hoping to see an obvious weak spot in Sebastian’s control down here, but she wasn’t picking up on one.
Of course she wasn’t. Logan had been here formonths, and he had all the same law enforcement training she did. If there was a clear way out of this, he would have found it a long time ago.
And if he had ... she might be down here alone right now.
She suppressed a shudder. That wouldn’t have happened. If Logan had escaped, he would have taken Sebastian down, and Iz would never have even gotten the casefile. She’d be back home with her new team, envying Evie’s fashion sense and slipping money to shoplifting octopus shifters.
Right now that sounded like heaven. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought it was boring.
She’d been so full of herself, and she hadn’t even realized it. Soconvincedthat she deserved to rocket to the top, an immediate equal with all the experienced, capable Marshals on her team. She had bumbled into this situation without backup, and now look what had happened to her.
Hot tears made her eyes prickle. She blinked the moisture away, scolding herself. Dragons didn’t cry. Dragons were strong.
Benoits didn’t cry either. They might steal, cheat, and lie, but they didn’t sit around feeling sorry for themselves.
She made herself wait until Sebastian left before she sank down onto the floor, resting her chin against the dusty stone. She’d say this much for being stuck in her shift form: dragons could collapse a lot more thoroughly than humans, and somehow keep a lot more dignity in doing it.
Logan came over to their shared wall. Like her, he lay down. Unlike her, he did it adorably. It was clearly one of the rare moments the hellhound ferocity took a backseat to the part where they were just great big mythical dogs, because he actually turned around in a circle three times before he curled up in a neat heap.
It was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. And just for a second, it managed to lift her spirits.
*