Finding the Wolf(The Dragon's Hoard #1)

by Mell Eight

  "Good morning. Can I have my arm back, now?" Leon asked, gentle humor sparkling in his eyes.

  Nyle looked down at what he was clutching to his chest and immediately let go when he realized he had been holding Leon's arm tight to himself.

  "Thanks," Leon said as he retrieved his arm, using that hand to stroke Nyle’s sleep-tangled hair behind one ear. "You're a quiet one, aren't you?"

  Nyle shook his head, still a bit surprised by how gentle the wild creature from last night was this morning. "I am not entirely sure what to say."

  "Oh," Leon replied. "Well, I have something to ask that may answer those questions you don't know how to raise." He waited for Nyle to nod before continuing. "Why don't dragons have sex?"

  Nyle felt taken aback for a moment but was inclined to answer. "Well for one, dragons carry too much mass to ever copulate like we did last night. We would flatten one another. Additionally, dragons do not have a need for intercourse. A female lays an egg, a male fertilizes it, and the female spends a century warming the egg until hatching occurs. As very few females have any wish to lose a century of possible research to an egg, this has not happened since my hatching three hundred years ago."

  "But you have a human form," Leon waved his hand over Nyle's body. Nyle was tall and thin for a human with tight muscles that complemented his lean frame. His eyes were golden as all dragons' eyes and his hair was the color of spun gold as well. In human form, Nyle looked to be the same age as Leon.

  Nyle shook his head. "It is an offense to traverse the dragon mountain in such a form. Only amidst humans do my kind shift smaller."

  "Well that makes sense." Leon stretched on the bed, drawing Nyle's attention to their lack of clothing and close proximity. "So, because dragons don't need to have sex to procreate, and because it is such a hassle, you don't bother. I guess that explains how you were a virgin at … did you say three hundred?"

  Nyle nodded but decided it was time to do what he had been sent to do. His task was much more important than the mysteries of sex and wildness. "We must go to the human court at once to assuage their fears of your death. Then we must find what has caused the disappearances of so many young human men."

  Nyle suddenly sensed a change in the room. It wasn't temperature or anything so overt; rather it felt like the malice level suddenly rose. Nyle looked at Leon and unexpectedly wasn't sure there were any humans in the room any longer. All trace of calmness disappeared, replaced by that different sort of wildness Nyle remembered from last night.

  "You will not bring me back to that place." The voice that came out of Leon's mouth was much deeper than usual, with a hard growl that made it difficult for Nyle to comprehend what Leon was saying. "Do you understand what would happen?" The threat in Leon's voice was clear.

  The abrupt change was one shock too many: Nyle was done. Enough was enough. First he was pulled away from his peaceful life to locate the royal whelp who did not appear to be lost after all. Then he was pulled into confusing and, admittedly, pleasurable sex for a reason he could not discern. Leon practically foaming at the mouth because Nyle was simply doing as he had been ordered was the last straw.

  Nyle had always thought that dragons did not have tempers. Yet he knew that Leon was about to be flattened by dragon-style anger.

  "No!" Nyle snapped. "No, I don't know. I clearly know nothing about what has been occurring for the past day! I don't know why you disappeared or why I had to look for you in that cesspit of human depravity. I don't know why you dragged me into this sex thing. And I don't know why you are growling at me, but I won't have it! You know where the castle is. You can go tell them to stay away yourself."

  There was smoke coming out Nyle's nose and mouth and he knew he was seconds away from lighting Leon, the room, and most of the human city on fire. Such a shameful display could not be allowed.

  Nyle turned around and walked out the door, smoke trailing him in a cloud of bad temper. When he could see the sky, Nyle shifted into his dragon shape and shot into the air, letting his wings pump him away from killing hundreds of obnoxious humans.

  He didn't care what Toel or any of the other elders would say. Nyle was going to spend the next few decades sequestered among his pretties. Someone else could deal with the confusing humans and their crazed prince.

  *~*~*

  Rubies, Nyle mused, were the color of fire without all the heat. Such a strong gem deserved to be his head pillow. He shifted and felt the hard points of his emeralds dig wonderfully into the itchy area between his belly scales.

  Nyle's hoard room was large, but his bed dominated the space. Carefully separated heaps of gemstones whose piles were then pushed together to make one giant mass in the center of his cave comprised his bed. There were wardrobes and trunks as well as shelving scattered throughout the rest of the cave. Nyle used them to hold all sorts of things, from statues made of precious materials to unusually beautiful clothing or tapestries. He was quite proud of his hoard, even if it wasn't too extensive in comparison to the hoards of some of the older dragons. Hard work and copious amounts of shining kept everything perfect and Nyle did his very best to keep it that way.

  For three days Nyle had been lavishing attention on his pretties and everything shone in the sunlight that fell into his cave from a skylight he had carved for that purpose fifty years ago.

  Elder Toel thought Nyle was in deep contemplation of his task. Hatch-mother Gail had told Nyle to stop sulking. Nyle shifted onto his side, his wings spread out over his jet inlaid jewelry and tried not to think about how close the color jet was to someone's onyx colored hair. He was also not thinking about his sapphires in conjunction with eyes. In fact, Nyle was trying very hard not to think at all.

  He dozed in the sunlight, comfortable on his bed of jewels.

  A paw on his face woke Nyle just as the sun moved past his skylight.

  Nyle snorted awake and blinked at the creature sitting in front of him. A wolf the size of a pony, with deep black fur panted widely just below Nyle's jaw. Nyle knew that canines did not come in that size … ever. Clearly the wolf was not a normal creature.

  "You do not belong here," Nyle said to the wolf as he quickly and surreptitiously checked to make sure that the wolf was alone and that all of his pretties were still in place.

  The creature snorted, sat back on its haunches, and began to shift forms.

  The process sounded and looked painful for the creature, bones snapping and reforming, muscles sliding around under skin, and fur receding. When Nyle shifted forms it was a smooth transition from dragon to human—nothing like the display of agony before him.

  When the change stopped, Leon lay naked and panting on Nyle's floor.

  "Dragon," Leon said once he had caught his breath. "We need to talk."

  No doubt about that. Nyle had been sent to locate and return the missing human prince, not a werewolf.

  Werewolves were creatures who only lived in the Wilds beyond the human city. It was an area controlled by the dragons only on paper. To truly own the area the dragons would need to fight, defeat, and decimate the wild races populating the Wilds that refused to complacently fall under the dragons' claws. One such race who could not be controlled was the werewolves, but they generally kept to themselves in the Wilds.

  Beneath the human skin, a beast would lie in wait. Human seeming, human smelling, human in everything except soul, werewolves would shift into their bestial forms and hunt.

  "I want to tell you the story of what happened to me," Leon continued. "And then I want you to tell me the story you were told that put you on my trail."

  Nyle looked down at the tiny human from his dragon-sized perch, sighed, and shifted into human form. He collected two cushions because the human bottom did not enjoy the sharp feel of cut stone. Once they were both settled comfortably, he nodded for Leon to continue.

  "I was born human," Leon began. "As the third prince, I had few responsibilities. One of those few was to visit the outlying territories to deal with problems
that arose. My older brothers could not do this job because, as the Heir and the Captain of the Guard and Royal Forces, they could not leave their posts for the lengthy amount of time travelling across the Kingdom would take. During my sixteenth year, I was sent to investigate the disappearances of a number of young men. The problem had started with the farms in the outlying territories and had slowly been inching towards the capital. My assignment was to investigate the disappearances, find the culprit, and stop the problem."

  Leon took a deep breath and Nyle could tell that they were coming to the difficult part of the story. When Leon began speaking again, Nyle could hear the breaks in his voice that told of pain and suffering even though his words seemed perfunctory. The occasional growl would suddenly appear in his speech too, as if the pain in the story couldn't be explained using mere words and instead needed another, wilder outlet. There was a clear difference between when the calm prince and the wild werewolf had dominance in telling the story.

  "I found the culprits easily enough. Actually, you could say that they found me. The werewolves knew we were coming, because two nights travel from the border with the Wilds, they attacked our camp. I was bitten and forced to join their society as a slave. Normal werewolves are born, you see, and as a bitten human I was second-class. There were a number of bitten young men like me; they were creating slaves to serve them.

  "It took me two months to escape. It was long enough for me to understand what I had become and to know that while I could return home, I would not be welcomed back any longer. I informed my father, King Leander, what had been causing the disappearances and then vanished myself before he realized what had happened to me. For two years I have lived among the humans, pretending to be one and only mostly succeeding. I was always worried that my father would realize what had happened to me and try to kill me because of it, so I tried to hide, but I'm still a werewolf and werewolves need to run and be wild every once in a while. Hiding among the humans was hard, but after the first few months I realized my father didn't care to put any effort into locating me. I stopped paying such close attention to what he was up to. By then I was only trying to conceal my wolf, because without the responsibilities of a prince to ground me all I had left was a wish to howl and run in the forest, which I couldn't give into for fear of being too blatantly overt in my father's face. Wild sex gave me back some of that grounding; I've never found anything fiercer and therefore more calming than a round of rowdy bed play.

  "But the other night," Leon's tone changed to the purring vowels Nyle had heard on the street that night right before he was dragged off for sex, "my wolf chose you. My human side had no say against taking a dragon to bed, and even though I knew it could be deadly the wolf didn't care. Still doesn't care." He paused, as if he were gauging Nyle's reaction.

  Nyle could see the truth in the wolf's eyes peeking out behind Leon's human skin, but could also see what Leon was not telling him. Leon, the human part of the werewolf, was also not adverse to a relationship with a dragon. Nyle had spent the past couple of days not thinking about the feeling of Leon over him, inside him, holding him. With Leon's truth staring him in the face, Nyle could not lie to himself. Nyle had enjoyed the sex, and not just because it had been a pleasurable experience. No, Nyle had enjoyed Leon and would very much like to learn more about the confident, proud, and courageous man before him. There was something inherent inside Nyle drawing him towards Leon. Leon was so pretty and Nyle wanted Leon in his hoard. It was probably the same feeling Leon's wolf was feeling towards Nyle.

  Nyle could tell that Leon saw his decision in his face and that it seemed to satisfy him because Leon continued his explanation in a final rush. "And then I realized that something had to be happening outside of the small world I had confined myself in and it had to be very large to include me after all these years. I'm still a prince even though I abandoned that part of my life for a long time, and if there's something going on I know it is my duty to do something to fix it."

  Decision made and further cemented, Nyle stood up. "Come," Nyle said with a gesture to have Leon follow him. They headed to one of the large and delicately carved pieces of furniture along the walls of his cave. The armoire was filled with the most beautiful men's clothing Nyle had collected throughout the years. He chose a pair of fitted black pants that he knew would be tight around Leon's bottom, but loose and flowing through the legs. The stitching for the pants was made of silver thread and a silver dragon climbed up Leon's right leg in intricate detail.

  "I was told by the Eldest that the human king had failed in his search to locate his third child," Nyle explained as he led Leon back to his pile of jewels. "King Leander had sent the child on a mission to find and stop the disappearances of young men in the city. I was tasked with discovering what had happened to you and to bring you back."

  Nyle dug through his onyx and jet stones that had been set into silver, wishing that more black gemstones had been made into jewelry rather than figurines. He found a net of jet and silver meant to be attached to a woman's hair and two silver armbands with the stones outlining a dragon shape and began fitting them on Leon.

  The dark stones glittered in Leon's hair and on his arms, tantalizingly enhancing Leon's already jewel toned hair and lightly tanned skin.

  Nyle dug through his pretties one more time before finding the most important piece. His hatching gift from the Eldest was a sapphire the size of a human child's fist set in silver on a silver chain. With the necklace on, no one would doubt that Leon's eyes were two gems set in his face. Leon was a human pretty covered in Nyle's pretties, which actually made Nyle inordinately happy and would force the Eldest to acknowledge Leon's right to belong in Nyle's hoard.

  "My father never mentioned that I had returned with the solution years before and was hiding from imprisonment?" Leon asked as Nyle looked over his human pretty. Perhaps … Nyle dug out a toe ring and a regular ring in silver with small sapphires and made Leon put them on.

  "That is what I wish to enquire," Nyle replied. He studied Leon one last time before nodding, satisfied that his pretty covered in pretties was perfect. "I will walk slowly. You need to keep one hand on my side. Do not speak unless you are specifically addressed."

  Leon looked down at the jewelry Nyle had dressed him in for a long moment. Nyle hoped Leon was remembering his school lessons about dragons, because a dragon never willingly parted with their hoard to a non-dragon. When Leon looked up and nodded, his eyes reflecting comprehension and agreement, Nyle shifted back to his golden dragon form, waited for Leon to put his hand on Nyle's side, and led them out of his caves.

  They met elder Toel along the way and Nyle bowed his head respectfully even though he knew Toel had no doubt been lying in wait for when Nyle finished his contemplations.

  "How fare thou on thy mission?" Toel asked.

  "My investigation has been a success, elder An'tatoel," Nyle replied. "But an equal number of questions have arisen that must be addressed at once."

  Toel looked at Leon, shock at Leon's dress crossing his face, before replying. "So I see. I shall inform the Eldest of thy imminent arrival."

  "My thanks," Nyle said with a bow as Toel left at a quick clip. Nyle followed at a slower pace so Leon could keep up and arrived at the entrance to the Eldest's cave as Toel was just leaving.

  "He shall see thee immediately," Toel said.

  Nyle nodded politely before walking into the cave.

  The Eldest was a giant golden-scaled dragon of such age that none could quite remember how long ago he had been hatched. His power was so strong that he could control all dragons with a bit of shine and sparkle. Yet, the Eldest respected those of his race so his outer meeting room was totally devoid of anything that could be used for magic. Only the golden eyes of the Eldest held any power in the empty room, but Nyle knew not to look directly into the Eldest's eyes.

  Nyle bowed his head and his knees and remained lowered until the Eldest bid him to rise.

  "An'nanyle," the Eldest in
toned softly, his voice deep with the accent of the language of dragons from generations past. "Speak."

  "I have located the missing prince, but feel that the human king was not forthright in his account of the problem at hand so am unsure of how to continue my directive."

  "Explain," the Eldest said when Nyle stopped speaking.

  "The third prince, Leon of the human court, was indeed sent to investigate the disappearances of young men. However, that was approximately two years ago and the prince was sent to the outlying Wilds. The prince returned, changed into a werewolf as you see him now, but with the answer to the issue. The werewolf clan had been biting humans to create slaves for themselves, which the prince reported to the king before retreating into the human city."

  "A incongruity indeed," the Eldest mused as he turned his head to look at Leon. His face did not show a reaction to seeing Leon as Toel had, but nothing truly surprised the Eldest much any longer.

  "The ease with which I located the third prince spoke of the king not having conducted a search himself. Rather, I believe that once I found the prince, I was supposed to have killed him because of the creature inside him. I also have to wonder if the king has eliminated the werewolf threat in the Wilds."

  "A discrepancy that cannot be ignored," the Eldest agreed. "And since you have claimed the third prince for your hoard, a stance I do understand, youngling, we must therefore protect the prince. I will think over all you have said. Please send An'tatoel in as you leave."

  Nyle bowed as he backed out of the cave, wondering what would happen, but knowing not to be rude and ask.

  *~*~*

  Nyle's caves had a set of smaller rooms that he led Leon to when they returned. When Nyle had been a child, and was much, much smaller in size, he had lived in his smaller rooms. As he and his hoard had grown, Nyle had expanded his caves and could no longer fit into his small rooms as a dragon. As a human, however, Nyle could fit, and he enjoyed finding interesting human things to put into his human-sized rooms.