Dragon Blood

Forty: Stubborn Nogards

Everything hurt. His head, his shoulders, but especially his chest. He felt so weak, and tired. He couldn't remember what had happened. All he remembered was fighting with Skylar... everything after that was dark.

Skylar, where was Skylar? He tried to open his eyes or sit up or anything, but his dragon suppressed his control. How odd, as he could feel that he wasn't in his dragon form, he was in his human. He took a deep breath to try and gauge his surroudings through smell and immediately regretted it. The pain in his chest intensified to a point where he almost passed out again. As he took a shallow breath, that was still agonizing but bearable, he felt his shirt pull at his skin, as if it was stuck. 

His dragon whined and paced in his head, but still wouldn't let him move. That said enough about how weak he was. He likely would have shifted, but it was hard for the dragon to take control when the human side wasn't conscious. His dragon should have been able to do it though; there was a different reason why he hadn't shifted.

He felt someone grab his arms and drag him forward. He nearly passed out again. "Damn he's a heavy bastard isn't he?"

"Just pull him over here."

"Did you bring a shovel?" the first man asked. 

Orion heard a scoff and the pressure on his shoulder eased as the man stopped walking. "Does it look like I brought a damn shovel? Where would I have gotten a shovel?"

"Just asking. Jared told us to bury him, hedidn't want a dead body rotting in the woods."

"Jared won't know if we just leave him out here. We're in the woods; the animals will take care of him soon enough. He won't be rotting"

His dragon let out a sharp growl, and Orion could feel him debating the shift. Orion had no strength to stop him if he decided to, but he wasn't sure stopping him was the best idea at the moment. He wasn't strong enough to fight; he could barely breath let alone swing at anything. His dragon could easily stop the two men, but if anyone else saw him, they would be done for. Everyone would know he was still alive, and they would be after him. They obviously thought he was dead. It wasn't a stretch; he could smell the blood that was caked to him, but he had no idea what happened. Did Skylar think he was dead too? And where was she?

His dragon whimpered at the thought of Skylar. Something about her worried him, but he wouldn't share with Orion. His dragon had never kept anything from him before, and that scared him more than anything. If the beast made the judgement that it was too horrible to share, that meant it was truly horrible. Dragons' sense of good and bad wasn't as sensitive as humans. Only the truly terrible things made an impact on them, otherwise everything was what it was.

If something had happened to a dragon's mate, that would be enough to get his dragon to keep it a secret until Orion could do something about it. Which he couldn't, but he needed to know where Skylar was. 

He pushed at his dragon's will, but the beast stood his ground. He would give nothing, and Orion wasn't strong enough, mentally or physically, to challenge him any further. The last time he'd seen Skylar, he'd been upset with her. He'd left her alone, and now he was here, being dragged through the woods with a wound in his chest and more blood than was safe caked against his skin and shirt.

His captors gave his arms another good tug and he had to bite back the groan. They thought he was dead, he needed to keep it that way to maintain the element of surprise. Unfortunately, he could think of no way out of this that didn't involve shifting. He couldn't fight. On any other day he could have fought them both with one hand tied behind his back. Today he wouldn't even be able to trip one of them. 

His dragon growled, following his train of thought. They reluctantly came to an agreement. His dragon wanted to tear the men apart, but spending any extra time here left them vulnerable to discovery by someone else. Their only hope was that the men wouldn't want to bury a body where other people could see them. They were likely out of sight, but were they far enough out of sight that no one would notice a dragon?