* * *
Aria looked down at the collar in her hands, and the knot in her stomach twisted a little tighter.
She barely had enough space to see her entire body in the mirror, yet she preferred her closet of a room to the communal ones shared by the majority of the guards. Working with these brutes was one thing, rooming with them quite another.
Her fingers traced the etchings on the collar. She didn’t want to do this. No, that was an understatement. Her instincts screamed that this was a really dumb idea. After all her hard work proving to these cretins that she wasn’t a sex object, here she was playing the part. She’d be shredding flesh for a solid month after this, just to claw back her reputation.
What would Mervok and Danao have said about this?
Her heart ached at thoughts of the grizzled veterans. Mervok had been a young mercenary on a mission with Danao, an aged Dragon shifter, when the Dragona slave had crawled up to them. She’d been holding her infant daughter in her arms and begging for their help.
If Mervok had held true to his often-touted rules, he would have turned his back on her. There was no profit involved in taking the Dragona under his wing. But Danao...
Still, there was no real explanation as to why they’d helped her. But they had.
And nearly bought himself a realm’s worth of pure trouble by doing so. Because the Dragonlord who owned her came after her with a vengeance. Aria’s mother had lured him as far away from her daughter as she could, before taking both herself and the Dragon down in flames.
In the aftermath, Mervok and Danao had found themselves nursemaids to an orphaned infant Dragon shifter. They could have sold her for a tidy profit, but instead they’d raised her. In their own image, so to speak.
Dragons took many years to mature. By the time Aria was fighting close to their skill level, Mervok was a grizzled old Trog and even Danao’s scales had gone gray. But they’d taught her how to fight and showed her the basics of hiring her skills out to the dregs of society.
It seemed right to be following in her mentors’ footsteps. But crystal dust was an expensive commodity, and she needed the stuff to live.
She now wished that Mervok and Danao had confessed to decisions they hadn’t been proud of. She could use that counsel, now. One more black mark, and no one would hire her.
She glanced into the mirror and swallowed. Although Mervok had often pointed out that a little skin would serve to distract her opponent, she hadn’t wished to use that tactic. She fought too hard to be taken seriously.
There was no shortage of exposure now. She’d grown her red and gold scales into a bustier that pushed up her full breasts yet left most of her sculpted abs bare. Few had ever seen the piercing she had in her belly button—something she’d done as an adolescent, along with the dragon tattoo along her shoulder blade. Glittering red scales made a form-hugging pair of shorts, her thighs bare above golden boots that encased her from above the knee to her feet.
She was insecure enough in adapting her scales to such an outfit that she’d examined the new look from every angle before committing to it. The last piece was the collar. Squaring her shoulders, she clicked it shut around her throat.
It hugged as though designed for her. Panicked, she jabbed at the release, and it opened. The fingers holding it trembled.
Get a grip, Aria. It’s just a hunk of metal.Gritting her teeth, she put it back on. She slid her tail spike into her special scale loop at her hip and left the room.
The guard standing at the end of the hall stopped breathing as she walked by, and then let it all out with a whoosh and a comment.
“Looking good, Ar—”
She grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall.
He was over twice her weight and almost a foot taller, but even in human form, Dragon shifters were strong.
This particular guard had also been with Udo long enough to know where resisting her would lead. He should have known better than to comment. Unfortunately for him, his brain hadn’t notified his mouth in time.
“No disrespect,” he protested, holding his three-fingered hands out to his sides. But his eyes slid down to the heaving, creamy flesh exposed above the bustier.
The guard’s gaze widened and snapped back upward as Aria snarled at him, her fingers growing long, curved talons. The tips pierced the leathery skin of his neck, and green-hued blood trickled down.
“You even look at me again, and I’ll rip off something you value. Two somethings, to be exact.”
“Yes,” he started to nod and winced as the movement sank the talon tips deeper. “My mistake.”
With a final growl, she released him. The interaction had her adrenaline surging, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. Mervok had always said her temper blinded her when she needed to be cool and focused. But Aria had found it useful, at times like these.
She usually used the stairs, but there were three more guards between the residence floor and the crystal-storage rooms in the basement. The jiggling that descending stairs would instigate promised to make it an irritating and time-consuming prospect. And Udo was already annoyed with her for maiming his guards.
So she opted for the lift, and its single guard. His gaze swept over her as the doors opened, but when she sent a scorching glare his way, he wisely ripped them away from her breasts.
