"This is what the mountain women look like? Fetching, indeed."
The warlord descended the steps from his chair, standing up to his full height, well over seven feet, and stretching his wings to the ceiling to get the blood flowing again and then retracting them. He approached to the kneeling captive, grabbing her chin with a clawed hand and pulling it upward.
The girl's nude form was voluptuous, with wide hips and large buttocks, and heavy breasts on her chest. Shorter than a plains dweller, but substantially so, her bronzed skin was accented with tattoos around her navel and nipples of sunburst patterns. Her auburn hair and green eyes gave her a slightly exotic look.
"The tattoos look enticing, cousin. Part of their savage custom?"
The warlord's seneschal paused a second before answering. Not a half-dragon herself, her red-scaled skin and statuesque build nonetheless marked her as a descendant of Agonagax as well, though her straight black hair, lack of wings, and softer skin showed that the dragon blood was multiple generations back. Her cadet's uniform, notably less battle-worn than the etched leather cuirass worn by her superior, could nonetheless not conceal her huge breasts and feminine curves, seemingly contradicting her amazonian build and soldier's poise.
"The tattoos mark her as being available for marriage. When one of their daughters comes of age, she is tattooed and forbidden from wearing clothes until someone offers her family a price for her, or at least until the winter months come. When she is married she is tattooed again."
"In what manner? I must say, something about it seems quite beautiful."
"The clan mark of her husband's family is inked on her." The seneschal gestured to her own lower belly.
"On her sex? Sounds painful for these soft-skinned humans."
"Not on it, Gyren, but more above it."
The warlord stepped closer to his cousin, poking her as he queried.
"Here?" he asked, prodding the top of her cleft through her skirt. "Or here, below the navel?"
The woman blushed at her cousin and commander's invasion of her personal space. She was sworn to his command, and to die for him if necessary, but this embarrassed her immensely. She was glad that only a slave who could barely speak a few words of the civilized tongue was the only witness to it. Gyren was a son of the king, and a brilliant war leader besides, and handsome, and Astar would certainly have shared his nest if he had asked her to. It was not uncommon for a commander to sleep with his or her subordinates; what made the situation awkward was that she was female. Female humans did not serve in the army; dragon-touched women did. The problem, then, was that if she became pregnant by Gyren, she became one of his concubines, his property.
That was the eventual fate of any daughter of the nobility, but to be gotten with child from a deployment relationship was a sign of the worst sort of promiscuity - a sign that a dragon-touched woman could not keep her mind off of breeding when she was supposed to be focusing on service in the king's armies. Astar, however, could not help but be subjected to a whirlwind of relief, annoyance, and distraction whenever her cousin treated her body in this way. In a matter-of-fact way, like he didn't even see her as a woman. It was refreshing to know that they could interact in the close confines of military life and not have it be improper. It was annoying to her that he treated her body like an object to be used at will by him, despite the fact that he could send her to die if he so chose. And it was distracting because he was the most overpoweringly handsome man she had ever spent time in close quarters with, and when he corrected her spear form with his strong hands she wished that he would spend more time grabbing other parts of her body.
She fought to keep her focus on the here and now.
"Usually the first. Right above the cleft."
"Fascinating. Marking their property, eh?"
"Yes. So that other men know she is not to be touched." Gyren's hand no longer prodded her, but his extreme closeness made Astar's stomach flutter. His yellow eyes stared right down into hers, unblinking.
The half-dragon broke the stare with his subordinate and circled around the captive, who remained silent and seated.
"Does she understand you?"
"Yes, I can get by in the hill tongue now, but she only knows a few words of our speech."
"Good. Tell her my name, ask her hers, and let her know that she is now my property."
Astar translated. The girl furrowed her eyebrows for a moment, then responded.
'My name is Terin. Am I to be this dragon's wife?'
'No, his concubine. He already has a wife, a noble lady.'
'Dragon-lady, I am confused. Should not a powerful man like him want many wives?'
'In our lands, we only have one man and one wife. But a man may take concubines.'
'Do you mean junior wives? This I understand; he has a senior wife and I am to be a junior wife.'
'It may be much the same thing, in practice, but we use different words.'
Gyren's keen eyes watched the exchange between the two women.
"Does she understand?"
"Yes, cousin. Her name is Terin."
