The dragon's harem

“Really!” Luminous gasped as a large, creepy smile found its way to her beautiful face.

Grace looked at her, both terrified and worried, as she felt an immediate sense of danger.

“I warned you.” Arad’s voice came from the door, and the two looked back. Luminous stood up and waved her hand, “Arad, my boy. How did you get inside?” She was suddenly standing beside him. “I’m sure I locked the door. Don’t you know that you can’t enter a lady’s room without knocking first?”

“First, this is my hoard. You’re the one who isn’t supposed to lock it without asking me. And besides, that drakaina isn’t your toy to play with.” He stared at her, “You’re job here was to count the funds allocated to the building process of Betty’s lair, nothing more and nothing less.”

She leaned on his shoulder and laughed. “You’re really taking Betty’s warning to heart. I’m glad to see that you hold my granddaughter that high, but isn’t it a bit disrespectful to be wary of me?”

“So what do you think? Should I be worried around you?” He growled, glaring down at her, and she smacked him on the chest.

“Of course, I would keep myself on a tight leash.” She smiled and was suddenly standing back on the pile of gold and jewelry. She leaned on Grace’s shoulder, making her flinch, “Come visit me sometimes. It is rare for me to find someone who can speak with me without getting blinded.”

Before Grace could know it, Luminous already took her to Arad’s side and returned to the pile of wealth. She looked around with a confused gasp. Her eyes laid on the radiant figure of Luminous sitting on top of the mound, counting diamonds and rubies with a bored face.

“Arad, Grace is a naughty, naughty girl. You’d better make sure she understands where she stands so she doesn’t make a stupid decision again. Like she did by coming here to meet me.”

“I know,” Arad and Grace then left and locked the door behind them.

“Who is she?” Grace gasped, and Arad glared at her. “Didn’t I tell you not to go there?” He rubbed his face and then sighed. “She, Luminous, had spent over two thousand years looking for a way to quell her radiant light. She had long since lost hope and got used to living as she did, engulfed in radiant light where no one could look her in the face.”

“So, where is the problem?”

“That is the problem! Give her hope, and she might dissect you to try to find a cure. The best outcome is her keeping you around like a pet to speak to you.” He grabbed Grace by the hair and lifted her up to look her in the face. “We’re lucky that she is good at controlling her impulses. It wasn’t this way a few centuries ago. Betty, her granddaughter, told me.” He looked back at the hoard door, “When I first met Luminous, she really intended on keeping me as her little pet. And I can’t even see her clearly. I just see a ball of radiant light.”

“Keep you?”

“Exactly what do you think? Luminous craves connections and will do anything in her power to escape her lonely existence. You can see her clearly but aren’t strong enough to wrestle any control from her.”

Luminous walks by the dragon’s traditions where might is right. She can never have an equal relationship with someone weaker than her, and thus, Grace and Arad would only end up as her toys.

“I did feel a sense of danger, but not that kind.” Grace punched Arad’s wrist to get him to drop her.

“As I told you, she is good at controlling her impulses. But one stray thought is all it would take for you to spend the rest of your life locked in a cage beside her. Until I find a way to free Betty from her light and get that solution to be strong enough to free her, you better not give Luminous a taste of what she had long forgotten.”

In fact, no one knew how long Luminous was planning. A drakaina of her age holds wisdom and insight that’s incomprehensible to even Arad.

Luminous had once left Betty to train under Doma. She also made contact with Aella’s dead mother and Zephyr. She even had a mirror in the Royal castle where Isdis lived. Betty suspects that Luminous already planned to get her married to someone like Arad long ago, maybe even before Arad was born.

It was ridiculous, but when Betty confronted her grandmother about the topic, she got a strange answer. That answer had made her shiver and run away to warn Arad.

“Well, if I kept him close to me, I’ll keep fucking him each day, and we’ll never make progress in eliminating my light. It’ll also work better to eliminate your light first- since your light would be much weaker than mine.”

Both Arad and Betty understood that it was useless to try and comprehend the thoughts of a light drakaina that surpassed the twilight and lived for thousands of years.

Luminous wasn’t just a beautiful woman who took baths all day long and spent most of her time rolling naked on gold and gems. She is an existence with enough wisdom and power to rival some gods, and she played mortals like pawns in the palm of her hand.

Arad was certain that Luminous was in no way malevolent, nor was she benevolent. She is just driven by her goals and wishes, which makes her impulses and whims even more dangerous.

Grace looked back, “Dangerous, I would say she is rather sad. Reminds me of myself, living alone in a world of shadows until I met you.”

“That’s why we don’t give her false hope. We don’t want her to go overboard chasing a false flag. Until I have a solution that is sure to work for eliminating her light, she’ll have to wait like she did for the past thousands of years.”

Grace shook her head, “Said the one trying to convince me that the world is still alive. I bet it all has to with that little she-monster shadow.”

Arad glared at her, “One last thing.”

Grace lifted her hands, “Fine! I’ll listen to you this time, no fooling around. You say I can’t do something, then I won’t do it. It was my mistake to go and take a peek inside the hoard vault.” She smiled, “I honestly thought I’d find more shadows stacked inside holding a meeting on how to brainwash me as well as they did you.”

“Just behave. For now, I have to understand why you can see me and Luminous and not everyone else. I bet it has something to do with either our magic type, me being void she is light, or our very nature as magic dragons.” The two finally walked into one of the caverns in Arad’s lair.

Grace’s eyes opened wide as she saw a woman sitting on a desk, tinkering with a hunting rifle. She rubbed her eyes and gasped, “Wait! Another living one?”

“That’s Altair, a void drakaina. So you can see her, interesting.”