Mary hears the door slam, and she realizes it's her parents coming home. Her head buzzing with excitement, she goes skipping out to the living-room to meet her parents-turned-owners. Mommy and Daddy will show her so much more affection as a pet, she thinks, and they'll keep giving her snuggles like she always did as a much younger little girl instead of crossly telling her to stop acting like such a child.
Her illusions are smashed as her erstwhile father slaps her in the face and pushes her to the floor, shaking a scolding finger in front of her nose. "No!" he snaps. "Bad! No jump! Kneel!"
Mary's eyes water as she recovers from the slap, and she sits up on her butt with her feet and tail sprawled in front of her and her and her hands sprawled behind her as she looks up at her master, trying to figure out what she is supposed to do.
After she takes too long, Daddy grabs her by her collar, causing her to choke violently, and he forcibly directs her legs into a kneeling position and pushing down roughly on her shoulders while still holding her collar, nearly causing her to black out before she sags defeatedly into position. "Kneel!" he repeats. "Kneel when approaching a human!"
"I told you she would turn vicious" says Mommy. "Are you sure we shouldn't send her back to the pound? Maybe adopting a rescue was a bad idea."
As Mary watches the conversation helplessly, Daddy presses his lips together stubbornly and shakes his head. "Alice, give her a chance," he pleads. "Anthros are submissive by nature, not like their wild counterparts. Just give her a few more weeks, and she'll be kissing on our feet like a good girl." He rubs on Mary's cheek while looking at her with eyes full of saccharine love, and he says "Won't you, girl?"
That was more of an ultimatum than a question, and Mary realizes with horror that she might be sent away to be put to sleep if she aggravates the humans too badly. She realizes she could die. With her face blanching as much as her red-scaled visage can, she nods numbly.
That turns out to be the right thing to do. At her gesture, Mommy squeals with delight and comes to kneel next to her, giving her a squeezing snuggle. "Oh, that was so cute!" she gushes. "It was like she understood!"
Daddy nods triumphantly. "The book says five thousand words for the breed I suspect this one is," he says smartly. "If we could prove her to be a purebred, we might be able to breed her by age 10."
"That's a little young for breeding" Mommy says, which Mary couldn't agree more to. "Well, I really hope we're going to have her toilet-trained like the Jefferson family did their dragon" she adds sternly.
Daddy shakes his head even more sternly, though. "We have to be realistic, Alice. My textbook says that dragons bond more closely if they are taught to rely on their owners and hold their micturations to be let out on command," he says. "Maybe, if we had hatched her ourselves like the Jeffersons, she would have been dependent enough on us for that sort of thing to work, but she is a rescue and needs firmer discipline."
At the mention of that, Mary realizes that she does need to pee, and to her humiliation, she feels a trickle running between her legs and wriggles unhappily, still afraid, having been slapped so hard, to move from her subservient kneeling position and blushing hotly as her young bladder starts to betray her.
As Mommy realizes that Mary is peeing the floor, she screams. "She's pissing the floor, IN MY HOUSE!" Mommy shouts. "Take that THING of yours away, Maxwell, OH! I'm SO mad! Now, I have to look up what to do with pet stains!"
Mary whines in terror, knowing she'll be sent away to be put to death. No! This can't be happening! This can't be happening, no, she wasn't supposed to die. This can't be like the predator/prey fantasy. Pet-owners are supposed to love their creatures. With a sense of horror, though, Mary remembers what had happened with her last dog that her parents had gotten for her. A Maltese mix named Misty, she had had an unfortunate habit of peeing the floor when petted on too much, and one afternoon, she had petted on Misty and played with her for hours anyway in the living-room, not paying any heed to the wet spots Misty kept leaving. Mary came home from school one day, and her parents had given her a story that someone with a great, big back yard had come and adopted Misty away from them, saying Misty was in a better place than she was before and much happier. Mary had never been sure whether to believe them or not, and as time went on, she suspected more and more that the dog had just lost its last chance to have a forever home. No, no, no, this can't be. This can't be!
Before Mary can start to panic, Daddy rushes to get the leash off the wall and snaps it onto her collar, pulling her roughly to the door with his opposite hand while also shoving her roughly in the small of her back with his adjacent hand, forcing her to follow at his side. "It's okay, girl," he says gently as he leads her hastily down the step into the front yard. "Here!"
As Mary is pulled into the front yard, she yelps and tugs and claws at the leash, finding it closed with a combination lock that was designed to thwart the little fingers of an anthro pet dragoness. She's being taken away, she fears, and she doesn't know what to do. She's going to be taken away for peeing the floor like Misty! She's going to die, she thinks, and it's all because she was a stupid pet that wet herself.
A little boy pulls at his mother's hand and cries innocently, "Look, Mommy! A pretty dragon!"
Mary is in a state of terror, though. No, the child doesn't understand what people do to pets that wet the floor. The boy doesn't understand. She tries to tell the child, "pets that get sent away die! That's what happens!" Mary is only capable of whimpering and whining, and she is very scared. She wishes she could make the boy listen and understand; no, being a pet is not fun and games at all. They die! They die!
"Down" Daddy snaps as he pulls Mary out onto the grass. As Mary's heart still flutters and her eyes roll with fear, Daddy jerks the leash around her neck and pulls Mary in front of him facing toward him, and he repeats the command while looking at her intensely and authoritatively in her eyes. "Down" he says softly and firmly.
Mary is shocked to realize that the command has more force when he says it softly while gazing at her firmly in the eye. It overcomes even her fear, and her legs turn to rubber under her as she looks Daddy--whom it has come home to her has power of life and death over her--back in those cold, unwavering eyes. Those eyes are powerful, and they seem to stare directly into her soul to account for every sinful thought she has ever had. She feels so naked underneath that gaze, and she feels him staring at her and judging her. She didn't think it was possible to feel this taken apart, naked and ashamed.
Daddy doesn't even repeat the command, but he just looks at Mary firmly while keeping pressure on the leash and on her shoulder.
Mary whimpers meekly as she gives in to his authority, and she crouches down with a fit of nausea coursing through her. Against her will and under the spell of his command, her bladder begins micturating onto the ground, and from the first few drops comes a torrent of piss. She braces her hands--no, forepaws--on the ground as she spreads out her legs. The stream sprays with force against the turf. As it slows down to a trickle, she looks back up at her master guiltily, knowing this is the end. She has abased herself. She has peed somewhere wrong, and she's going to die like Misty. That's Master's judgment, and she's just some trash to be thrown away.
To her shock, though, Daddy beams down at her with pride. "You're such a good girl, Mary!" he says, gushing with happiness. "You're so good!"
Although Mary is too scared to fully believe it, her eyes light up as she starts to believe the impossible. She starts thinking Daddy won't send her to die right away. She looks up into her father's eyes pleadingly, begging for more of his merciful, sweet forgiveness. "Don't throw me away, Daddy," she pleads with her eyes, yearning to tell him with her voice that she was really his daughter, trapped temporarily in a bestial body, but only able to get out grunts and bays.
Mary's sudden fear for her life has quickly made her into a subservient, obedient beast. All the more humiliatingly, this subservience is what she had fantasized. It's what a forbidden, scary part of her had longed for secretly, and she hated it. She hated that she liked it on a sick level, and she just wanted Daddy to hold her, care for her and keep her safe from these fantasies.
The scene is interrupted as, right at that moment...