The Dragon From Paris_A Sexy Dragon Romance

by JJ Jones

  “That’s right. I’d have to be to wanna spend my off time with you boys, after having to work with you all of the time, too.”

  “Yup. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell ya. But you aren’t gonna go anywhere, right?”

  “Go anywhere? What do you mean? Where would I go?”

  Chase could see that this wasn’t an easy conversation for his friend to have. He could see the struggle written all over his face and he wanted to be able to help, to just pull the words out of him and have the whole thing be done with. But he knew Mitch, he knew how he operated. He was a man of relatively few words that carried any serious weight, but every now and then he got to a head space where he just had to get something off his mind.

  Chase had learned that the only thing to do when he got that way was to let him work through it. It required some patience, that sort of went without saying and not everyone was cut out for the task, but to Chase it was just one of those things you did for a brother.

  Lord only knew he had his flaws and Mitch had always put up with them with only minimal genuine complaint.

  “I don’t know, man. It’s just-- well, you ain’t exactly like some of the other men here. Ain’t that right?”

  “I don’t know, Mitch. I guess it depends on what you mean by that.”

  “God damnit, Chase, I don’t really know what I mean by that. Sometimes I’m not sure I know what’s up and what’s down. I just do the best I can, you know?”

  “I know. I’ve been there. Hell, that’s pretty much how I go through my life on a day to day basis.”

  “Right. So then you know.”

  If Chase was being perfectly honest, no, he didn’t have a fucking clue what Mitch was trying to say. He could see that he was pretty heavily intoxicated, he could definitely see that much was true. He could see him going through a massive internal struggle, too, that he wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing by even having this conversation.

  Looking at that conflict on Mitch’s usually simple and untroubled face, Chase began to feel the first little bit of real unease he had ever had with his friend. He had an idea that anyone who had a serious secret to keep would know what it was he was experiencing.

  There was always this undertone of suspicion, this knowledge that things could all unravel even when you felt like everything was going well. Some men turned mean because of it. Some men lied and stole, let themselves become the worst possible versions of what they could have been. They let their secrets eat them up from the inside out until they weren’t hardly people any more. That was something Chase hadn’t ever let happen to him.

  Who knew, maybe it was because it was a secret he had been born with. He had never known a life that wasn’t double, the one life that was human and the one life that was shifter. It was such an integral part of his identity that it didn’t really plague him much. It was something he was usually grateful for, except for times like this. Times like this all of that unease and dark suspicion would come bubbling up inside of him and make things feel very difficult to control.

  It triggered his flight or fight instinct, made him worry that he could lose control of his shift and do some damage he would never be able to undo. Looking at Mitch searching inside of his head for words he didn’t know how to say, Chase knew that something was different. Once Mitch said his piece, it would never go back to being the same again.

  “Let’s get at it this way, OK? I want to ask you a question.”

  “Shoot. Ask me anything you like.”

  “Alright. How come you decided to be a SEAL?”

  “Easy. It’s in my family. It’s in my blood.”

  “Because that’s what your daddy was, right? You were a military brat.”

  “Sure. We moved around more than fugitives, if I had to guess.”

  “And why do you think your daddy became a SEAL?”

  Huh. In all of the years of his life, all of the time he had spent pretty much idolizing his dad, Chase had never thought to ask that question. Not of his father or of himself. He had just accepted that it had to be out of a sense of duty to his country. That was the only honorable reason there was, right?

  But the way Mitch asked made him stop and think about it in a different way than he ever had before. Why had his father made the choices he had made? It hadn’t been nothing, the way he moved them around from place to place. It hadn’t been the easiest way to raise a family and, in the end, it had been the biggest contributing factor to Katie’s excommunication.

  Chase had always assumed it was because his father believed in a greater good that surpassed even the good of his family. It was that belief that had gotten him through the harder times, but now? Now he wasn’t so sure. All it had taken was that one, off the cuff conversation and he didn’t know what he believed about his father’s decisions any more.

  “Chase?”

  “I don’t know, man,” he said, shaking his head lightly to try and clear the dark thoughts from taking root, “I never asked. I guess I always figured he thought it was his patriotic duty.”

  “It’s a good reason. I bet it’s right, too. At least partly.”

  “Partly?”

  “Shit, brother, I’ve gotta switch tactics, I think. Let me ask you another question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have you been listening to the rumors that’ve been circling around? I guess they’ve been swirling from one base to another. Kind of an underground kind of thing, the sort of hush hush stuff you ain’t supposed to talk about unless you want to be seen as a crazy man.”

  His skin went cold. He didn’t want to talk about it. This was the last thing he wanted to talk about. Because yes, he had heard the rumors. The rumors were about men and women who had infiltrated the SEALs who weren’t all together human. To listen to the hushed stories told mostly in seedy little bars like this one, you would think that there was a whole group of flat out monsters attempting a mostly secret hostile takeover of the United States’ military.

  These rumors made shifters sound like monsters who would just as soon murder a man as look at him. They made the shifters sound like pure evil, never mind the fact that these men and women were serving their country just like the standard humans enlisted were.

  Never mind that they were putting themselves in the line of fire day in and day out, that it was their unnatural strength and instinct that had saved many a potential casualty throughout the course of their dedicated service. You didn’t have to look very hard for evidence of how poorly the human race tolerated anything that was different from them. Chase had studied enough history to have seen the patterns clearly.

  What was unknown was very often persecuted and he had no doubt that was exactly what would happen to shifters if their existence became widely recognized as real. So what did he do? Lie to his friend? Yes, that was probably exactly what he should do.

  The only problem was that now he had waited so long to deliver any kind of answer at all that Mitch had already drawn his own conclusions on the subject.

  “So you’ve heard it. Damn, I thought as much. Somehow I just knew you knew.”

  “Did you?”

  “Well sure, you’re about a thousand times smarter than the rest of us combined.”

  “I don’t know about that. But out of curiosity, why do you ask?”

  “Well, I was just curious exactly how much you had heard.”

  “I don’t know. I guess little pieces here and there.”

  “I was just thinking about it all, you know? Like, what would it mean if it were real? They’d have to be friendly, these shifters, right?”

  “I’m not saying I disagree with you, but what makes you say that?”

  “Well, think about it. Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier for them to just live out in the backwaters, not troubling anyone and minding their own business? It seems to me like it would be safer. They must want to be of service, right? Or else why would they put themselves in direct contact with the fucking military? You explain
a thing like that to me with any other kind of reason that makes sense. I dare you. I mean, seriously man, I bet you can’t do it.”

  “You’re right. You’d have to be a complete fool, wouldn’t you?”

  “Exactly. I mean, it would be really fucking hard to hide it, right, I would think it would be for sure, but a shifter could do it if they really wanted to.”

  “Right, I guess. But why, exactly?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would it be so fucking hard to hide?”

  “Shit, being able to do all of these things that other people can’t do and having to pretend to be regular. That would feel like a bunch of bullshit to me. Maybe it’s because I ain’t never had anything really special about me, but if I woke up and I somehow did, I think you’d have to hold me back from shouting it out to every person who could hear me.”

  “OK, I can see that.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “What do I think about what?”

  Mitch just looked at him, most of the fear and jitters gone. Shit. This was it, wasn’t it? He had spent his whole life with at least part of him wanting to be able to tell someone what he really was and now it looked like he might not have a choice about it.

  If only it was as exciting a thing as he used to imagine it would be instead of this sickening, dead feeling crawling across his skin that told him he was in danger. Danger in the form of a friend, how Shakespearean. Sweet Christ, he just wanted things to go back to how they were five minutes ago when they were still his half-baked version of normal.

  “Chase. Chase. Come on, man.”

  “What? What do you want, Mitch? I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “The truth, man. I want you to trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

  “Which would be what? I don’t know what you think you’re going to find out by doing this. You’re doing a fantastic fucking job of creeping me out, though. So if that was your goal then well done.”

  “Shit. OK,” Mitch ran his hand through his hands with a slightly aggravated look on his face and started to pace back and forth in front of him drinking his beer like a man who was dying of thirst, “let’s break it down then. If that’s how you want to do it.”

  “Mitch-”

  “No. No, we’re gonna do this, one way or another. So here we go, OK? Let’s look at the things these shifters can do. They’ve got their instincts, right? They’ve got these fantastic fucking instincts that let ‘em know the perfect time to act on a thing. They’ve got crazy good reflexes, smell, and vision. They’re way stronger than any normal person is ever gonna be, and they’re liable to be closed off, real private about themselves. Now. Those things sound familiar to you at all?”

  “I don’t know, should they?”

  “You’re really gonna make me just come out and say it, aren’t you? Fine, here goes. I know, man. I know what you are. There’s a couple of us who know. We’ve suspected it for a little while now.”

  Chase’s heart was thumping so hard in his chest that he thought he could very well be having a heart attack. He felt very real, physical pain coursing through his whole body and a panic he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to keep at bay pounding in his skull. He needed to deny it, to laugh it off like it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard but he felt frozen.

  Every second that ticked by without him telling Mitch he was nothing but your average guy was another second that proved to Mitch that he was absolutely right about his observation. He could see it in his face, his new-found certainty about what his friend was. Chase started to sweat, his face, his hands, the skin all over his body feeling clammy and sickly with reservation and fear.

  If it hadn’t been so visceral, he would have found the feeling fascinating. Fear wasn’t something he’d had a whole lot of experience with in his life. He probably should have felt more of it, honestly, what with him being something most people only believed to exist in mythological stories and such, but he had always felt so well taken care of by his parents that he hadn’t realized that fear might be an appropriate response.

  All he had known was that he was taken care of when he needed to be and that he was strong. His parents had raised him to know that, had instilled in him a pride of what he was and a deep respect for his lineage. This was inexplicably the first time he had felt the slimy grip of terror around his throat; now that he had felt it, he was certain he would never be able to forget the weakness it inspired. All men, all men, had it within them to be cowards. He knew that now. He was not so special as to have escaped that.

  “Come on, man. Say something, will ya?”

  Chase opened his mouth to tell Mitch to take all of his theories and shove them straight up his ass, but he had to shut his mouth again promptly. He could feel a war going on with his insides and he had a feeling he was going to lose. All of the food and drink he had taken in was threatening to come straight back up again and the smoke in the room was making him feel like he couldn’t breathe.

  Suddenly, he knew that if he didn’t get the fuck out of this room he was going to be sick all over its dingy carpeted floor. Mitch was still standing squarely in his way and he shoved him aside with one arm, startling his friend so badly he nearly knocked him straight off of his feet, desperate to get himself out onto the bar’s expansive wood patio. He knew he was making a scene, could hear the surprised voices behind him, but it was a little too late to think about decorum at this point. They were going to have a lot more to talk about if he lost his lunch all over the place.

  “Whoa! Whoa, man, what’s the matter with ya?”

  No time, no time to stop and talk. He had to keep going, had to get outside where there was uncontaminated air to fill his lungs and soothe his hot brow. He moved so fast out the back door of the place that he almost vaulted himself over the patio’s railing before he stopped, his fingers digging into the old, chipped wood so hard he actually cracked it.

  He could feel its splinters working their way into his skin and he welcomed the sensation. Even if it hurt (which it couldn’t, not all that much for a man with skin as thick as his), it was good. It was good to feel something that reminded him that the world had not stopped turning, that most things were just exactly the same as they had been before he had entered into this ill-fated conversation with Mitch.

  He shut his eyes and threw his head back, breathing the cold air in deeply, and one breath after the other until he felt revived. The nausea passed, a small blessing, and he started to feel ever so slightly more like himself. He looked up into the sky and thought about how much easier it would be if he could just take wing and fly far, far away. He could do it, too. He had the physical ability to do it but where would he go?

  What place on this planet was safe for a creature like him once he had outed himself? Not even Antarctica could hide him if he revealed himself so openly that the entire world could get a look. He felt trapped. He felt like a monster just for the thing he was born to be. What an awful weight to carry around on your shoulders. In some ways he felt a profound sense of gratefulness that this was the first time he had felt this over being a shifter. He was sure that there were people who had felt that way for their entire lives.

  “Hey man, why don’t you just stay still for a second, what do ya say?”

  “Yeah, Mitch. I guess I can do that for you.”

  “Good. That’s real good, cuz I don’t think I could’ve chased you much further than a couple of feet. Good god, you’re fast! Even for you, that was impressive.”

  Mitch was slowly joined by other members of Chase’s company, all of the men he considered extensions of his family. They moved cautiously, but when he looked into their eyes he saw that it wasn’t out of fear of him. No, they were trying not to spook him again, lest he take off so that they couldn’t follow.

  There was still love in their eyes, he could see that as plain as day. It was more than he would have expected or asked for and it actually succeeded in getting him a little choked up e
ven in the face of what had proven to be a pretty fucked up day.

  “You ready to talk to us now? You understand that we aren’t gonna hurt ya? Because that’s not the plan, I want you to understand that point for sure.”

  “OK, well I’m not gonna lie, that’s good to know.”

  “I bet. But did you think that’s what this was? Honestly, buddy, I’m a little bit offended.”

  “Are you for real right now?”

  Chase couldn’t help it; he bust out into a fit of laughter that shook his whole body. It was just the strangest thing to hear in a conversation that was already completely bizarre, and Mitch’s face looked so earnest. By god, it looked like he meant what he said. He was hurt by Chase’s lack of faith in his friends. When he thought about it from that perspective, it was actually sort of humbling.

  There was a depth of connection he hadn’t expected and it made it clear that sometimes people managed to surprise you; sometimes they managed to be so much more than you expected them to be.