by Amelia Jade
“What the hell happened?”
Dom laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Your out-of-town boyfriend and his lackeys paid me a visit in a dark corner. I didn’t get the jump on them,” he said bitterly. “He came to rub it in that you had chosen him over me.”
Rhynne felt her jaw drop. “Dominick Carunno, you had better start making some sense right now,” she snapped.
He shook his great head. “What was the line you used? Oh, right. ‘I’m sure he is nice. In a way. But the answer is no. Not interested, at all. In anything. I’m not going to give it a chance. As soon as it’s finished, he’s gone, and I’ll be happier for it. That’s just the way it is.’ Real nice,” he said with a mighty snort of his dragon nostrils.
Rhynne sighed with relief. “Oh Dom,” she said softly. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about Garviel. He’s the one I’m not interested in.” She ran a hand across her stomach, not entirely sure if she did so subconsciously or to drive her point home. “You’re the one I’m interested in.” Her voice dropped another octave. “You’re the one I want.”
Emotion warred within Dom’s face clear enough for her to see. Hope played against what he perceived as reality as he tried to decide if she was telling the truth, or just stringing him along some more. Rhynne stood close, dropping her guard and letting him stare into her soul, in hopes that he might understand. Opening up was difficult for her. It wasn’t something she did often, or had much experience with. But right here, right then, she tried her best. For him.
“Rhynne,” he said softly, and she heard the emotion in his voice, the desire, the want, the need. Heard it so clearly that she ached for him.
“I’m here,” she told him. “Right here, right now. You can trust me.”
“And Garviel?”
She snorted. “Garviel is nothing. I put up with him to keep up appearances, to shut my mother up.”
A voice rang out in the night behind her. “And kissing him? Was that just keeping up appearances as well?”
Zeke strode from the dark. “Tell him the truth, at least,” he said, moving to another standing stone with Amber in tow. “He deserves that much from you.”
He shifted rapidly and extended a wing for his mate to climb aboard, and then with a nod at Dom, launched himself into the air.
Dominick’s dragon eyes blazed, the yellow orbs alight with anger.
“Dom, wait,” she protested, but he spoke first.
“You know what, I’m glad being visited by your match is part of keeping up appearances.” He spoke the word with such vehemence that Rhynne was driven back a step. “Perhaps you should concern yourself less about appearances, and stop being so damn afraid of standing up to your parents.”
His wings snapped out wide.
“Dominick!” she tried again, but he wasn’t listening.
“Don’t follow me,” he rumbled and took off into the night, leaving her behind as tears streamed down her face.
Rhynne sat down hard, cradling her head in her hands as her shoulders shook. She had opened herself up to him, and everything had come so close to being given a chance. A chance that she had been avoiding, yet desperately craving, for so long. Rhynne cared for Dominick. A lot. She yearned to be at his side, to have him next to her. However one wanted to say it, she needed it. And here, on this night, she’d almost been able to overcome her own internal hiccups.
Until Ezequiel interfered.
No, she told herself. That’s not fair, and you know it. Stop trying to put the blame on someone else. This is your fault, and it’s Garviel’s fault. You didn’t lead him on, but you didn’t stop him right away either, like you should have. So accept part of the blame, and do something about it.
“Rhynne? Are you all right?”
All at once her anger coalesced from burning coals into a towering inferno that rose up without warning and crashed over her. Rhynne flew to her feet as Garviel approached, and without warning, without care, and most importantly, without hesitation, she punched him square in the face.
“DO YOU GET IT NOW?” she screamed at him as he reeled from her blow.
She hit him again.
And again.
“Get it through your thick skull. I do not want you.”
Her final blow sent him tumbling to the ground.
She almost spat on him. It was a close thing, but in the end, she figured he wasn’t worth it.
Turning on her heel, she moved to a stone circle and shifted, winging away into the night as Garviel lay groaning on the ground, trying to figure out what had just happened to him.
Chapter Nine
Dominick
The town of Cadia proper came into view as he soared through the sky. The day was overcast, with thick dark gray clouds covering the sky, limiting the sunlight. In the distance he could see rain falling, but it didn’t appear to be coming any closer.
Lazily he banked to the right, looking at the buildings that formed the core of the city. There was the Cadian Hall, easily visible in the northwest corner of the city. The Guardian Headquarters, with its sprawling lawns and hexagonal-shaped building stood out from its spot nearer to the center of town. The Administration building, a gothic-style building with high-peaked roofs and far more gargoyles than necessary, occupied a large spot in the east end of town.
Today he was out on nominal “patrol duty.” This was one of the primary responsibilities of the Guardians, and Top Scale was firm in its belief that some of the basics should be taught and used during training. So all the cadets were out on different patrol routes that day, with instructions to take note of anything unusual they saw and to report back at the end of the day, or to notify an actual Guardian if something went awry.
When Dominick had been told he was assigned to Cadia proper, he’d been buoyed. True, it wasn’t the border, which was the most exciting of the assignments, which had gone to Asher. Thankfully, however, it wasn’t one of the uninhabited areas between the border and the center of town, as had been assigned to Zeke.
So far though, he’d been bored out of his mind, and had begun to regret that. The buildings were fascinating, yet there was nothing unusual about them. His focus was wavering. Or had been.
A dim trail of smoke and the crowd of people surrounding it right downtown drew his attention. Frowning, Dominick dropped lower, abandoning the thermal he had been riding as he came in for a closer look. It wasn’t a particularly cool day; in fact it was rather oppressively humid, making it terrible weather for a fire.
As the situation resolved itself, he realized that the smoke was listlessly drifting upward from the ruined remains of a building. There wasn’t much left to identify it with. Dominick dropped to the ground.
The crowd heard him coming and parted to allow him to land. He looked around. This wasn’t a part of town he frequented often, and thus he didn’t know all of the buildings by heart, including the cinders of the one in front of him.
“What is going on here?” he asked politely to the giant elk standing nearby, who, like some of the others, had declined to shift into human form.
At the question, the other shifter shuddered and assumed his human form, a tall, gangly ginger-haired boy of perhaps seventeen.
“Not sure,” he said, his voice cracking. The young man cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed to have done that in front of one of the dragon shifters. “Rumor is that some dragons burnt it down though,” he said, ducking his head automatically as if fearing reprisal.
Dominick’s long neck snapped around as his eyes focused on the young shifter. “A dragon did this?” he hissed in angry surprise.
“Dragons, sir,” the elk shifter said nervously. “Plural.”
“Three of them!” a woman said from nearby, bearing the thick bulk in her arms and hips of a bear shifter. “I saw them from my window.” She turned and pointed across the street to a three-story building, with shops on the ground floor and what appeared to be apartments on the upper levels.
>
“What is this place?” Dominick asked, trying to keep the anger from his deep voice, but only partially succeeding.
“It was my shop,” a thickset man replied, pushing his way through the crowd. “Now it’s a pile of ash,” he said, working his jaw to try and keep his emotions calm.
Dominick frowned. “Who are you?”
“My name is Morrte,” he replied. “I ran a sandwich shop.”
“A damn good one too,” someone in the crowd muttered, receiving noises in agreement from the others gathered around.
Morrte. The name sounded familiar to Dom, but he couldn’t quite come up with why. It would come to him though, he was sure.
“Any ideas on who might have done this to you, Morrte?” he asked, moving forward to more closely inspect the wreckage.
“Not at all,” he said with a shrug, his body language that of someone still in shock.
“No enemies, people that hate you, rivals, anyone you pissed off recently?”
Morrte shook his head, wringing his hands slightly in despair. “No. I actually thought I was a pretty well-liked guy,” he said with a sad smile. “But apparently I was wrong.”
“Nonsense, Morrte!” the elk shifter said, coming forward. “You are well-liked. Nobody knows who would have done this to you.”
The general consensus from the assembled bystanders seemed to agree with that statement, which made the destruction of his shop all the more unusual.
Two figures made their way through the group from his right, and Dominick turned to look at them. They both wore the golden G, indicating they were official Guardians of Cadia. They weren’t two that he was familiar with, besides a general recognition, but Dominick nodded respectfully toward the both of them.
“Did I hear you say that you witnessed three dragons doing this?” the one said, looking in Dominick’s direction.
He noticed that the Guardians did not return his nod of greeting. In fact, Dom realized with surprise, he was being looked at as if he were under suspicion.
“Is there a problem?’ he asked warily, shrugging aside the insult of not being greeted.
The crowd around them seemed to sense something, and a lane appeared almost instantly between him and the two newcomers as the gathered residents backed away.
“Well, there is a burned-down building,” the first Guardian replied. He was tall, not overly broad, with long hair that he kept pulled back up and over his head, where it hung down to his neck.
A closer look at his badge revealed no great surprise. He was a Pegasus.
That explains the hostility.
Every race committed members to the Guardians. That was the rule. Each species of shifters had their own version of Top Scale Academy, where ungainly shifters were transformed into highly trained versions of themselves, becoming one with their animal and learning to use all of its abilities.
That didn’t mean, however, that a shifter who joined the Guardians was as exempt from inter-species politics as perhaps they should be. Dragons were the lords of the sky, and the other flighty races, the Pegasus and gryphons, were jealous of them for it. To the point they actively worked to try and remove the dragons from power.
That enmity was boiling over now as the Guardian in front of him all but accused Dominick of having something to do with it.
“I did happen to notice the burnt building. Saw it while I was flying overhead,” Dom said, emphasizing the fact that he was both a better flier, and had been there first.
The other shifter’s eyes roamed the crowd as he spoke. “And three dragons were involved. A trio, working together.” He paused for effect, his eyes now focusing on Dominick. “May I ask what you and your fellow cadets were up to last night?”
Dom hissed in anger, his wings spreading threateningly. So that was his ploy, to try and blame the destruction on him and his friends? Dom snorted and prepared a scathing reply, but before he could get it out, Morrte stepped in front of him, holding up a hand.
“Who are you?” the Pegasus asked distractedly.
“I’m the owner of this place,” Morrte said bluntly. “And I can tell you that it wasn’t him and his friends.”
The Guardian arched an eyebrow questioningly, inviting Morrte to continue.
“Asher is one of my best, and closest friends,” he said simply.
The Pegasus continued to eye Dominick unsettlingly.
“Is there something wrong with Morrte’s statement?” he asked, his voice a thundercloud prepared to unleash lightning.
The street began to empty as many sensed the impending confrontation.
So far the second Guardian had remained neutral, neither supporting nor stopping his comrade. His attention had been focused on the burned-out husk of a building, and so Dominick had not yet seen the badge close enough to notice what type of shifter it was.
“Are you threatening a Guardian?” the first, still-unnamed shifter asked in reply.
Dom’s temper flared. “Of course not,” he said in clipped tones. “I’m simply asking if you, as a Guardian, believe the story offered by one of the residents of Cadia or not?”
Ire flashed through his opponent’s eyes, but he’d been neatly mousetrapped by Dominick, and the Pegasus knew it. If he continued to call out Dominick as a liar, then he was also therefore calling Morrte a liar, and he had no basis on which to do that.
“Of course not,” he replied, his eyes promising that he wouldn’t forget it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an investigation to conduct.”
“Oh, you’re excused all right,” Dominick said with a cheerful smile.
The Pegasus seemed ready to trade barbs—or blows—but his partner called him over to the wreckage, ostensibly to point something out, though Dominick recognized a distraction technique when he saw one.
“You’re unharmed though?” he asked, turning to Morrte, who nodded.
“Yes, though it will be ages before I can get this fixed and be back in business.” He shook his head and allowed himself to be guided away by others as the tension calmed.
Dominick watched him go for a long moment before he cleared the area around him and returned to the skies, letting the Guardians handle the official part of the business, even if he didn’t think much of the one in particular.
He was grateful, however, for the distraction the incident had provided.
It interrupted the constant stream of thoughts he’d been having about Rhynne. Particularly the ones where she’d been telling the truth, and there was more to the story of her kissing Garviel than he’d known.
Those disturbed him most.
***
He opened the door to his dorm room without caution, his brain fully distracted by Rhynne, the child she was carrying, and how convoluted everything was. Thus it was that his brain took several long seconds before it realized that he was not, in fact, hallucinating.
“You’re in my room,” he said dumbly.
“How very astute,” Rhynne Nova said as she uncurled herself from his bed in a way that, if he wasn’t still angry from his treatment the night before, might have awoken some other thoughts within him.
The room was small, and it felt utterly claustrophobic with the pair of them in there along with the massive ball of tension that seemed to wrap its seedy tendrils into every cubic inch of open space between them. The room was rectangular, with the door in the middle of a long side. His bed rested against the wall to the right, with a nightstand to the right and a wardrobe to the left. A thick oaken bookshelf rested against the far wall, and to his left lay a desk and chair for reading or doing work. That was it, not even a window, as his room was on the interior of the building.
Very, very tight confines for the two of them, when right now he wanted to have as much space as possible.
“Why are you here?” he asked, trying to remain civil. After all, she was here on official Academy business—although highly unlikely given her position on the bed when he arrived.
“Because we need to talk.”
He shrugged. “Not sure I’m interested.”
Rhynne looked at him with what amounted to contempt, her stare so powerful he suddenly felt self-conscious.
She pointed at the chair. “Sit down, and shut up.”
He obeyed rather meekly as she shut the door, and reassumed her perch on the bed, although it was a rather substantially less inviting pose this time when he added in the fire raging in her eyes.
“Better,” she said as he looked at her without speaking. “Now, let’s get some facts out of the way. One,” she said, holding up a finger, “I am carrying your child. Our child. However you want to think about it. Two,” another finger, “that child is both of our responsibilities.”
He nodded, though she hadn’t invited him to do anything yet.
“I have no intention of abandoning our child,” he said firmly, holding up a hand as she made to continue to talk. “Whatever may go on between us, I will be there for them,” he said with a fierce protectiveness he hadn’t even known he possessed. “Understood?”
Rhynne looked at him strangely, but her head moved up and down swiftly. “Three,” she said, continuing as if he hadn’t said anything, “I am not interested in Garviel. Get that through your damn thick skull. And four, he kissed me, uninvited. I was so shocked that I admittedly did not fight him off right away, which is my fault, and I accept that blame. But you will know that I did not want it, and that later that night, I delivered that message as forcefully as I could.”
Dominick noted the way she rubbed her knuckles at that, and wondered just what she had done. Still, so far it was all words, besides accepting a bit of fault about letting herself be kissed. He wasn’t sure what to think of it all.
