by Amelia Jade
Then they would put him in a cage and never let him free. She wanted to see him suffer, but not as a lab rat. That was too mean, even for her. That’s why she had to lie to Garath. Not like he would believe her anyway.
“What secret?” The officer sitting with Garath spoke up. Marie recognized the colonel, albeit barely, though she didn’t know her name.
“I don’t know a secret!”
“Then explain the pictures,” Garath replied, ignoring the colonel.
The pictures. How could she explain them? What, that she kept them up like that so she could go down there and be miserable with herself for failing her father? For letting her asshole of a dragon-shifting ex steal the car he’d prized, and left to her in his will? That she went down there to cry and beg for forgiveness several times a week?
Garath wouldn’t listen to that. He was searching for something else, something she didn’t know about. It sounded like he suspected some sort of plot going on between her and Liam. But she hadn’t seen him in over a year. Not since he’d left her and taken the car.
She knew that she should just tell Garath the truth, to explain to him what was going on. A part of her questioned that, calling to light the fact that he’d just walked out on her without answering any phone calls or texts, his apartment empty as well. She’d been worried sick, and yet here he was having dinner with the colonel and her husband, or pet, or whatever the hulking behemoth who went everywhere with her was. Eating with them like nothing was wrong.
Clearly he didn’t care about her. Nor, then, did he actually care about the truth. Whatever it was, she’d been naïve to think that he actually cared for her. If he’d been as crazy about her as he pretended to be, then why would he have left her alone without a word? While perhaps not as bad as the way Liam had left her, it still hurt. It wasn’t something you did to a person you cared for!
“If you wanted to know the truth,” she said coldly, her own defenses settling into place, “then you should have asked me instead of running off.” She smiled at him. “Though I suppose I should thank you for that.”
His perfectly arched eyebrows came together, the gray eyes cloudy. “And why is that?”
“Because. You revealed to me your true nature. The real asshole underneath. If you hadn’t, who knows how much longer I might have stayed with you before it came out. So thanks for doing it early.”
She walked away, leaving him at the table. This was why she hadn’t dated anyone since coming to Barton City. Men were all the same: they were all assholes. Whether they were shifters, like Liam had been, or human like Garath, they were all assholes.
And she was done with them.
Chapter Fifteen
Garath
Kallore spoke for the first time into the silence. “Uh, what the fuck was that all about?”
Typical red dragon. So crass.
“It’s a long story,” he said tiredly, not wanting to get into it.
“Uh-huh.” Kallore looked at him, then back at the kitchen. He made to say more, but Colonel Mara interrupted him.
“You should go apologize.”
“For what?” He wasn’t sorry. He’d done nothing wrong. Marie had lied to him. She and Liam had set him up from the beginning, but even after being caught and called out, she’d kept up the lie. If there had been even a shred of true caring there, she would have at least admitted to knowing more. Instead, she’d played it dumb. The only time he’d caught her telling a bald-faced lie was when she claimed not to know a secret. Well duh. Of course she knew it. She was in on it.
“For being an asshole.”
“Fuck you.”
BANG! Kallore’s hands slammed down onto the table. He growled threateningly. “Be careful how you speak to her.”
“If she wants to speak to me rudely, then she’s going to get it back in spades. I’m not afraid of you, crimson. Respect given will be reciprocated. It’s an easy concept. I should think even your thick skull could get it eventually.”
The big red dragon exploded out of his seat.
“Kallore, if you can’t keep your temper in check, then go outside and pick on some new recruits or something.” Colonel Mara’s voice was like a whip, cracking through the building conflict between the two dragons.
Garath watched smugly as the crimson was brought to task and given the boot by his mate. He shrugged off the angry glares from the ash-blond giant. If he thought his electric blue eyes were intimidating, he should try trading stares with Marie. She could teach him a thing or two.
He could picture them now, the icy orbs that had pinned him down with their intensity, anger at her destroyed kitchen growing by the second. She’d stood there, furious and covered in food, but the only thing he’d been able to see were her eyes. Blue circles like the calm at the center of a hurricane, they’d warned of impending danger as the temperature in them dropped. Garath hadn’t seen it coming, and he’d walked right into it.
Conflicting emotions filled him. Anger at what he’d seen, what he knew was going on between Marie and Liam. She knew more than she was letting on, and for some reason she was determined to protect the asshole. What else could that reason be besides trying to salvage their plan to humiliate him? If she truly cared about him, she would tell him, wouldn’t she?
“You look upset,” Colonel Mara said as Kallore departed the room.
Of course he was upset. His dragon was still trying to tell him that Marie was his mate. It was trying to convince him that the pain she’d faked was real, that she truly was hurt by his actions.
“Humanity’s ability to lie has left me confused. You are so adept at it you do it without thinking, and it makes separating the truth from the lies more confusing.”
The military officer laughed, a bitter, biting sound. “Like dragons don’t lie.”
“Rarely. We simply refrain from giving out all information unless absolutely necessary. There is a difference between outright deception and lack of information.”
“Some would call that semantics.”
“Some would be wrong.” He shook his head. “I am not here to debate that.”
Colonel Mara studied him. “Why are you here?”
“You invited me.”
“I mean now. Why are you still here?”
“Because you have not given me an answer as to whether you will let me go and be free, unpursued by the military.”
The short woman sighed. “Not that, you dolt. I meant why are you not going after her?”
“Why should I? She’s not my mate.”
Liar.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
Liar.
The word echoed inside him over and over, pounding his skull every time he tried to deny his interest in Marie.
“Either way, it sounds like you need more information, Garath. Go after her.”
She was right. He needed more information. Like where on this retched planet Liam was currently hiding out. If Liam was alive after all these years, perhaps he could find him and track him down. Then he could either get his treasure back, or hand out punishment to Liam. Or both.
“Fine.” He rose from the table and headed through the doors into the kitchen, ready to confront Marie and find out just what the hell was going on.
Chapter Sixteen
Marie
Everyone in the kitchen stared at her as she fled to her office in tears. Jamie came after her, the ever-faithful friend he was, but she didn’t want to be disturbed. Not right then. After several knocks her assistant let her be. She would talk to him, in time. But not yet.
The locked door rocked in its frame as someone tried to enter only to find it wouldn’t open. The same person grunted, then wood shattered as Garath simply ripped it from its hinges. She didn’t even have to see him to know it was him.
“Now what are you going to do?” she asked calmly as he stood there holding the door, almost comically looking around for a place to put it.
Finally he decided
to push it back into the frame. It didn’t fit very well, but it stayed, giving them a modicum of privacy.
“I’m going to give you a chance to tell me everything,” he said, standing in front of her desk. “To come clean about the pictures of him.”
There was something about the way Garath spoke of Liam that triggered a warning, but once again she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Whatever it was it had to be important, but her brain just wasn’t able to unravel the mystery.
“Fine. But not with you looming over me like that. I’m not going to do this like I’m being interrogated.”
Garath sat stiffly in one of the three chairs opposite her desk, wasting no time.
“His name is Liam.” Start with the basics. “We dated and then were engaged, yes. That is why there is a picture of us. Everything was fine. I fell for him, he wooed me, whatever you want to call it.”
Joints popped in his knuckles as he gripped the arm rests of the chair, wood cracking and snapping under his immense strength.
“Will you stop ruining things?” she barked. “This is all in the past. I wasn’t a virgin when you met me, okay? It’s not like you were either. You don’t just get to be that good in bed without any experience. So stop acting all holier-than-thou on me, got it?”
Garath nodded, but he didn’t relax. Fine, whatever.
“You weren’t wrong about us being together.”
The gray-eyed giant grew visibly more irate at that admission. His lips, already thin, were now compressed so tightly she could barely make them out. Red filled his face, but it wasn’t from embarrassment, it was from fury. Like a volcano ready to erupt he sat across from her, biding his time.
“Why shouldn’t I leave right now?” He spoke in tight, clipped tones, the calm a complete façade for the tempest swirling underneath.
Marie slammed a palm onto the table. “Because then you’d be just like him, and just like every other guy. Leaving me right when I need you the most. When you’re supposed to be with me and support me. Instead you’d leave me.”
Garath’s surprise was complete. “What?”
“See? You’re rushing to conclusions when you don’t have all the information. Liam left me.”
“He did?”
“In the worst possible way.” She looked down, feeling embarrassed and hurt all over again as she remembered that day. “It was on the wedding day. I walked down the aisle, and he walked out. Leaving me on the altar. Alone.” Tears started to fall. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was for me, Garath? To be up there in front of hundreds of friends and family, most of whom were from my side, and be humiliated? All of them staring at me, asking questions.”
“I’m sorry.”
She ignored him. “What’s so wrong with Marie that Garath left? She must be a control-freak. Maybe she’s broken. Messed in the head. Maybe she cheated on him. Or he cheated on her because she wouldn’t put out.”
“Nobody said that,” he protested.
“Of course not. Not out loud. But in their heads they were thinking it. All while I stood up there and cried, my perfect makeup ruined as the man I thought I loved walked out on me.”
“No explanation? Nothing?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s because he’s a scumbag piece of shit, Garath. That asshole left me there and ran out of the chapel. He stole our wedding ride. It was my father’s pride and joy, a classic 1971 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda convertible that he left to me in his will.” Her voice finally cracked and she reached for a tissue.
Garath beat her to it. He pulled one out and then handed her the entire box.
“It was all decorated too. Tin cans, a Just Married sign, the works. He ripped that all off and just ran off with it. He stole it from me.”
“I’m sorry.” The big man’s face was filled with shame, and he refused to meet her eyes. “Then just now, I walked out on you without warning or reason again. It must have been like it was happening all over again.”
“Yes.”
“There’s not much I can say to make up for that, is there?”
“No. It’s weird, I get it. The pictures of him. But I keep them there for two reasons.”
“What are those?”
She smiled sadly. “This is what you should have asked before you walked out. One reason is as a reminder to myself of how I failed my father. I’ve never gotten the car back. The police weren’t able to track it down. My dad trusted me to take care of it, and I let it get stolen. What kind of daughter am I?”
Garath looked poised to protest, but she didn’t let him.
“The second reason is a tracking board.”
“What?”
“I’ve never stopped looking for that bastard,” she snarled, her voice cold. “Every picture up there besides the engagement one is from a recent source. I tracked him down to this base, and those are pictures from news reports, newspapers, things like that, where he’s shown his face. He’s here somewhere, and I’m going to find him.”
She finished with another slam of her fist onto the table, but Garath’s reaction surpassed that and then some.
Chapter Seventeen
Garath
He exploded out of his chair, the force of his actions sending it flying into the door, shattering it into pieces and toppling the door outward, the frosted glass in the top half shattering.
“He’s HERE?” he roared. “Where? I’m going to find him. Then I’m going to kill him.”
Power surged through his body and he felt his eyes and skin begin to darken as he called upon his dragon powers. All this time he’d been here under Garath’s nose? How? Was Colonel Mara harboring him, keeping him safe from the onyx dragon’s wrath?
His desire for revenge purged all other feelings from within him, including the shame and failure toward Marie that had been present just a moment earlier. The knowledge that his ancient enemy from centuries earlier was not only alive, but also somewhere on the base itself was just too much for him too ignore. He’d harbored this anger for so long it was all-consuming now.
“That’s just it!” Marie exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. “I don’t know! I saw him on the news here months ago when the military first started doing maneuvers out in the mountains, right before they started building this base. He was in the background of some report or another, I forget now. Anyway, I came out here to find him, but nothing since.”
Garath went cold.
Marie had no idea, but he knew the truth. The real reason why the military had done “maneuvers” out in the mountains. That was just a fiction for the first fight between humans and Outsiders. They’d battled against the mysterious creatures, driving them back through the portal contained under one of the mountain peaks. It had come at tremendous cost, but finally they’d returned to the portal.
A nuclear weapon had been sent through in an attempt to close it. Unfortunately, while it had eradicated much of the Outsider strength that was attempting to stream through the tiny rip in the fabric of space, there had been an unexpected side effect. The portal itself had absorbed much of the energy, and had expanded in size until it was now a massive thing nearly a hundred feet tall and more wide.
The only positive was that the radiation it had seeded upon the ground on the far side of the portal was deadly to the Outsiders as well. It prevented them from coming across. For now. To Garath’s knowledge only three Outsiders had remained upon Earth, and his fellow dragons had accounted for two of them. Only one remained.
What none of that information did, however, was explain to him why another dragon had been poking around the area right when the Outsiders had first appeared. There didn’t seem to be anything good that could have come out of that.
“Garath? What’s going on?” Marie looked at him, worried.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Tell me. You went from volcanic explosion of anger to cold and silent in a nanosecond. What’s going on? What aren’t you
telling me?”
“I’m angry about how he treated you.” He had to divert the conversation. Get it back onto something else. “I was dreaming about exacting revenge on him, of finding your father’s car.”
Marie shrugged. “I’ve sort of accepted that I’m likely never going to find it again. I just want to find him and give him a piece of my mind. To get a bit of closure.”
“I understand. I could probably help with that.”
“No. Trust me, Garath. You don’t want to go up against this guy. As big and strong as you are, you would lose.”
She knew. By trying to protect him, by keeping him away from Liam, she revealed that she knew Liam’s secret. The only question was how? The silver dragon would never have told her the truth about him. She must have discovered it by accident.
Garath wished he could tell her the truth. That he was also a dragon, and that he wasn’t afraid of Liam. After being swindled by the dragon—something they had in common now—he’d wandered the world searching for him. During that time he’d had little else to do, so he’d honed his skills, practicing for hours daily while he walked or flew. Garath was a master of his dragon powers.
If he ever found Liam again, the silver dragon would be sorry.
Why can’t you tell her the truth? She knows your kind exist already. What difference does it matter?
The answer was right there in front of him though. Liam had hurt Marie. Betrayed her and embarrassed her more than anyone else. It was a wound that would take a long, long time for her to heal. They could fix things now, he felt confident of that. But revealing to her that he’s a dragon would be too much, he felt. Better not to tell her yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly, Marie, I reacted badly. I should have stayed calm and asked you what was going on.”
She smiled. “Yes. You should have. Though I guess you might not have believed me.”
“True. There would have been doubts in my mind. It is, after all, a jarring thing to discover that your m—”He’d almost said mate. “That your girl has pictures still up of her engaged to another guy.”
