by Starla Night
“I please every female.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Every time.”
She shook her head. “There’s a big difference between pleasing a female in bed and pleasing her in marriage.”
He lowered his lids. “You’ve never been married.”
“Mal shared your unwarranted arrogance. He barely wooed Cheryl.”
“He secured her in the end.”
“She’s human. When Mal caused her anger, she didn’t attempt to chew his arms off.”
Pyro felt a sudden, intimate awareness of his hand curling around the warm ceramic mug of coffee. The scarred forearms encased in sleeves. The fine houndstooth sliding against his arm hairs.
“It’s an honor to be chosen,” he growled, mouthing the words plenty of the Empress’s former ex-consorts must have used before going to their doom.
“You survived the Colony Wars,” Amber said, more softly. “I have no wish to see you fall in Draconis Palace.”
A soft wave of tenderness thunked into his hard heart. He rubbed his chest and focused on what mattered.
This situation was all the fault of aristocrats.
If his snotty Onyx grandmother had acknowledged Mal on his first birthday, their parents’ marriage would have been validated and their subsequent dragonlets would have been born aristocrats. But his grandmother had refused to let the dragonlets of a brimstone miner darken her estate. Their mother had been forced to give them up, their no-name father had died too young, and they’d been spread across the Empire, forced into the worst situations to survive.
As soon as their grandmother died and their mother took over the family, she’d recalled them to her home estate, but it had already been too late. They had the wrong education, the wrong credentials, and no relative would give them a chance.
And so it went to this day. Aristocrats were still determining the course of their lives. Pyro couldn’t do a thing about it. Why not give in? Maybe he could burn the palace down before he drew his final breath.
Kyan finally spoke in his quiet, deadly voice. “Here are the women you spent time with this week.” He held up his phone.
Ten tiny faces appeared. Pyro glanced at them. Sure, that looked about right.
“Select one for your wife,” he ordered.
Pyro bristled. “Since when does a younger brother order an elder?”
“Choose. Now. Or I will choose for you.”
The former mercenary was serious.
As much fun as it would be to challenge Kyan for overstepping, Pyro didn’t want to face him if the male was serious.
Kyan didn’t crack a smile.
“Fine,” he said, just to change the subject. “I’ll secure my wife tonight. But you’re third in age. If the Empress is consistent, her marriage offer will leave me and land on you.”
Kyan’s jaw tightened.
How could she possibly propose to him? His scars were brutal and so was his personality. But then the Empress had expressed interest in hot-headed Pyro. And blunt Mal.
It wasn’t them she wanted. It was what they represented.
Success. A top company of bastard males from the Outer Rim. Low caste bastard males couldn’t dare make fools out of the higher caste aristocrats or succeed despite their limitations.
Even going to the ends of the Empire wasn’t far enough away to live in peace.
“Alright. You secure your wife.” Jasper ticked tasks off on his mental checklist. “The rest of us will shutter the company.”
Okay. This little joke had gone far enough.
He sighed. “You can’t close the company.”
Everyone stopped, once more, and stared at him.
“This is Mal’s company. You can’t destroy it on his honeymoon.”
“So you have an idea for how to save it?” Amber asked flatly.
“Figure something out.”
His siblings regarded each other with irritation.
“Well?”
“Pyro, we don’t have any ideas. If you don’t either, then we must dissolve—”
“We’re a number one company!” At least for another week, until the next ranking list was published. “We shouldn’t be dissolving or selling. We should be pivoting.”
“Into what industry?” Amber demanded.
He had no idea. “So that’s it? We’re over? It’s time to cut and run?”
They stared at him silently.
Hellfire. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent the last few days trying to drown his troubles in the student bar wishing alcohol had any effect on the dragon metabolism.
“What does Flint have to say?” he finally asked, invoking their absent youngest brother.
Everyone turned to Kyan.
“The same thing he’s said from the moment Mal recruited him. Enjoy this little ‘vacation’ on Earth because it’s not going to last.”
Pyro rubbed the back of his neck. “He couldn’t honestly have expected the Empress to propose or our mother to give away our ports.”
Kyan shrugged.
Who knew what Flint expected? The reclusive dragon spent his time reading esoteric histories and staring into orreries. Pyro’s best guess was that he was living “somewhere on Earth.” Only Kyan knew where.
Dead end.
Pyro turned to Amber. “Why don’t you marry into another company and give us their ports?”
Her eyes crackled. Red scales shifted beneath her skin in dire warning. “For the same reason I don’t want to take over this company.”
“You’re the female.”
“So?”
“Take responsibility.”
She bared her teeth. The incisors lengthened into fangs.
His brothers fidgeted uncomfortably. Pyro had never antagonized Amber to the point of her bursting into dragon and flaming him. Females were larger, more dominant, aggressive, and they could belch flames.
“Pyro.” Kyan interrupted softly. “You always said we were held back by the rules of Draconis. We’re no longer on Draconis.”
He slammed his palm on the table. Claws burst from his fingernails and raked the heavy wood, curling it up into little curls. “And we’re still subjected to the aristocrats’ rules!”
“So find a way around them.”
His scales stabbed under his skin, prickling with warning. “Help me out here. We have the creativity. We have the talent.”
“Mal put this in your hands to decide.”
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
They stared at him. At the end of their ropes, they had no one else to turn to.
Fine.
“I’ll reschedule the meeting with Sard.” He scored new lines of anger into the table. He couldn’t help one last whine. “You didn’t let Mal work on company business when he was acquiring his human wife.”
“Mal was more hopeless,” Jasper said.
“He had no women,” Alex agreed.
“Only the intern directly outside his office,” Jasper finished.
Accurate, but irritating.
“So why didn’t you hire an intern for me to marry?” he grumbled, as the meeting ended.
“You don’t need assistance organizing a wife.”
No. He didn’t.
Looking at the tiny photos on Kyan’s phone had made one thing startling clear: He’d been with masses of human females. Even this very week. But only one face stood out to him.
Amy.
She was going to be furious.
He cracked his knuckles as an unholy grin stole across his face.
Good thing he liked to live dangerously.
Chapter Eight
This is a great lesson.” Amy’s mentor, graying fifth-grade teacher Corinne, said.
Amy sucked in a deep breath. She’d worked so hard. Thank goodness the distraction from two days ago hadn’t shown in her work. “Thank—”
“But.” Corrine’s spotted metal giraffe barrettes jangled in her ears as she shook her close-shorn head. “You can’t teach
it.”
Her stomach dipped. “What?”
“Not for the observation.” Corrine spread out the pictures Amy had carefully sourced and mounted on construction paper. “Diversity is a noble teaching goal. But not when controversy-shy administrators are watching.”
Her heart started beating fast in her chest. This couldn’t be happening. “But there’s diversity here.”
Corrine smiled dryly. “Within a certain income bracket, yes.”
Excelsior Preparatory Academy was ranked second in the state for academic excellence; the first-ranked school was fifth in the nation. A high percentage of their students went on to attend Harvard, Stanford, and other Ivy League schools. For the privilege, the parents paid through the nose, and they did not offer scholarships for need.
Amy had received a personal invitation to join as a substitute assistant teacher after her final portfolio was awarded a commendation by the Board of Education. She had studied past award winners, stalked top educators, and sent Melody’s homemade cookies to anyone who reviewed her portfolio and gave advice. She’d worked very, very hard.
Innovating on real-world problems was one of the reasons her portfolio had beat out many other highly qualified candidates. It was “edgy yet full of heart,” the Board of Education had said in their award letter. Students thought and engaged deeply on a personal level that lead to real change.
“But we do have diversity,” Amy insisted. “We do have different income brackets, colors, languages, backgrounds—”
“The administration prefers our faculty to be blind to differences,” Corrine said. “Your lesson is the opposite of blindness. It’s pointing out differences, including making students aware of differences they may not be able to see.”
“To celebrate them. It’s a celebration.”
Corrine rested her hands on the rainbow-confetti Amy had cut for student reflections. “I like the lesson. You’ve chosen a heart-warming introduction story, nice videos of current celebrities who have visible and invisible differences, and a relevant reflection activity. It’s a great lead-in to more advanced topics such as Model United Nations. But you can’t do it in this school. Not if you want a permanent position.”
It felt like she was in trouble all over again.
Corrine’s classroom suddenly felt far too warm. Amy’s palms sweated. Her lavender silk shirt stuck to her lower back.
“Now, what about that lesson on colors and figurative language?” Corrine tapped her tablet to a website where another educator’s tried-and-true lesson was posted for the world to use. “You read a poem, the students comment on the metaphors, and then they write their own.”
Amy twisted her hands in her lap. “I think Bethany’s class did a similar project last week.”
“And so our students are well prepared for it.”
She twisted her hands.
Corrine smiled at her gently. “You do want a job here, don’t you? We’re only expecting one retirement this year. You have a real shot at a permanent place.”
Of course she did.
“Repeating a lesson that’s already been done well by another teacher isn’t going to set me apart from other candidates,” Amy said.
“Put your own spin on the lesson.” A note of reprove entered Corrine’s voice. “Of course it should be your own. You have the weekend to work on it. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”
The hour changed. Amy gathered up her things, thanked her mentor for taking the time to review her lesson, and headed to the fifth-grade reading room.
The real problem was that the colors lesson didn’t feel like her. She’d studied the plan extensively. Figurative language was all fine and good, but she wouldn’t teach it using this poem. And if she started bringing in real-world examples focused on divisive issues she cared about, her lesson would slip into controversial territory again.
As a teacher, she had an important role to show all sides of a controversy fairly. Think about history and give students the tools to make decisions. Work toward positive change.
But there was no side to reading a poem about colors. It was a fine lesson. Corrine would make it interesting. But it didn’t speak to Amy. At all.
The rebel in her wanted to proceed. Screw the administration. She’d do her lesson her way.
But that wasn’t responsible. She’d lose her chance and, once the regular assistant teacher returned from maternity leave, have to go hunting for a new position next year. And she’d probably get in trouble.
Don’t you get tired of being perfect? Don’t you want to live a little?
Ha! If she lost her job, there was always Sard’s job offer. What would drawing ten million Zentangles be like? She could sit in a cubicle with the terrifying CEO breathing down her neck and churn them out.
Ugh.
Amy would do the color poem lesson. She’d go home, curl up with a plate of Melody’s crinkle cookies and a bowl of homemade fudge ice cream, and put on Rich B*tches. And then, properly sedated by the addictions that kept her numbed, she would review Corrine’s lesson.
Amy slid into her chair as her students were taking their seats and pulling out their reading books. Almost immediately, her mood improved.
She loved reading hour. Even though, as the assistant, she was only supposed to sit and make sure they read for an hour, she squeezed bonus educational juice out of the activity.
“Good afternoon. How do we feel about reading today?” she asked.
Most of her twenty students sat attentively; a few of the “regulars” jostled around in their seats, needing the extra minutes to transition.
“Written on the board behind me are the words you said last week were interesting, unusual, or you didn’t know the meaning. Come on up and write the definitions.”
Forgetful students pulled out their dictionaries; others carried their personal whiteboard markers to the board and jostled for space.
She used the words as a five-minute vocabulary exercise emphasizing multiple meanings. There were sides to any controversy; even the ultimate controversy of the English language.
Once they were back in their seats, she moved to her final interactive portion. “Open your books, review where you are, and give us your one-second summary of what happened last time.”
She started with her most concise students to set the tone. It gave them a chance to interact with their books, and it fulfilled the basic human need to share stories. Plus, by the time the quarter ended, students might be hooked by another’s story and check out extra books to read over summer.
Her students finished their summaries and opened their books, eager to find out what would happen next.
Corinne gave her great freedom. Twice a week, Amy got the whole class to herself like this. In addition to working with the school librarian finding exciting books to match students’ interests, she’d inserted mini-lessons on story structure, heroism, emotion, and even figurative language.
Yep. She’d already snuck in her own mini-lesson. Done her way. The way she’d liked.
Amy leaned back in her seat and stared out the window.
Normally she’d read along with them, but her book — Passionate Teaching — only mocked her. Teach what you believe in, the chapter subheading instructed. Make not only the way you teach but the subject itself something that you care about deeply.
Double ugh.
The verdant green lawn gleamed in the sunlight. Upper-level lacrosse players tossed their hard, white rubber ball from stick to stick. Brick and glass buildings shone with the pristine care of the landscaping team.
Amy made four dots on her planner paper and drew the frame connecting them, then divided it with her string and began filling the quadrants with meditative Zentangle forms.
Her parents were so proud when she’d gotten this substitute position. “You’re on your way,” her dad had said, patting her shoulders.
“Don’t screw it up,” her mom had added. “Stay smart.”
And then they’
d both chanted the phrase embedded into Amy’s soul. “One bad choice can ruin your life.”
Like the other night. With Pyro. When she’d thought she was going to be arrested.
She’s nobody I care about.
Amy set aside the unfinished Zentangle and picked up her book. Her kids were reading feverishly; a few were jotting notes. Talk about responsible. That had always been her, too. When she went through a rebellious junior high phase and public school got too distracting, her dad, a history professor at the local community college, threatened to pull her out and homeschool her. But that would’ve meant giving up on friends, band, and the small freedoms she had left. She’d doubled down on homework until her test scores reached perfect and never changed.
Getting this job was her last mission. Her final promise to her parents. They’d be able to relax and know she was as responsible as they’d always wanted. She’d make them so proud. She’d talk about “safe” figurative colors until she gagged.
Something odd swooped across the sky. Too big to be a bird, too close to buildings to be a plane.
Was that—?
Her belly pinged.
It couldn’t be.
Was that a hard, delicious, heart-stopping male clad in a leather jacket, shades, and jeans? And was he searching for her?
Pyro swooped over the lacrosse players, causing surprise and pointing, and buzzed silently around the high school class buildings and the library.
She jolted to her feet.
A few of her students looked up from their books.
“Class, keep reading.” She grabbed her spring jacket from the back of her chair. “I’ll be right back.”
She raced across the hall and thundered down the stairs. He was going to disrupt every class on campus. She shoved open the glass doors and raced out into the private, tailored courtyard.
Pyro caught sight of her and checked. He descended into a sheltered garden, his rough form hidden by Japanese maple and trellises. “So you do work here.”
He looked too good. Loose jeans invited her to tug his empty belt loops, a tight blue T-shirt highlighted his corded muscles, and a devilish smile reminded her in intimate places that he knew the flavor of her kiss.
