by Amelia Jade
“So then make yourself at home. We’re mated, I suppose we may as well share.”
She hissed angrily. “First off, we’re not actually mated. Secondly, I’m not sharing a bed with someone who doesn’t even know my name!”
Thorne opened his mouth to respond, to assure her that he did in fact know her name, but a warning glance snapped his mouth shut. Didn’t he?
“And in case you were wondering, no, my name is not Corporal, thank you very much. That’s my rank.”
He nodded begrudgingly, playing out every conversation he’d had with her. The truth was, he quickly realized, he didn’t know a single thing about her besides her rank and that she was part of the advanced infantry battlesuit division deployed to Fort Banner. It was hoped that the augmented humans could stand up to the Outsiders, providing support to the dragons, or even taking one on themselves if they had the numbers.
Plucking his bag from the bed, he nodded in acceptance. “Thorne,” he said, sticking his hand out as he approached her, trying to make a peace offering, so that perhaps they could at least work together to figure out a way out of the situation they were in. “I’ll grab the couch.”
She hadn’t seemed interested in taking his hand, but the lack of argument about the bed seemed to sway her. “Carla. Carla Giannone.”
“Sorry about not doing that earlier, Carla. I actually truly thought I had already found out your name.” He shrugged and eased past her. “I’ll try to do better.”
“See that you do,” she said, but there was no malice in her voice.
He tossed his bags down on the floor and flopped down on the couch. Resting his head on the one arm, his legs hung off the far side almost to his knees. It clearly was not built for people his size to be sleeping on.
“Don’t get too sour,” Carla assured him. “You can have the bed after I leave tomorrow.”
He sat up. “Leave? What? Why are you leaving?”
Carla stared at him, her eyes striking and hard, the gunmetal blue-gray aspect of them staring him down. It was those eyes that had caused him to call out to her in the first place when she’d walked into the bar, something in him attracted to them like a magnet. Now though, he was the victim of their intense glare, and he wondered if perhaps he’d made a mistake. She could be intimidating when she wanted for a human, and he almost took an involuntary step backward.
“Why? Maybe because I’m not your mate or whatever, and that I have a unit to get back to?” She paced back and forth across the thick planks of dark hardwood that covered the floor. “We have a general inspection on Monday. My leave ends tomorrow. I need to get back, or I’m going to be in big shit and my unit will fail. I can’t allow that to happen. I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am.”
Thorne mulled her words over. “They mean a lot to you, don’t they?”
“Yes. They’re my family.”
“And you, you pilot one of those robots?”
“Battlesuits,” she corrected. “And yes. I’m one of the best. I’ve been training for this opportunity for years.” Her eyes glinted coldly. “I’m going to kill any of those Outsiders who even tries to get through. Nothing is going to hurt innocent civilians while I still draw breath.”
Her ferocity and fierceness were impressive and attractive, though Thorne had his personal doubts about how effective the suits would actually be in combat against an Outsider.
“Interesting.”
Carla raised her eyebrows in challenge. “Got a problem with that?”
“What? No.” He shook his head emphatically. “Not at all. The other humans on the base hold your unit in high regard. I just admit to being curious. They make you out to be pretty badass, if I understand the term correctly.”
A brief frown crossed her face, but then she smiled, lifting her chin. “We are badass,” she stated. “The Steel Scythes are the best battlesuit operators in the entire military. Period.”
“Maybe you could show me sometime,” he said, trying to get on her good side.
“Maybe.” Carla grinned. “Though after we beat you senseless, you might regret asking for an invitation into the thing.”
Thorne couldn’t help himself, he matched her grin. Damn but she had a fiery spirit! If he could just get her to stop hating him, maybe they could emerge from this as friends. Not many humans had her attitude, he’d learned, and it made everything just a little more bearable.
The elevator slid open without warning, and Colonel Mara emerged from its confines.
“Um, aren’t you supposed to knock?” he growled. “A little privacy would be nice from time to time.”
Another hulking figure emerged from within the elevator, the whites of his blue eyes so bright they nearly overwhelmed the color. The thickly muscled male had a shock of ash-blond hair on his head, and slabs of muscle riveted to his frame.
Kallore glared at Thorne, who returned the look. The reds always thought they were the best. They might be bigger in dragon form, but they were slower too, and he knew how to exploit that ruthlessly if necessary. No, the fight between them would be too close to tell, and Kallore would never want to risk it in front of his mate. He was perfectly safe and unwilling to take the glare directed his way.
“I figured since you two had barely arrived you’d still be getting comfortable. Besides, Kallore and I weren’t planning to be here, but he insisted that we come visit his friends. So here we are, on my day off, bringing you two a message in person.”
Thorne’s stomach gave way at her tone. Whatever she was about to say, it wasn’t going to be good news. Bracing himself for the worst, he listened as she began to speak.
Chapter Four
Carla
“First off, I just wanted to reiterate how happy I am for you two.”
The false happiness in her tone was obvious, mostly because she wasn’t trying to hide it. In fact, it seemed like Colonel Mara was daring them to speak out, to call her on it and admit that the whole thing was a charade.
Carla almost did just that. Her desire to leave and be reunited with her unit and put this whole thing behind her was strong, and her mouth almost spoke the words. Thinking it through though, she realized that to do so would be to give in. To let Colonel Mara have her way, and bully her into admitting that they were in over their heads.
If there was one thing Carla couldn’t stand, it was a bully. Even if the bully in this case was right, she didn’t appreciate the methods. Why hadn’t Colonel Mara just called them on it herself, giving them the opportunity to fess up? That part irked her enough to keep her mouth shut.
“Thank you,” Thorne said, shifting uncomfortably at the praise.
“I know that things are moving fast for you two. To find each other and accept the suddenness of it all, the changes, everything like that, it must be tough. It seems like you’re adapting well though, so I give you both credit for sticking it through and not giving up.”
The veiled references to their failed practical joke were getting a little heavy, and Carla felt her face tightening. She hated standing there and taking the cheap shots, but it would be infinitely better than admitting defeat and being tossed in jail. Lying to a superior officer was a major offense, and by now she was in too deep to try and play it off as a prank gone wrong.
Carla was screwed.
“Also, Thorne, while you get settled with your mate, nothing will be expected of you. Either of you actually. The next week to two weeks will be entirely for the two of you to get to know each other. After that, Thorne, you will be expected to start partaking in the patrols of Barton City with both Corde and Vanek.”
“Two weeks?” she asked, speaking out of turn her surprise was so great. “But what about my unit?”
Colonel Mara turned to look at her. “What about it?”
“I need to get back to it right away.”
Colonel Mara shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that won’t be happening.”
Kallore grunted something to her and Colonel Mara nodded. “Okay,
time is ticking. Enjoy, you two. I still recall finding out that this oaf was my mate. It was…interesting.” She smiled, a sickly sweet look filled with fake sugar. “I’m sure you both will have plenty of fun though.”
With that they were gone, the elevator taking them upstairs to the penthouse. Carla stared after them, trying to process everything that was going on. She was to stay here for two weeks? That meant she was going to miss the GI. Her unit was going to fail. She could even be demoted.
Anger burst through her calm exterior like a wildfire blazing out of control. Carla wheeled on Thorne. “This is all your fault!” she snapped.
“Excuse me? All my fault?” He snorted.
“You’re damn right it’s all your fault! If you were willing to fight and didn’t want to run away like a coward, this wouldn’t have been an issue!”
Thorne lunged to his feet as she leveled her accusation, going from flat on the couch to vertical without seeming to make an effort. Carla stepped backward involuntarily, stunned by the swiftness of his movement, dropping into a fighting stance.
The dragon looked at her with disdain. “I’m not going to hit you. Put your hands down.”
Feeling guilty, she lowered them back to her sides.
“This is just as much your fault as it is mine,” he told her, his voice relaxed.
It grated on her to hear him speak like that, with the extreme confidence of someone who knew they were right.
“You could have said no at any time. You could still own up to it. I’m not pressuring you into staying whatsoever. Not in the slightest. You could have said no to kissing me at the bar, or owned up to the charade after the fact. But you didn’t. You didn’t want to get in trouble, and you didn’t want to back down before Colonel Mara’s challenged, just like me, and so here we are. In this together.” He shrugged and pushed past her, headed for the bathroom. “Don’t blame me for this, Corporal Giannone. You chose to be here. Perhaps you should ask yourself why.”
“What are you accusing me of?” she snapped before he could close the door.
“Absolutely nothing. You’re the one accusing me of things, though you don’t know the slightest bit about me.”
“So tell me then,” she growled. “What should I know that will help convince me you’re not a coward?”
“You should know that just because I’m a dragon, doesn’t mean that I’m not a living, breathing person, with thoughts, emotions, and yes, even feelings. I am not a weapon that you people can dig up from the earth, turn on, and shove the pointy end at the bad guy. Yet that is exactly how I am being treated.”
Any response she might have had died as he spoke, giving her a glimpse into his mind.
“You called me out for not getting your name, and rightly so,” he said. “Well Carla, now I’m calling you out for thinking that I should owe you something after waking me up from a sleep that I had voluntarily entered. I didn’t ask for this; I wasn’t trapped. Yet now I owe you humans a debt? How the hell does that make any sense?”
“Then go back to sleep.”
He looked at her for a long time before answering. Long enough that she started to fidget. What was taking him so long?
“I still might.” Thorne started to close the door.
“We had no choice.” She spoke quickly, before he closed it.
“What do you mean?”
Carla bit her lip, looking away. “About waking the dragons up. We had no choice.” Crossing her arms she finally met his gaze, the brownish-gold eyes threatening to draw her in even deeper. “You’ve seen the footage. What they’re capable of. These things aren’t human. They’re not natural. We don’t have the technology to stop them, Thorne. Without dragons, they’re going to walk across the earth, no matter how hard I train, no matter how well I fight. We can’t do this alone.”
He blinked once, his head tilting sideways as he looked at her with compassion. “I know,” he said softly. “That’s the one reason I’m still awake.”
Then he closed the door, leaving her with her own thoughts of him, the Outsiders, their situation, and most importantly, her unit. They were going to fail without her, and there was quite literally nothing she could do about it. Her own actions and unwillingness to back down had her cornered in a situation that she didn’t know how to extract herself from. Owning up to it was the obvious answer, but try as she might, Carla just couldn’t bring herself to do that. Colonel Mara knew they were lying, and she was calling them out on it. To back down now just wasn’t in her nature.
Her eyes followed a trail of hardwood planks across the floor to the door. The sound of the shower had come on, and she realized he wasn’t emerging any time soon. He’d had enough of her and this was his way of saying so. Carla had a brief thought about going in there after him to continue the conversation, but she swiftly realized that was a different part of her brain thinking, and shut it down. Nothing more would be resolved if she were to walk in on him naked. Except for maybe some curiosity on her part, which again, she did not need to be thinking of just then.
Thorne was more than just eye candy. Just like he was more than a weapon, like he’d said. His points about not being an object they could just throw at the Outsiders were good ones, and ones that she felt everyone, including Colonel Mara, was overlooking. Hell, she’d overlooked them until he’d brought it up. Nobody was taking that into account and they really should be.
They needed the dragons though. Carla was confident of herself and her unit. If presented the opportunity, they would take down an Outsider and kill it. They had the machines, the weapons, the knowledge, and the teamwork. Her squad she felt was probably capable of going toe-to-toe with a single one. The six of them worked excellently together, and the battlesuits augmented their strength to four or five times that of a normal human.
That wasn’t the issue though. The issue was there were only four battlesuit units in the entire army. Just over a hundred suits, if one included the command teams. Against thousands of Outsiders, if not tens of thousands. They were building more, and the technology was advancing in leaps and bounds thanks to Loky-Industries R&D department, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to have enough in time.
The dragons were needed.
Thorne was needed.
Was she going to be the one to convince him of that?
Chapter Five
Thorne
Shortly after he started his mission, he heard the bedroom door creak open.
It was the first time she’d emerged since late afternoon the day before. After he’d showered and felt refreshed, they’d spent the day watching television and awkwardly ignoring each other, except to ask what the other person wanted to watch. It had been…unpleasant, to say the least. Each one preoccupied with their own thoughts and emotions, wanting nothing more than to be left alone, yet unable to have what they wanted. It had been, simply put, brutal.
Thorne was trying to start the second day of their forced living together on a better note. He knew Carla had hoped to be leaving today, but after Colonel Mara’s visit he was wondering if she was going to go back at all, let alone soon. For some reason the colonel had been adamant about the two of them staying together. From what he’d heard of the colonel’s reputation, she wasn’t the type to be spiteful like this. There was a deeper reasoning here, he just didn’t know it yet.
“What are you doing?”
Burying the smile that appeared on his face, he answered with more than half turning his head. “Making breakfast?”
“Oh. Where did you get all the food?”
“I went out and bought it?”
They’d had pizza the night before, ordered in, something he realized he absolutely loved about this new world. While it had been delicious, Thorne wanted to experiment with other things. Much of his spare time was spent on his phone browsing the internet, trying to get up to speed with modern-day culture and technology.
Shit, speaking of which…
As subtly as possible as Carla came
closer he flipped his phone over, trying to hide the cooking instructions displayed upon the screen. Bacon and eggs were apparently a classic breakfast meal, but he had no idea how to make them. The remnants of his first try with the eggs were now in the garbage can. His second attempt were slowly sizzling away, waiting for him to flip them before serving.
“Right, of course. You went out and bought food. This morning?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Any chance you bought anything else that you feel like sharing?”
Thorne could hear her practically salivating over the food, and a little feeling of happiness shot through him. He was doing it properly then if she was getting hungry at the sight and smell of what he was making.
Except she wants something else, not this…
“You don’t want any of this?” he asked, trying to hide his abrupt mood change.
Carla, who had been rummaging through the fridge, stood upright and looked at him. “You’re making some for me?” The disbelief in her voice was palpable.
He stared at the food. Then her. Then the food. “Did you really think I was making all this for me?”
“Uh, maybe.” Carla at least had the good graces to blush as she answered truthfully. She was silent for a bit longer as he opened the oven and withdrew a plate stacked high with already cooked bacon and added the fresh strips from the pan to it.
He busied himself gathering two empty plates, upon which he spooned two eggs to hers, and three to his. The internet had said “over-easy” was the quickest and easiest style and fairly popular, so he’d not tried to be too fancy.
The toaster popped in the silence, and both of them jumped as four pieces of toast appeared with perfect golden tones to it, the smell of freshly twice-cooked bread filling the room. Thorne, hoping she didn’t mind his fingers, tossed a pair on her plate, and then set it in front of Carla, along with the tongs to grab the bacon.
