“Is there anything I can call you besides asshat or squatter since you slept on my back porch?”
“What is asshat for?” He laughed as the whisk in his hand moved with alarming speeds.
“For being you,” Rhiannon said.
He glanced over his shoulder and the spark in his eye made her breath catch. “It’s almost like you’re getting to know me better. I’ll have to tell my family that one. I’m sure they’d love to use the name, too. You, on the other hand, can call me Gareth.”
Gareth. It suited him, she thought. Before she knew it, Gareth set a plate full of raspberry waffles and breakfast sausage before her. Butter and jam followed it. She could barely believe that there was a dragon making waffles in her kitchen.
He was even serving her. And she let him.
Chapter Four
Gareth pulled out a chair beside the cranky woman and sank into it before reaching to claim a waffle for himself. He’d been pleasantly surprised to find a waffle iron in her possession after seeing the state of her pantry. But, as he snuck a glance at her, he was truly confused by her.
The scent that touched his nose on the porch told him that the female dragon he’d found the night before was nearby. It wasn’t until Rhiannon lost her balance and lurched toward him that he realized that the scent was coming from her. It confused him. This anger filled creature was no dragon. Of that, he was sure.
She worked for GOE. Despite their connection with the white dragon, she seemed to have a deep-seated hatred for his kind that clearly stated she was not a dragon. He should have picked her up, put her on the soft surface of her couch and left when he could. Instead, his first instinct had been to feed this waif of a monster beside him.
When she emerged from her house earlier in the morning, her words had held a touch of sincerity. He wanted to believe that she saw the truth in his words and that she would put an end to her boss’s madness, but it was hard to believe. Rhiannon was a good soldier and a good soldier followed orders until oblivion.
It made him sad more than anything. He expected to feel anger and frustration, but when he looked at the woman in her pajamas with her hair loose and free around her shoulders, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the fate she was marching toward.
“What are you staring at?” Rhiannon asked between mouthfuls of waffle.
He let a small smile touch his lips for a moment. “Did you mean what you said this morning? That you will try to stop your boss’s plans to fake a terror attack?”
He hoped that his words held weight, that she could feel it as much as he did. What her boss wanted to do was a horrible, desperate thing. It would cost them the lives of not only dragons, but humans if they weren’t careful. Gareth didn’t want anyone to die.
She regarded him as she chewed. He thought he could see a soul behind her dark eyes, but he very well could have been wrong. All he wanted was the chance at happiness. But, that rug had already been pulled out from under him. The best he could do now was keep his family safe.
“I will try,” she said, her voice small.
Gareth nodded. He stood and brushed loose flour from his shirt and jeans. The best he could do now was return to the territory and tell his leader what he’d learned. Perhaps, if they tried they could put a stop to it if she didn’t.
“You’re leaving?” Rhiannon asked. Her eyes widened as if her words surprised her own self.
He nodded. “You and I aren’t meant to be under the same roof for very long. We’re more likely to kill one another than to get along. It’s time I should be going before we burn your house down.”
He didn’t say that he’d like to burn the house down with their passionate love making. He didn’t say that he wanted to know what kind of fire burned inside of her to make her so dark. Instead, he told himself that he was being a self-destructive idiot. Laying with a GOE agent was surely suicide, no matter how much she intrigued him.
***
Gareth parked his truck outside of his leader’s cottage home. It looked human and normal, even in the wilderness that was Snowdonia. Maggie was nowhere to be found, her life too busy for a woman her age. Drystan, on the other hand, moved a bit slower and more precise.
The dragon in question was working in a tool shed behind the cottage. The smell of fresh cut wood filled the air.
“I must say that I am okay with some of these inventions of technology that my mate has brought to me,” Drystan said without turning around. He was holding a nail gun in his hand, nailing together pieces of wood that Gareth couldn’t decide would end up making.
“She does spoil you,” Gareth agreed.
“And, it seems, that the new exception regarding Territory restriction has spoiled you. I know that you spent the night off the Territory while the humans are in an uproar over what happened. You also smell of woman, but not sex. Do I have to warn you of the trouble you could not only bring upon yourself, but upon your family if you are not more careful?”
Gareth let out a breath. He’d been expecting this. Drystan was a level headed, honorable man, but he was also their leader for a reason. The older dragon slowly turned to pin Gareth with burning eyes. The nail gun was clenched in his hand, the plastic groaning beneath his strength.
“I followed the female GOE agent last night,” Gareth confessed. He wouldn’t tell him of the female dragon scent he found. Not when the scent came from the GOE agent. It had to be wrong. It was a fluke that didn’t need Drystan’s attention.
“I see that she didn’t succeed in killing you,” Drystan said. “You certainly didn’t charm her. I doubt the woman would fall for charm even if you had any. What made you spend the night with her? Do not lie, I can smell her all over you.”
“I overheard her partner pass on orders from her boss, the man that kidnapped your son’s mate. They want to destroy one of their own buildings and try to blame it on us.”
Drystan’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t return with this information immediately?”
Gareth felt the fire inside him reach higher. He knew that he was moments from smoke leaking from his nostrils. Why couldn’t his leader trust him? Why couldn’t he be proud of him for trying to protect them?
“My hope was to convince the woman to try to stop it from happening. I thought… I thought that maybe she would have a conscience, but I fear that I might have been wrong.”
Drystan sighed heavily before closing the space between them. With his head bowed forward, he let a heavy hand fall onto Gareth’s shoulder. His fingers pressed into Gareth’s shoulder almost painfully.
“Perhaps you have the right intentions for once in your life, but you do not have what it takes to act upon them.” Drystan’s hand moved to the back of Gareth’s neck in a tight brace. His head rose to meet Gareth’s eyes and the younger dragon could see the flames of anger in them. “You have wasted your life sleeping and drinking your way through your years. Do not think to act in this dire time without consulting me ever again. You are mine to command and mine to keep safe. If you are out and about while the Guardians are looking for any reason to hurt our own, I cannot protect you. If that woman turns on you and hurts you it makes me look bad. Do you hear me?”
Gareth swallowed the ball of fire that was lodged in his throat. Scorching air seeped from his nostrils, but he nodded. There was a reason that Drystan was his leader, but Gareth was a part of this family. He had every right to put his life on the line in an effort to protect them. He wished that his leader could only see that. Instead, he thought of how he looked to the world.
He was concerned with his honor.
Gareth ducked out of his leader’s grip, unable to form words. Instead, he walked away. His efforts weren’t appreciated. He was just Drystan’s silly nephew. As much as he wanted to punch something in that moment, he pulled it back and told himself he would do better. He would stop GOE from implementing their attack.
It didn’t matter if it cost him his life.
Chapter Five
Day and nig
ht, Rhiannon waited for the call that would spur her into action, but nothing came. She sat in the hearings like a good little soldier and went to the grocers like she was supposed to, but the anxiety of not knowing what to do was building inside of her. Things were not looking good for Wilson in the hearings. No one truly believed the story that she and Everett were weaving. Perhaps they knew Wilson all too well.
Perhaps this was the end of her career.
It meant that she was getting out of bed later and later in the day. That morning she’d gotten up after eleven and barely dragged herself to the shower.
She sighed and turned off the water. Steam filled the room as she stepped out of the shower. She wiped the mirror and looked at the woman in front of her. She had dark, mysterious eyes. Tendrils of almost black hair snaked over her pale skin. The stark contrast made her look almost alien. She wondered what her parents looked like. Wilson hadn’t been able to give her any family photos when she was old enough to wonder what they’d been like.
He simply told her to look toward the future. Not the past.
She looked to the small scar in the soft skin of the inside of her arm. Wilson told her that it was from a surgery she needed after her parents died. He didn’t go on to explain what it had been for, holding onto his forward-looking motto. Rhiannon had never wondered about it before, but these days she had too much time on her hands.
She often found a slight discomfort in the scar. Almost a burning sensation, but she never payed any attention to it. Without anything to occupy her mind she seemed to notice it increasingly more nowadays. Had it always burned this much? She couldn’t remember. She reached with her opposite hand and touched a fingertip to the small, white scar. She ran her finger up and down the scar, trying to summon memories. What happened to her? What happened to her parents?
Her heart skipped a beat when she pressed into the scar. There was something hard beneath the press of her finger. It was tiny, almost imperceptible. Her throat became tight when she realized what that meant. There was something inside of the small scar. How had she not noticed it before? She’d always thought that the surgery had been to fix something. Maybe she’d broken a bone or suffered a deep cut when her parents tried to protect her from the dragons that killed them.
Swallowing hard, she wrapped a towel around her body and went in search of something sharp. She was sick of her questions remaining unanswered as she blindly followed orders. She needed things to be out in the open if she was going to keep going forward with everything Wilson asked of her. That meant she needed to know what was in her arm.
It had been there for over thirty years. Her stomach turned when she thought about what it was going to take to get it out of her. It was still close to the skin, she thought, since she could feel it with the tip of her finger. It would only take a small incision from a sharp knife.
After claiming a tactical knife from her bedroom, she returned to sit on the edge of the bathtub. She held the tip of the knife to her skin and waited for her heart beat to calm before pressing it in. The pain was sharp and hot. It was nothing compared to what the woman she shot must have felt, she told herself. Pain is nothing.
The sharp knife slid across her skin. The skin parted and welled with red blood. It was nothing new to her. She’d seen her fair share of cuts and bruises and broken bones in the line of duty. Sucking in a shaky breath, she reached for the tweezers next to the sink. Dipping them in rubbing alcohol just to be safe, she paused, knowing how much this was going to hurt.
The thing that she pulled from her shaking arm made her heart stop. It clattered to the floor, leaving a trail of blood as it skittered across the white floor. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She didn’t want to admit what it meant.
Her stomach rolled and she stumbled toward the toilet before she dry heaved. There was nothing inside of her stomach to throw up, but that didn’t stop her fear from causing contractions in her diaphragm. Tears slipped down her cheek.
No.
Rhiannon felt something inside of her stretch and fill imaginary space in her mind. She caught flashes of scales and dark, gold eyes.
This wasn’t right.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and turned toward the implant laying on the floor. With a shaking hand, she reached for it. The tiny strip of silver was engraved with delicate knot work. The other side had the name of a medical company on it.
Silver. There had been a silver implant in her skin.
A voice growled in her head as she looked at the implant. Rhiannon scrambled to her feet. She ran from the room, but the growl followed her. It was inside of her.
This could not mean what she thought it meant. There was no way.
She was a dragon.
***
Gareth sank into the folding lawn chair on Rhiannon’s back porch. There was nowhere else he could go that would get him closer to the problem at hand. If she hadn’t already enacted their foolish attack, then if he stayed close by he would know when it did happen. At the very least, he would keep her out of it altogether.
He was oddly concerned with her safety, no matter how much she brushed him off. She was a tough and faultlessly loyal woman, but he didn’t know if anyone had ever looked out for her before. He felt as though her boss led her into hell simply because she would follow blindly.
His head shot up when he heard the sliding door open. Standing in the doorway, white as a sheet and smeared with blood, was a haggard looking Rhiannon. He lurched to his feet, sending the folding chair tumbling backward. He raced to her, hands already searching for the source of the blood.
She fought his hands back, holding them tight with both of her shaking hands. Her dark eyes rose to meet his.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” she whispered before placing something small into the palm of his hand.
He opened his fingers and felt the world tilt sideways. Many confusing things clicked into place for the first time. He breathed in deep, looking past the smell of blood and fear in the air. It was much stronger this time, the scent of the female dragon. He watched as the beast pushed forward into Rhiannon’s eyes. The darkness swirled into a deep gold color and revealed slit-like pupils.
A smile curved her lips upward, unlike the woman he had come to know. He stepped back, but the beast that took possession of Rhiannon stepped forward. Her bloody hands rose to his chest. He had to grip her wrists to keep her hands from travelling south.
“Give me the girl back,” he growled.
The beast in her couldn’t use words the way that his could. He doubted, from the silver in his hand, that the beast ever had a chance to learn. She pulled her lips back from her teeth and sank her nails into his shirt to jerk him closer to him. The beast took a deep breath of his scent and Gareth’s chest tightened.
“I recognize you beast,” he whispered. “Now give me the girl back so that I can comfort her.”
The beast cocked her head and seemed to think over his request before conceding. The gold pulled back from her eyes and darkness returned. Her eyes widened with more fear than before. He let go of her wrists and pulled her into the comfort of his arms, nuzzling her hair with his chin. How was he going to tell the agent of GOE that she was not only a dragon, but his mate, too.
Gareth didn’t have the words to use just then, so he scooped the trembling woman into his arms and carried her to the bathroom. It, too, was caked in blood. He could see where she dropped the implant and how it bounced across the floor. He set her on the edge of the tub, with her feet inside. The room smelled of bile beneath all the blood.
“Where are your towels?” he asked.
Rhiannon didn’t respond. She stared at the wall. Glancing back, Gareth could see where blood was slowly soaking through her thin bathrobe. He saw the knife in the sink and realized that she carved herself to get the implant out. It must have come as a shock to find a silver implant in her skin. He had heard of some dragons using them to blend into society, but had never seen anyone use them. Fr
om the looks of Rhiannon, she hadn’t chosen it for herself.
Someone had made that decision for her.
His shoulders tightened with anger. Who would do that to a young woman? To a child? She claimed that dragons had killed her parents, but Gareth wondered how true that was. More likely, GOE had killed her parents and taken pity on the defenseless child. Instead of killing her, they chose to make her one of them.
Gareth finally found the small towels in a cupboard over the toilet. He grabbed the bottle of rubbing alcohol and turned the hot water on in the tub. With a hot towel, he knelt beside the tub and began to gently wipe the blood from her skin. He wiped it from her cheek where she must have accidentally smeared it.
Once she was clean of her own blood, he dug through the cabinet beneath her sink and came up with a heavily packed first aid kit. He was all at once grateful and wondered what happened in her job to make her so prepared. There was nothing to stitch the self-inflicted wound closed, so Gareth had to settle for a few butterfly strips to pull it closed.
When all was done, he looked into her face. He could see how this epiphany had drawn her down, how she was struggling internally with a beast that might never have seen the light of day. The beast recognized him and what he was to her immediately. He didn’t think that Rhiannon needed that kind of news in her life just yet. One life altering event at a time, he thought to himself.
Gently, he touched her chin to raise her gaze to meet his. The darkness in her eyes swirled back and forth with the gold that was struggling to push forward. She pressed her eyes closed and regained control for the time being. When she could look him in the eye with her dark gaze, he spoke.
“Do not forget that the woman you are has not changed. You are still the fierce and irritating woman that I met days ago.”
“How can you say that?” she whispered. “I am not at all who I thought I was. Everything I’ve ever been taught is turned upside down right here and now. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know myself at all.”
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