by Amelia Jade
But at Top Scale, he’d gone from a bumbling, awkward, and downright brutal flier, to something out of his enemies’ worst nightmares. His muscles had grown and strengthened. His wings were more powerful than ever. In the air he was as graceful as a bird, and could hit with more brute strength than one of the humans’ attack helicopters. He could shoot bolts of lightning or breathe entire sheets of electricity at his enemies, before closing and rending them with his razor-sharp talons.
He was the stuff of legend now.
And yet despite all his accomplishments, and the progress he continued to make, Dominick Carunno still felt like his life was empty and devoid of something.
His thought train was interrupted by the burly man next to him, who guffawed loudly as the waitress walked by and his thick, meaty hands pawed at her black skirt, pulling at the tight material, trying to hike it up over her voluptuous rear.
“Hey!” she cried, slapping his hand away.
The man growled as her bladed fingers chopped against his wrist with enough force to bruise.
Dominick smiled. In his stupor, the man had forgotten that she was a shifter too.
Everyone was a shifter in Cadia.
Okay, not everyone. Asher and Zeke both found human women. But the majority of the residents of Cadia are shifters of every type and breed out there.
Asher and Zeke were the other two dragon shifters who made up his cadet class at Top Scale.
They were also indirectly the reason he was drinking. They were off on a date night, spending it with their mates. Dominick couldn’t fault them for it, and in fact, he was quite happy for them. But it only emphasized the aching loneliness in his life.
Maybe you should talk to her.
He chopped that off abruptly, focusing on his surroundings. Something was changing in the bar.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” the bear slurred, his superhuman system now intoxicated from the brew. “Don’t like it when a real man touches you?”
The waitress, a wolf shifter, snorted. “I’ll let you know when one does.”
Several others in the bar laughed, but the man looked entirely unimpressed.
“Whatever, bitch. You wouldn’t know a good thing if it reached out and slapped you.”
The waitress smashed one of the glasses over his head.
“That’ll be enough out of you, Torre. You best pay up and head on home. Otherwise you’re going to get in trouble.”
The bear shifter roared and turned, his hand raising up to strike the woman.
“What are you—” She never got to finish her sentence as the hand flashed toward her.
And stopped inches short, the muscles in the man’s arm quivering. Caught in Dominick’s vise-like grip, his arm didn’t move forward another inch.
“This doesn’t concern you, dragon,” the bear said gruffly, turning his attention to Dominick.
As he did, several others at a nearby table pushed their chairs back. They didn’t do anything more than that, but they didn’t have to. Dominick knew what they were saying. “Mess with him, and you mess with us.”
That was fine.
“Actually, I think it does,” he rumbled, his baritone voice cutting through the remaining idle bar chatter fairly easily.
The background noise died immediately as everyone sensed a confrontation.
“It’s okay,” the waitress said to Dominick. “I can handle it.”
“I know you can,” he said, his voice still calm and even. “But that doesn’t mean you should have to.”
“Piss. Off,” the bear shifter said before the waitress could reply, wrenching his arm free from Dominick’s grip.
“Leave her alone, and I’ll leave you alone,” Dominick said, giving the other shifter a neutral shrug of his shoulders.
He wasn’t taunting the man. That wasn’t his style. He didn’t want to fight either, but he knew when it was right to intervene. He may have some dissatisfaction with his personal life, but he wasn’t going to take it out on others. That wasn’t Dominick’s way.
“Fuck you,” the bear shifter said, grinning drunkenly as he remembered he had friends with him.
Dominick just shook his head and turned back to his drink. The waitress moved on, hoping the conflict was over.
“I didn’t tell you to go anywhere, Minnie,” he called at the waitress.
She ignored him.
“This is your fault,” he said, turning his anger on Dominick, grabbing his right shoulder and spinning him back around from the bar.
Dominick had had enough. As he turned, his left hand moved with the spin and lashed out, cracking the bear across the jaw. It was an off-balance, off-handed shot, and though it rocked the other shifter back, it didn’t have the leveling force Dominick might have hoped for.
Not that leveling a bear shifter with one punch was easy. Although dragons were naturally stronger, the other shifter was easily two or three inches taller than Dominick, with a good fifty pounds of bulk. They didn’t go down easily when fighting in this form.
And shifting inside the bar was a big no-no. He was going to have to fight.
Glasses and furniture clattered when his friends came to join the fray, and the other patrons moved away to give the combatants a wide berth.
“Oh come on guys,” Minnie the waitress said. “Can we not do this inside? I just got the chairs replaced from last time.
“You heard her,” Dominick said, ducking a blow. “Shall we take this outside?”
The man sneered at him, spittle dripping down into his beard as he worked himself into a frenzy. “So you can use your dragon like a cheat? Hell no.”
He launched himself at Dominick, but the agile, and more sober dragon shifter ducked down and to his left, snapping out a backhand, rapping his knuckles off the other shifter's skull while he moved to deal with his friends.
His left hand, bent at the elbow, slid across his face and deflected a blow as he planted his left foot and spun, snap-kicking his right foot up and around. The booted foot plowed through the defenses of the hapless bear shifter, driving the man’s own fist into his temple and dropping him to the floor unconscious as Dominick re-centered his weight and reached forward to grab the smallest of the three bear shifters facing him.
Four on one wasn’t normally a fair fight, but Dominick was no ordinary shifter either, and it appeared these fools were beginning to learn their lessons about that.
His fingers closed around the man’s shirt and he started to lift.
A massive, meaty fist crashed into his face, throwing him to the floor as blood spurted from his nose and his jaw cracked.
“Ow,” he snarled, gracefully returning to his feet.
He placed both thumbs on either side of his nose, and with a painful stab, reset it back into position so that it could begin to heal.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he said, his voice slightly slurred as his nose immediately began to swell.
He tilted his head to the left, cracking his neck, and then to the other side, as the three remaining on their feet awaited him.
Then Dominick charged. It caught the three of them off guard. He grabbed a chair on his way, whirling it around and smashing the heavy, reinforced wooden piece of furniture to pieces against the shifter’s head. Pieces rained down on the others, forcing them to raise their arms to shield their eyes against splinters.
In that moment, Dominick reached them. He dropped to one knee, sliding across the peanut shell-covered wooden floor, and his left hand connected squarely with the side of one’s knee. It buckled immediately and the man began to crumble.
As Dominick rose, he drove up with his right forearm and delivered a knockout blow to the man’s jaw, snapping his head back almost as fast as his eyes rolled up into his head. The man fell to the floor in a clatter of limp limbs.
That only left the two biggest bear shifters on their feet.
The door opened and four more men came storming in from outside.
“Ah, a fair f
ight!” he said nonchalantly as they came and stood on either side of the original antagonist and his friend.
The group charged at him.
The next flurry happened too fast for him. He lashed out with every weapon he had. His fists. His forearms. Elbows, feet, knees. His head.
Bloodied, bruised, and reeling, he crashed to the floor once, then twice, as blows hit him faster than he could react.
That isn’t to say it was one-sided. He was, after all, a dragon shifter. One opponent went down. Then another. But that still left four.
On one knee, his nose broken and bleeding again, and one eye rapidly closing due to swelling, Dominick looked up just in time to see the finishing blow speeding toward his face.
He closed his eyes and waited.
There was the sound of a punch hitting flesh. He heard himself groan in pain, and felt his body hit the floor.
But the strangest thing happened. When Dominick opened his eyes, he was still on his knee.
And the fight was still raging. Two other tall men, one with a goatee, the other with eyes so light blue they were almost white, were taking on the remaining foes.
Reinforcements.
Dominick rose to his feet and swept his leg out, taking one of the bears down. He fell with the man, driving a knee into his stomach before his forearm crunched against the man’s face, driving his head back into the wood.
Dominick drew his right fist back and slammed it into the bear shifter’s face.
And again.
After the third time, the man went limp, blood bubbling at his nose as he drew ragged breaths.
Still alive. Good.
The fight was over. The two new contestants, both dragon shifters as well, were too strong and too fresh, for it to be much of a fight.
“Dom.”
“Asher,” he said, spitting blood out of his mouth and accepting the help up.
“What the hell did you get yourself into tonight?” the other man, a slightly tanned male in his late twenties, asked.
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “Thanks for the assist.”
Then he tried to push his way past them.
“Get out of my way, Zeke,” he said as the second man stood his ground.
“We were worried about you,” he said. “Word got to us that you were here. Again. So we came to find you.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. But I promise I’m fine.”
He shouldered his way past the two of them and through the swinging door, out into the streets of what passed for downtown in Cadia. There were perhaps ten thousand or so shifters living in the territory, carved out of the plains on the western half of one of the more populous human continents.
To the west, the Quicksilver mountain range rose high into the night, blocking the stars with their dark shapes. There was forest to the east, plains to the north, and desert to the south.
It was its own miniature ecosystem, all in one place.
“What the fuck, man?” Asher said as the others followed him. “Where’s the real Dom? This guy lately, this isn’t you. Distant, violent, coming unhinged. What the hell is wrong?”
“Not wasting any time, are you?” he replied to the bluntness of the conversation.
“No.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint you boys. But this is the real Dom.”
Zeke snorted. “Bullshit. You’re lying to yourself on that one, and trust me man, we can see right through it. You can talk to us, buddy. We’re your friends.”
“I know,” he said, relenting slightly. “But just not right now. Okay?”
“Then when, Dom?” Asher asked, coming up alongside him. “How much longer can you go around getting into fights and such? What if one of the instructors catches you?”
“Indeed, what if?” The strong, feminine contralto echoed down the alleyway where they were headed.
Dom froze in his tracks.
He knew that voice.
“Rhynne,” he said, turning to look at her.
He saw the way her eyes widened slightly in shock—and something else, but in his state, he couldn’t identify what—before narrowing in disgust.
“I. It was. Um, I mean,” he stammered, taken aback as one of the instructors of Top Scale stared at him.
With a disappointed shake of her head, she turned from the mouth of the alley and disappeared back into the streets.
“Well that’s just great,” he muttered, angry at himself.
You need to say something!
But he couldn’t. She was an instructor, but she was more than that too.
Rhynne Nova was a Guardian, one of the Cadian Elite. They patrolled the borders, keeping shifters in, and humans out. They also settled internal disputes.
She was one of their finest, and he was just a degenerate drunk getting into bar fights.
No wonder it only happened once.
Dominick shut that thought down immediately. He’d sworn never to bring it up, and tried to banish the memories entirely, even if they all but consumed him.
“I need to be alone,” he said, shaking off his friends. “I promise I won’t get into any more trouble tonight, okay?” he said forcefully as they tried to restrain him again.
They didn’t say anything, but he could sense the disappointment in them too.
Well, I suppose it’s easier to disappoint everyone at once, instead of doing it individually.
Dominick wandered off into the darkness, his head low as he struggled to come to terms with why he was feeling the way he was.
***
The cadets filed out of the Top Scale Academy building and into the rear courtyard.
The three humped buildings, joined by long, low corridors, housed everything that was necessary to run the school. The westernmost building housed the dormitory where the cadets stayed. It was a self-contained unit. Sleeping rooms, a library, study, common area, kitchen, and even an exercise room below grounds were all part of it.
The central building was for the instructors. Dominick had never seen much of it. The main entrance to the whole Academy was there, but beyond that, the exit to the rear, and the hallways that led off to the two outbuildings, he hadn’t seen any of it.
Finally, the eastern building was given over entirely to the Wing Commander, the Master of Top Scale. He wasn’t present today that Dominick could see, but many times Daxxton Ryker would be there, either high in the sky, or somewhere else near their training grounds, to observe the cadets as they trained.
It wasn’t a large building, but it was big enough. It didn’t need to house a lot. There were only three cadets in this class, and it was the first class to be run in at least half a decade. Oftentimes there was only one or two students. Top Scale was that rigorous in who it let in, and even then many of them failed out.
Like Dominick knew he was coming close to doing. He had to ace today’s test, whatever it was, or else he might be in serious trouble.
Unfortunately, the instructors had been extra mum on the objective today.
The rear courtyard was on mostly hard-packed dirt, except for the multitude of fifty-foot wide circles of stone inlaid into the ground.
As Dominick watched, the three instructors, Rhynne Nova, Zander Pierce, and the Senior Instructor Blaine Wingstar, all moved to a circle as the cadets approached.
He watched, fascinated as always as they shifted.
Zander reached the center of his stone circle first, and Dominick watched winds whip up around him from seemingly nowhere, wrapping him in a cocoon of gale force winds. Tiny particles of dust, vegetation, and other debris were caught up in the tempest that grew as it expanded rapidly inside, the winds moving so fast they blurred the air, obscuring what was happening.
Then suddenly the air went still, and debris clattered down as the sphere dissipated. A magnificent brass-colored dragon was suddenly visible, its wings slowly retracting until they lay flat down the flanks of the forty-foot-long creature. Though Gale Dragons were one of the smallest of the dragon breeds, they w
ere lightning quick, and their GaleFire breath could send even the strongest dragon tumbling from the sky.
He expected the huge coppery membranes attached to the dragon to reach out and send it spiraling quickly into the air, but the dragon simply stood there, the huge yellow eyes looking over the Cadets as they waited.
Rhynne was next. He watched her, trying not to stare, as the tall, powerful woman took a knee in the middle of her chosen circle. Flame-ridden black clouds of smoke circled her, rising above her as she stood up in time with them, until she too was obscured in a sphere of her elemental nature. Yellow flames briefly burst through the clouds in a powerful display as the sphere expanded. Blackness crept back into it, and then it all rose up into the sky as she finished her transformation. A magnificent red dragon, a solid seven or eight feet longer than Zander’s, settled down in the center of the stone circle.
Her eyes fixed on him, and Dominick swallowed hard, transfixed by their beauty even in animal form. He was so focused on her stare that he almost missed Blaine as he reached the center circle of the three that had been chosen.
Blaine was a Fume Dragon. Thick green clouds of noxious nerve gas billowed out from his feet. They didn’t swirl up and around him like the others. Instead, they compressed in a ball behind him, until at last he threw his arms out wide. The green gas exploded outward in all directions, enveloping Blaine in its midst. The fumes took on the shape of his dragon instead of a sphere, showcasing his mastery of the powers within him. The clouds solidified, and suddenly it wasn’t a gas sculpture of his dragon, but a brilliant verdant-scaled beast that stood there.
Dominick never ceased to be amazed as he found out new things that he might one day be capable of.
It was just those sorts of things that kept him coming back to Top Scale, despite everything else.
“Asher, you are with me,” Blaine intoned. “Zeke, with Zander. Dominick, you will work with Rhynne today.”
He gulped, and moved toward the center of another circle, preparing himself to change.
Work with Rhynne? Part of him was elated at the opportunity to spend more time with her. But the unimpressed look that seemed to be etched upon her face anytime he saw her looking his way made him rethink that decision. If only he could just talk to her. To discuss what had happened. Maybe she would change her mind. Maybe—
