Mandy clinked glasses with her coworkers, and then took a long drag of her beer as they cheered and teased her about never letting anyone else win. Mandy acted annoyed, but she enjoyed the backhanded praise nonetheless. She spent most of her time at work being overlooked despite the fact that she worked harder and better than anyone else in her department. It was nice to be acknowledged for something for a change, even if it was just a stupid game of swivel ball.

The coworkers Mandy was with tonight were all men, but they were among the nicer men from the office. These were the guys who didn’t join in with Commander Hawkins and his ilk when they acted like women were incapable of accomplishing anything. Mandy would have preferred to have some of the gals come out, too, but they were all giving her the cold shoulder ever since she successfully completed her dragon recovery job. She’d thought they would be happy to have a female succeed, since this would make it more likely that they would get jobs of their own in the future. But they saw her victory as a threat to their chances of getting assigned to a dragon recovery job, and treated Mandy as though she had stolen something from them.

Mandy squeezed her eyes shut and took another long sip of her beer. Frustration was such a buzz kill. And to make matters worse, Russ was here and completely ignoring her. She’d seen him sitting over at Jake’s usual table, but had been careful not to let him see her watching him. She had developed a talent over the years for looking at people without appearing to actually look at them, and that talent was coming in handy tonight. She had watched Russ spying on her all through the first round of swivel ball. Not long after the game was over, he’d left the table, and he hadn’t come back since. She was beginning to think that he had left for the night, a thought that made her inexplicably sad. She knew he was not going to date her. He was interested in her—that much was painfully obvious from the way he openly stared at her. But he was convinced that she had tricked him, and his dragon pride was too strong to allow him to overlook that. Mandy gritted her teeth and took another sip of beer. She couldn’t act bummed right now. It was Friday night, and she was out at Torch Lake’s best bar, celebrating her most successful week at her job yet. She drained her whole glass in several long swigs, and then set it down with a defiant thud.

“Who’s ready for another round of swivel ball?” she asked. Cheers and laughter filled the air around her, but before Mandy could even move to start setting up the pieces, she felt a strong hand on her upper left arm. Her heart skipped a beat and she turned, half-expecting to see Russ standing there. But her eyes landed on a different dragon, and her heart fell.

“Jake?” she asked. “What is it?”

“What are you drinking?” he asked, pointing to her empty mug.

“Charmed Star Ale.”

“Come on, I’m buying your next round. We need to talk.”

He started dragging her toward the bar, which earned him a round of protesting howls from Mandy’s wizard friends.

“You boys’ll have to play the next round without Mandy,” he called over his shoulder. “I have some business to discuss with her.”

“Business?” Mandy asked, ignoring the protests still rising from her friends. She glanced back toward Jake’s table, hoping that Russ would be back and this would somehow have something to do with him. But Russ was nowhere to be seen, and Jake wasn’t answering her question. He led her to two empty barstools on the far end of the bar. The spot was as secluded as possible on a busy Friday night. Near them sat two wolf shifters who were too interested in making out with each other to pay any attention to Jake and Mandy.

The bartender approached before Mandy had finished settling into her barstool, and Jake ordered a Charmed Star ale and a Dragon’s Breath lager When the man left to get their drinks, Mandy once again asked for an explanation.

“What kind of business do you have to discuss? I don’t normally work directly with trainers.”

“It’s not official business. I want to talk to you, off the record, about something Russ told me that I find quite disturbing.”

Mandy bit her lip. This had something to do with Russ? Had Russ said something bad about her? Or, perhaps worse, was he going to throw in the towel and head back to Chicago before his job was completed. He wouldn’t get his money if he did so, and yet, he wouldn’t be the first dragon to leave early. A few had left before they’d collected their million dollars, which had always blown Mandy’s mind. She couldn’t imagine how awful a training regimen would have to be to make her walk away and leave a million dollars on the table. That had been before Jake, though. Jake was still a tough trainer, but he played fair. No dragon had left before completing their assignment when he was in charge of them.

The bartender set down two mugs in front of them, the copper-hued Dragon’s Breath lager in front of Jake, and a purple, smoking Charmed Star ale in front of Mandy. Jake rolled his eyes.

“That’s such a girly drink.”

“It is not. It’s a magical drink. And besides, even if it was a girl drink, so what? I am a girl after all.”

“Indeed you are. Which is a nice segue into what I want to talk to you about. Russ told me that you were instructed to make him fall in love with you as a means of getting him back to Torch Lake.”

Jake let the statement hang in the air, but Mandy knew it wasn’t really a statement. He was asking a question. He wanted to know if Russ was telling the truth, and, if so, why the High Council would order such a thing. Mandy let out a long sigh. She didn’t know herself why the High Council had ordered this, but she wished Russ hadn’t said anything to Jake. Mandy could feel her cheeks burning with shame as she forced herself to meet Jake’s eyes. She knew she shouldn’t feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault that the High Council had given such an unconventional order. Still, if word was spreading that her mission had originally been a twisted attempt at romantic coercion, Mandy would never be taken seriously. Everyone would assume that any jobs she got in the future were only given to her because she was a woman. Mandy wanted nothing more in that moment than to lie to Jake, and tell him that Russ was talking crazy, but she knew she couldn’t do that. She didn’t make a habit of lying, and, besides, if she lied to Jake now, she’d be throwing Russ under the bus. She couldn’t do that to Russ, even if he did think that she was nothing more than a trickster with no morals.

“Russ told you correctly. The High Council ordered me to use my ‘feminine charms’ to try to lure him back to Torch Lake. I’m not going to lie; it troubled me quite a bit. But I assume the High Council has their reasons for doing what they do. I trusted them, and I made a good faith attempt at flirting. I realized soon though that I…couldn’t do it. So I reverted to the normal method of offering money to come back to Torch Lake.”

Mandy purposefully didn’t explain that the reason she couldn’t go through with tricking Russ into falling in love with her was that she had accidentally fallen for him in the space of one evening. She hoped that the anguish she felt just thinking about Russ wasn’t written all over her face. Jake was looking at her with hard, searching eyes, and Mandy had to fight the urge to look away. She wasn’t sure why he was so interested in Russ’s journey to Torch Lake, but she had an uneasy feeling about all of his questioning. After staring her down for quite some time, he finally looked away and took another sip of his beer. Then he sat there, staring up at the bottles of liquor behind the bar as he stroked his chin. Mandy did not speak again. She would wait for him to speak first, no matter how long it took. After about three minutes, which felt like an eternity, he turned back to look at her.

“Mandy, I went through Russ’s whole file after training this afternoon. After he told me that you supposedly had to seduce him in order to follow orders, I got curious. You have to admit it doesn’t sound like something the High Council would want.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mandy admitted. She felt her whole body growing tense. Where was Jake going with this? Was he trying to accuse her of making all of this up? She almost laughed out loud at the thought. Anyone who knew her well knew she was hopelessly awkward when it came to flirting. The idea of her actually suggesting that she should seduce someone was preposterous.

“I read everything in Russ’s file,” Jake continued. “I didn’t just read the biographical information that is part of his profile. I actually went through all of the notes about tracking him down in Chicago, and about how the decision was made to use you for his dragon recovery mission.”

Mandy blinked. She had never read the notes about how she was chosen. She knew the High Council kept meticulous minutes of all their meetings, and that they discussed ad nauseam who should chase down each dragon. But she hadn’t wanted to read through a transcript of the High Council discussing her pros and cons. She figured they must have discussed at length how her ‘feminine charms’ might give her an advantage, and she had zero interest in hearing a bunch of old wizards and shifters talking about whether she was pretty or flirtatious enough to bring home a dragon.

When Jake saw that Mandy wasn’t going to comment, he kept talking. “There’s nothing in there about you flirting with or seducing Russ. There’s also nothing in the notes to Commander Hawkins telling him to instruct you to use your ‘feminine charms’ as you put it, and—”

“Are you saying I’m lying?” Mandy interrupted. “I didn’t come up with the term ‘feminine charms.’ Those were the orders I was given by Commander Hawkins. I have no idea why none of this shows up in the official notes, but I’m telling you, I was given clear instructions that I had to flirt. Commander Hawkins told me that if I wasn’t willing to do that, he would give the job to one of the other girls. You can ask anyone in the room the day I was assigned to Russ.”

“I know you’re not a liar, Mandy. Even though we haven’t worked closely together, whenever we have crossed paths at work, I’ve been impressed with your character and work ethic. Not only that, but I can see in your eyes right now that you’re telling the truth.”

“So why are you telling me all of this, then? If you don’t think I’m lying, then why make such a big deal about the fact that there’s no record of orders for me to seduce Russ.”

Jake gave Mandy a stern look. “Don’t you see? If you’re not lying, then someone else is.”

Mandy frowned. “What are you talking about? Who would do that?”

But as soon as the words came out of her mouth she knew. She knew before Jake even spoke his name.

“Commander Hawkins,” Jake said. “He’s the only authority figure who told you to seduce Russ, right?”

Mandy’s heart dropped as she scrunched up her brow. How could she have been so stupid? She’d had an uneasy feeling from the start about the High Council ordering coercion of a dragon. But she’d blindly trusted them because she wanted so badly to believe that they would never do anything wrong. Now, she thought about the fact that no one who helped her prepare for her trip to Chicago had seemed to know anything about the seduction plan. In fact, the equipment specialist had laughed in her face when she suggested that maybe she should have been given some tools to help her flirt.

“Oh my god,” Mandy said, her hand instinctively covering her mouth. Her jaw had dropped, and she felt as though the floor beneath her had been pulled away. “You’re right. No one else said anything about seducing Russ. In fact, most of them looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned that plan. At the time, I brushed it off as people not wanting to discuss what could be a somewhat awkward topic, but now I see that you’re right. People just didn’t know, and they didn’t know because Commander Hawkins made the whole thing up.”

Jake had a grave look on his face. “You know that accusing Commander Hawkins of lying about the High Council’s wishes is a serious matter, right?”

Mandy put her head in her hands for a moment. Her Charmed Star ale sat untouched, the purple liquid swirling in front of her of its own accord as she sat, stunned. “If this is true, though, I have to tell someone. He cannot be allowed to make up orders like that!”

Jake looked around for a moment, making sure no one was listening too closely to him. “I have the transcript of the High Council’s meeting about giving you the job. It’s in my car. I think you should read through it. Once you see how they spoke about you, you can make your own decision about whether you think Commander Hawkins was lying to you.”

“And then what?” Mandy asked.

“And then you call me. If you want to bring an accusation against Commander Hawkins, I’ll help you do it.”

Mandy’s heart was pounding, and she pushed away her beer. “I think I’ve had enough beer for tonight. Mind if I go grab that transcript now so I can head home?”

“I don’t mind at all.”

Jake pushed away the remainder of his own beer as well, and led Mandy back through the crowded bar and out to his car. He handed her a large envelope filled to the bursting point with papers, and Mandy stared down at it unmoving for a few moments.

“Why are you doing this?” she finally managed to ask.

Jake drummed his fingers on the hood of his truck, then tilted his head to one side to look at her. “Two reasons. The first, and biggest reason, is that I don’t like the idea of Commander Hawkins overstepping his authority and putting words in the High Council’s mouths. I’ve thought since the first day I met that man that he was trouble, but I never had proof before that he had actually done something wrong. Now that I have what seems to be a strong case against him. I have to say something. When good people see wrongs being done and say nothing, evil gets a foot in the door. And we’ve all seen how destructive evil can be once it gets a foothold. I can’t stand by and allow that to happen.”

“I agree,” Mandy said, her heart pounding even faster now. The thought of someone evil rising to power again sent chills down her spine. She had always disliked Commander Hawkins, but she had never thought of him as some sort of evil tyrant. Maybe she was being naïve, though, to think that he wasn’t capable of things as bad as she’d seen in the war a few years ago. After all, evil was a slippery slope. She knew many people had been drawn in to dark magic by false promises of power and glory. If Commander Hawkins was capable of lying about the High Council’s commands, what other steps toward darkness would he be willing to take?

“The second reason I’m doing this,” Jake said, his voice taking on a strange, softer tone now, “Is that you and Russ deserved better.”

Mandy’s eyes shot up to meet Jake’s. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. You’re in love with each other, but he’s too stubborn to admit it and you’re too scared to confront him and tell him he’s wrong.”

Mandy was taken aback, both by the fact that Jake had realized that Russ loved her, and by the shock of him calling her scared. “I’m not scared,” she insisted. “I’m being respectful of the fact that I did him wrong. Whether the High Council actually commanded me to seduce him or not—”

“Not, I think.”

Mandy ignored the interruption. “Whatever they commanded or didn’t, the fact is that I should have refused to even attempt to trick him.”

Jake narrowed his eyes at her. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. Were you ever really pretending?”

Mandy didn’t answer, but the way she lowered her eyes was enough of an answer for Jake.

“Well, then,” he said. “I rest my case. Now go home and read this. I think you’ll find it quite interesting.”

He pushed the folder of papers against Mandy’s chest, then turned and walked back into the bar without another word.