Thorne
At some point during the day, Carla had disappeared.
She’d left the bedroom and fled the apartment while he was in the shower, as far as he could tell. He wanted to set off after her, but something made him wait, staying his hand until the sun started to set behind the mountains. It was a beautiful red sky, the clouds glowing red-orange as the ball of fire disappeared. One of the sorts of sunsets he wished he could share with her. It screamed romance.
Maybe he would go watch it himself. Staying inside held no appeal to him, so he wandered over to the elevator and headed up for the roof. Although he was alone in the apartment, the roof and elevated helipad always gave him a more thorough sense of being alone, and the freedom to contemplate his own thoughts on a level the couch never did.
Probably because he always fell asleep on the couch.
The doors slid open and he emerged, but not before something tickled at his nose. Drawing in a fuller breath, the scent of sweet honey on a spring day filled his nostrils. Carla was up here.
He stood on the spot for several minutes, trying to decide what to do. Eventually he turned to go.
“You can stay.”
The words drifted down from the helipad, stopping his finger inches from summoning the elevator.
“Are you sure?” he called back.
The silence was painful, but he endured it until she replied, “Yes.”
Cautiously he ascended the steps, finding Carla sprawled out on the helipad, a thick sweater acting as a pillow for her. He wondered where she’d gotten that from, but decided it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she’d allowed him to come and share the space with her.
By the set of her body he could see that the madness had left, and she was now wallowing in sadness. Her eyes were still red and puffy, though they were dry. It hurt him to know he hadn’t been there when she’d needed someone to hold her, but this was a feeling he was going to have to get used to with Carla. She was fiercely independent, and he could not, would not, take that away from her.
Not after so many other things had already been ripped from her, no matter how tightly she clung to them. Her biological family. Her childhood. Her rank, and unit. The only thing that hadn’t was him, and he wasn’t even sure she wanted him to stick around. Could he blame her, after all the trouble that had come her way since meeting him?
“I’m sorry.”
He stumbled, catching his toe on the concrete as her words hit him mid-stride. She looked up at him as he caught his balance.
“What are you sorry for?”
“Those words I said to you.” She sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. “You didn’t deserve those. I’m ashamed of what I said. You were correct. I’m just as much to blame for this as you.”
He sat down near her, crosslegged. “Your emotion and sense of dedication is one of those things that are the core of who you are, Carla. They are part of what make you the woman that I know is my mate.” He swiftly waved off her protests. “Whether you choose me or not, does not change what I know to be true in my heart. My soul. That’s not why I speak, though.”
“Why, then?”
“Because I don’t want you to feel shame for the passion that is your duty. This is what you have made of the past decade-plus of your life. To have that all ripped away from you with no warning is going to hurt. It’s going to leave you feeling raw and vulnerable. I do not hold it against you for lashing out at me.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” he said with a smile. “Because you actually said one truthful thing among them, which means you’re starting to believe.”
She frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You called me scaled,” he said.
“I…it was an insult, Thorne. Not a compliment.”
“Perhaps. But it still means you think I am a dragon.”
Carla opened and closed her jaw a few times. “I’m not sure you’re interpreting that right, but if it makes you happy and keeps you willing to forgive me, then I’m okay with it.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know what to do about this.” She sighed and lay back against the sweater, turning her head so she could still regard him.
“What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious? We march back to base, I say I had you under a spell, and that it was my fault. They reinstate you to your unit, and I go back to sleep.”
“What? Thorne, no!” she sat upright. “You can’t do that.”
“Sure I can.” He shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal. You need to be with your unit. Whatever it takes.”
“But what if I want to be with you too?”
Thorne swayed slightly, placing one hand on the asphalt to steady himself.
“It’s not that I don’t like you,” she said, continuing on, oblivious to the reaction her earlier words had gotten from him. “I do. You’re a great guy, and when I’m being honest and open like this, which I know I don’t do often, I’ll admit I do like you. You’re right though, I do need to be with my unit.”
“Right,” he said, tight-lipped. “Your unit.”
“What I don’t understand, and what nobody will explain, is why I can’t do both. I’m competent. Better than competent, truthfully. I can still be with my unit, and then also have you. All they need to do is assign you to Fort Banner so that you’re close by. If they want us together for whatever reason, then why wouldn’t they do that?”
He frowned. For whatever reason? Did she not know why they wanted her to stay with him? Why they were so desperate for her to realize that she was his mate, that they were going about it all wrong?
A memory came back to him.
“Look, buster, I may be a badass battlesuit bitch, but you had me drinking pitchers of beer and doing shots of hard liquor. I can hold my own normally, but your tolerance is insane! I was an absolute wreck that night, spent it around the toilet. So no, I don’t really remember a damn thing besides that, and drunkenly kissing you like some boot camp newbie!”
He remembered that conversation now. His focus had been on trying to kiss her again, and in that particular memory he’d all but missed the fact she’d admitted to not remember the day before. Including his revelation about what being mated did to a dragon’s powers against an Outsider.
Everything about her confusion suddenly fell into place.
Opening his mouth he started to tell her, but fell silent in thought. If he told her now, it might scare her off. To realize that everyone around her thought that she was mated to him might make her begin to think so as well. But she wouldn’t view it as the positive that it was. After all, everyone had their different reasons.
Thorne wanted her to accept that she was his mate so that they could move on to the next chapter and start to forge their life together, somewhere far away from the military and hordes of Outsiders that threatened their very existence. Colonel Mara, however, had her own reasons, hoping to use him as a weapon in her fight.
But Carla wouldn’t see either of those. All she would see is two different parties trying to push her into their camp. Bullying her. Both using whatever tactic they could to get their way.
“I just don’t get it,” she said again. “What’s wrong with me?”
The anguish in her voice was too much. He couldn’t stand to hear her doubting herself like this.
“Oh Carla. No,” he said, reaching out to rest a hand on her kneecap. “You’ve got this all wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t about you.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s about me. About what I am, and what you are to me. Because out here, you’re safe. You won’t be struck by a stray bullet, or have your life stolen from you by the touch of an Outsider.”
“That’s what I signed up for!” she snapped. “I know the risks; I’m not an idiot. I’m deployed to the front lines, Thorne. I’m well aware of my low life expectancy.”
“Which is exactly why you’re out here. To increase that.”
“I don’t get it.”
“How much do you remember of the first day we met?” he asked.
“Not much. Getting drunk with you, kissing you to prove I was your fake mate. That’s about it.”
“So you don’t recall me talking about the Outsiders, and how being mated affects our ability as dragons to fight them?”
“No,” she said slowly, her eyebrows furrowing together. “I don’t.”
“Right.” And so he explained to her just how the bond of the mated pair worked. That it provided a shield of lifepower too strong for even the Outsiders to penetrate, that it gave dragons the ability to kill the things, not just wound them.”
“So if I’m out here,” she said, following that chain of logic. “Then you’re free to fight them and kill them, without worrying about me dying, at which point you’d become vulnerable.”
“Precisely.”
Carla fell into thought, looking up into the sky. “They’re keeping me here until I come to believe that I’m your mate. Because you need me.”
“They want to use me, yes.”
“And I would make you more powerful.”
Thorne responded nervously, knowing where the conversation was going, and yet completely unsure of the response he was going to get. “Yes. The love of my mate and the bond we would share is a powerful force.”
Love. There, he’d said it.
The word was finally out there for her to hear, to understand what drove him to do the things he did. The undying yearn to make her happy, to do whatever he could for her, all came from the same source. It was no surprise that he’d spoken it at long last.
But what was she going to say?