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?