Garath
“Much better,” his instructor said in the condescending tone one might reserve for children. The same condescending voice that had tempted Garath to punch him on more than one occasion. On many occasions.
Okay, every time he opens his mouth I want to fill it in for him. Why the hell did they have to hire such a patronizing asshole?
All his other instructors had been relatively decent people. Some a little too confident of their own abilities, but otherwise not the teeth-grinding, knuckle-cracking, fury-inducing arrogance of Chris the driving instructor. Garath swallowed his rage once more. It wouldn’t do to lose his temper, because there was little he could do about it. He was expressively forbidden from attacking the humans, which he wouldn’t have done anyway even if it were outlawed.
It just wasn’t fair. He outclassed them so severely that a casual backhand could snap their necks if not careful. Garath just didn’t find any challenge in fighting humans, so he didn’t. Though if one of them threatened him, he would find it to be a very bad idea.
The world he’d been reawakened to was strange, he thought, slowing to a halt in front of a red octagonal sign emblazoned with the word STOP on it in giant white writing. All the mechanical contraptions—cars, planes and the like—were genuinely amazing, but he felt that the world had lost a lot of its mysticism and secrecy with the advent of all this technology.
No longer could one just “sail over the horizon” to see what lay beyond, or set out into the great unknown to start a new life. Such things were no longer doable. Everything was photographed and mapped, and Garath just wasn’t sure he agreed with it all. The ability to just disappear was something he valued greatly, and missed.
Several pedestrians crossed in front of him, and he waited until the path was clear to use the accelerator again. The big Jeep engine rumbled and brought them up to speed without much in the way of effort. Three more lessons, he’d been told. Then, if he demonstrated he could do everything necessary in a final test, he would be granted a license or something and be done his “boot camp.”
There had been several times he’d thought about just skipping out, leaving Fort Banner in the middle of the night and heading out on his own, but after several lessons on just how different the world had become, he’d decided to stay and absorb as much knowledge as he could before leaving.
But I am leaving, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop that. There’s no way I’d stay around all these other dragons. Not for what they want to pay me, that’s for sure!
Garath wasn’t a fan of other dragons. The one’s he’d met weren’t outwardly bad, but he knew the truth. The truth that lurked below their false exteriors, and he wasn’t about to fall for it. Not again. He would get his license and he would head out into the world and make his own way. He was a dragon; how hard could it be?
His hands tightened around the steering wheel as he thought about all the other dragons. There was Kallore, the giant crimson dragon who stalked around the base, most often at the side of Colonel Mara, the woman in charge of awakening the dragons. Dragons like him, who had all slipped into the long sleep for their own reasons, and then been forcibly awakened and told to fight.
He sneered. Colonel Mara had termed it “asking,” but in reality, he knew it wasn’t. The choice was simple: choose to fight, or be put back under. Back to the long sleep. That wasn’t a choice in his mind. He hadn’t chosen to be woken up, but now that he was, they were just going to put him back under? Absolutely not. He was going to finish learning how to drive, because he understood it was a big feature of the modern world, and then he was going to grab as much treasure as he could find and escape.
They would send others after him, he knew. The Steel Scales, probably, Vanek the red dragon and Thorne the black, like himself. They and their human partners in their battlesuits would come after him, trying to subdue him. But they wouldn’t succeed.
Garath was older than either of them, and he knew much about being a dragon that they were barely aware was even possible. Vanek could beat him in a contest of strength, and Thorne was likely faster than him due to his youth, but that was it. Garath had no intentions of engaging Vanek, or of leaving a trail Thorne could use to catch up. No, nobody would be able to find him if he escaped undetected.
“Keep your focus on the road, Garath.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” he snarled, his throaty bass rattling the windows as he infused it with his anger.
He’d begun drifting slightly, and he pulled the Jeep back into his lane, chiding himself for becoming so distracted. Meanwhile, Chris sat still in the passenger seat, staring straight forward. The smell of fear was thick on him now, and for a small moment Garath almost felt bad for terrifying the other man. Then he remembered how he treated him during each lesson and his empathy disappeared.
Driving around Fort Banner, they passed the battlesuit barracks and enclosed training grounds before making a left-hand turn and heading toward the administration and similar buildings. A helicopter landed near one of them and a tall figure stepped out, immediately drawing his attention. It was Kallore. And that meant the smaller, thicker woman stepping out behind him was Colonel Mara, probably here to oversee his training and the final days of it.
Garath was, to his knowledge, the last onyx dragon they’d found and awakened, and Colonel Mara was probably eager to move on to the next batch that they’d located, whatever that might be.
Another figure emerged from the helicopter behind Colonel Mara, and Garath instantly recognized him as a dragon, though he didn’t know him. Tall, fair-skinned and fair-haired, it was about all the detail even his enhanced eyesight could make out at that range.
“LOOK OUT!”
His eyes snapped back to the road just in time to see they were headed directly at the sidewalk on the far side of the road. A platoon of infantry out for daily PT scattered, every member trying to jump out of the way.
Garath wrenched the wheel around in a panic, turning it so hard he warped the shape of it, even as his massive booted foot stomped down on the brakes, trying to stop the desperately swerving Jeep.
Instead of the brake though, his foot must have caught the gas, the pedals in the infernal contraption far too small for someone his size. The big diesel engine roared to life, the entire inside shaking as it injected gasoline into the engine, immediately transforming it into forward thrust. Garath lifted his foot to switch to the brake, but it was too late.
“HOLD ON!” he bellowed.
The Jeep struck the brick wall and plowed halfway through it before coming to a sharp halt. Red brick cascaded down, a particularly large section denting the roof in while other chunks rained across the windshield, cracks spreading like spiderwebs. The bulletproof glass held strong, however, keeping the occupants protected while both of them shook their heads and gathered their senses.
Garath tried to push his door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Horrified that someone could be possibly trapped underneath, or had been hit by flying debris, he flexed his muscles and with a fist like a battering ram blew the window out. The glass didn’t shatter, it just bent and ejected itself outward under the impact. He was pulling himself out before it hit the ground, surveying the damage as dust and debris settled to the ground around them.
“Is everyone okay?!” he shouted, ducking low to see if anyone was under the vehicle. It was clear on both sides of the wall that it had shattered, and so he turned his attention to the inside of the building.
Calling into the dust-filled interior he looked through the rubble and scattered equipment and food supplies. “Anyone in here hurt?”
A chorus of noes reached his ears, and he breathed heavily, thanking his lucky stars that his mental lapse hadn’t resulted in personal injury. He could help rebuild a wall and the Jeep, but he couldn’t bring someone back from the dead. Wounds could be healed, but death was permanent.
The dust cleared, and Garath found himself face-to-face with a diminutive woman full of curves and fury, if he judged the cold, arctic ice-blue of her eyes properly. She was standing with her arms out to her side, coated in what appeared to be some sort of tomato sauce, creamy potatoes, and long stringy pasta. She didn’t look impressed.
Garath started looking around wildly for an escape route, not wanting to deal with the monster temper that was about to be unleashed upon him. She reached up and wiped the white and red liquids from her face, leaving streaks of mixed substances, adding new meaning to the term “rosy cheeks”. Her lips were barely visible, anger compressing them so flat they were almost nonexistent.
Her clothes were covered in food too, though thankfully she was wearing all black, pants on the bottom and a button-up dress shirt on top that had been tucked in. If she started cleaning it off now, she might be able to…who the hell was he kidding, there was no saving this.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Garath stared at her.
“Well?”
He couldn’t reply. Every function of his brain was offline, overwhelmed by the smooth, even, alto voice. The anger beating inside of it couldn’t shake him out of it, even when she spoke up for the second time. Garath’s eyes roamed over her again, viewing her in a different light.
This time he subtracted the tomato sauce, the mashed potatoes, dust, and even the bits of pasta. All he could see now was a heart-shaped face with slight cleft in the chin. Her cheekbones were naturally big, catching the light and highlighting them no matter what angle she faced. Eyes the size of the moon glared up at him, amplified by her thick, curly lashes. Garath just wanted to fall into them, to dive deep into her soul and swim in everything that made this woman her, forgetting the outside world and keeping it at bay while he devoured every bit of her.
It was a terrible way to meet his mate, but his dragon didn’t doubt it for a moment. She was the one for him, and he needed to make her his. To claim her and make her his own, so that no one else could have this beautiful woman. He’d have to go about it right, though.
“Hi, I’m Garath. We’re mates.”
“What?”
Perfection. Couldn’t have done it any better if you’d given me even ten seconds to think about what to say.
Garath cursed his brain silently and tried to figure out a way to salvage the situation.
“I’m so sorry about everything,” he said, deciding that pretending he’d never said anything was probably the best way to go about things. Hopefully.
Whoever she was, it was clear she had heard his opening line clearly, and was now deciding whether to go along with him, or bring it back up and find out just what the hell he’d meant.
His dragon was screaming at him, telling him to move forward, to claim her then and there. It felt it had waited for forever and a day to find her, and now that she was here, it didn’t want to take another second. Garath knew better though. Humans weren’t dragons, and after an entrance like the one he’d just made, it was going to be hard enough to convince her to talk to him. Picking her up and carrying her out of the building and back to his lair was not an option.
You don’t have a lair anymore.
Choice oaths were exchanged mentally while he waited for a response, which finally came just before he started to speak again.
“You destroyed my kitchen.” The dull monotone of shock colored her voice.
Garath had to keep her moving, keep her thinking, otherwise she might shut down on him, and he couldn’t do that. “No no. It’s not destroyed. Just damaged. It can be fixed. See?”
He reached down to grab one of the wire-framed stands used for storing bins of food on it and set it upright. Looking around frantically, he grabbed a couple of bins that hadn’t exploded upon impact and set them down on the shelves. “There. Good to go.”
The blue eyes that had gone from ice-hard arctic to dull and dreary moved slowly from him, to the rack. Garath stared closely, and he was boosted by the slight flicker of light. He could salvage this. It could be fix—
Metal groaned and with a loud clang the shelves caved in upon themselves and everything crashed to the floor. One of the tubs he’d collected had contained pasta sauce, and it hit the ground squarely, red paste exploding from the top like a volcanic eruption, coating the two of them in a fresh layer of foodstuffs.
Garath cringed, eyes slammed closed until the noise faded away, the last echoes dying off in the deathly silent room. Nobody seemed to move. Behind him a few more bricks crumbled off the outside of the wall.
“I am so fired.” Dejection wove itself through her words. She was beyond being upset, beyond anything feeling, her world having imploded upon itself because of him.
He had ruined it. And he needed to fix it.
“No, you aren’t,” he hissed fiercely. “This can be fixed. I’ll get the arrangements made to have the supplies brought over, and I’ll do the work for free. Trust me, it’ll be fine.”
“Not that.” Sauce dripped from her chin, but she paid it no mind. “There’s an event going on today. All sorts of brass. This,” she waved her arms around the ruined kitchen, “this was the preparation for it. Now how are we supposed to have food ready for both them and the normal officers of the base?”
Garath didn’t have an answer for that. “We’ll find a way,” he promised. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
She looked at him skeptically in disbelief. Garath wasn’t backing down though.
“How can I help make it happen?”