Garath
The city scrolled by underneath him like a picture, but Garath didn’t notice. Lost in his own mind during the helicopter ride, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Chestnut hair tied back in a messy bun. Short body with curves like waves of the ocean that just beckoned him to go exploring. Cobalt eyes that screamed her emotions for any and all to see. A voice like the first caress of a breeze after a stifling hot day. Her face, heart-shaped and lovely, with a little cleft at the center of her jaw that matched his own, a surefire sign that she was indeed his mate.
And Garath didn’t even know her name. Throughout it all, he’d forgotten to introduce himself. Nobody had said her name, not while he was in earshot at least. All he had to go on was that she was the manager of the officers’ club on the base. It should have been easy for him to work out another meeting with her.
Unfortunately, after his disastrous driving lesson, Colonel Mara had come down on him much like the bricks had rained down upon the Jeep. Her wrath had been swift, and Garath had paid for it with next to no downtime. He was given time to eat, sleep, shower, and that was about it. Otherwise he was out finishing up his driving lessons.
To his complete surprise, the colonel had forbade him from assisting in rebuilding the wall, yet another way he had been sure would have given him the opportunity to run into his mate a second time. With that denied to him, however, he’d struggled, and two days later he’d been sent to Barton City.
He climbed out of the helicopter as it set down, ducking low until he was out from under the whirling blades. The pilot didn’t wait long, lifting the craft back into the air before he’d even reached the stairs down to the roof.
Raising a middle-finger salute to the pilot, who just grinned and waved cheerily, Garath shrugged the duffel backpack onto his shoulder. The entire contents of his new life were contained within that bag. Several changes of clothes. An ID card and a few other odds and ends.
Compared to the castle he’d called home before, the tower he was in didn’t appear to be much. It was taller, sure, but other than that it had no appeal. Made from fragile glass, it lacked the sturdy appeal of solid rock hewn straight from the earth. Though he knew the accommodations were considered opulent by the times, it was nothing compared to what he’d had.
His treasury overflowing with coins and cups, chalices and plates of gold and silver. The finest tapestries depicting his various victories covered every wall, the floors and anywhere else there was room to store them. Everything was made from gold. Tables, candleholders, doorknobs, and more. Gold everything. It had been perfect.
Until it had been taken from him.
Staring warily at the elevator doors that would take him to his apartment, Garath contemplated what was expected of him now. There were other dragons in the tower—an apartment building, he was told it was now called—other dragons he was supposed to live with. Other dragons he was expected to befriend and treat with respect and politeness. Other dragons who would steal everything he had in a second if given the chance.
Garath was about to walk into a pit of snakes. And he had precisely no other option.
The world was too foreign for him to survive on his own. He was more than aware of that fact, nor was he too arrogant to believe he could simply walk out and learn how to make it on his own. No, if the military was willing to give him plush quarters and time to learn how to manipulate the system to his advantage, then he would certainly take them up on their hospitality.
Even if that meant dealing with more dragons than he’d seen in centuries.
Keying in the code he was given, the elevator closed and whisked him down to his apartment. The doors opened and he glanced around. The elevator tube was near the center of the building. A wall with doors to his left ran out from the elevator, and he could see a bathroom and bedroom through the openings. Following it around, he came to what he was truly looking for. The kitchen.
Dropping his bag, he made a beeline for the fridge, pulling it and the freezer open. He’d had no need to use them during his stay at the base, but the idea of cold storage was nothing new, not even to him. This was just a more advanced way of doing it. A stove was an indoor hearth of sorts, but that was all. He had no idea what the boxy rectangular thing mounted above the stove was, or any of the other steel contraptions in the kitchen. But the fridge and freezer contained food he knew, and Garath was starved. Yanking on the handle he opened the door, eyes greedily looking at the contents within.
It was empty.
“Cheap bastards,” he snarled to nobody in particular. A similar check of the freezer revealed the same thing. He had no food.
Storming back into the elevator, he eyed the buttons beside the keypad. There weren’t many, but one labeled “G” stood out. He punched it, and less than a dozen seconds later the doors opened to the ground floor of the building.
“You,” he said to the man behind the counter. “I require food.”
The younger male, mid-twenties with short-cut hair and a tight-fitting suit, stared at him with undisguised irritation at the way he’d been addressed. Garath was forced to lift his eyebrows a fraction of an inch to get a response.
“Uh, okay? Do you want to eat out, or make your own?”
He had no idea what the phrase eating out meant. It sounded fun, but he wasn’t ready to admit how out of date he was. “Make my own.”
“There’s a grocery store two blocks down,” the male said, pointing to the doors and then to the right. “It should have whatever you need, unless it’s something hard to find.”
“That’ll do,” Garath pronounced.
Marching away from the counter, he pushed open the glass doors and followed the man’s directions. He was going to the grocery store! There was only one question remaining.
What the hell was a grocery store?