Chapter Fifteen
Vanek
“Vanek, listen to me. There are three days left.”
“I’m aware of that, Colonel Mara,” he hissed formally, pulling the phone from his ear and glaring at it, as if she could see that. “It’s not like I haven’t been counting down the time or anything. After all, it’s not you who’s going to be put back to sleep and tossed into some deep dark hole. It’s not you who’s going to be responsible for the damage done to your friends and their mates. It’s not you who everyone will blame. Who everyone will hate.”
He snarled audibly as she started to speak again. “Every day, Colonel Mara. Every damn day. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Five. Four. Every morning I wake up and remember that means one less day that I have to make this all right. I feel guilty for sleeping, Colonel Mara. For taking those few hours that I actually do manage to sleep to myself. Because I shouldn’t be doing that. I should be out there, searching, trying to kill something that only I and my kind have a hope of defeating without massive casualties.”
Long legs started pacing him around the upstairs of his penthouse suite. Even the setting sun outside was no calming influence on him this time. His blood was up and he was having a hard time keeping the fire within him contained, not allowing it to burst free in a demonstration of his anger.
“Vanek—”
But he wasn’t done. “So don’t remind me how long I have. I’m well aware of those facts. They stare me in the face every morning when I open my eyes. They’re written on my arms, emblazoned upon my eyes. I can’t go anywhere without seeing the numbers in everything. Street signs. License plates. Fingers on a person’s hand. Everything reminds me of this stupid deadline your military has given me.
“As if life works on a clock. Besides, it’s not like your vaunted intelligence operations have even found so much as a hint of where these creatures are. Don’t you find it a little hypocritical that I’m now not only required to kill one, but also find one, since you can’t? How much more apparent is your government going to make it that they don’t actually want us around?”
His words were filled with all the vitriol and hatred that he held for the others making the decisions in the background, without real knowledge of the situation.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be rejected by your own, Colonel Mara? To be banished for hundreds of years because you screwed up? Because I do. And now thanks to you and your military, I’m about to experience it again, all with the added guilt that I tore apart the lives of two men and their mates that I have come to call my friends? So can we dispense with the reminders of just how little time I have left to make everything right on my own?”
The silence on the other end was deafening.
“As a matter of fact, Vanek, I do know exactly what it’s like to be rejected by my own. To be trampled on and pushed to the side simply because I tried to do what’s right.”
Colonel Mara audibly clacked her teeth together, cutting off whatever else she was going to say.
Vanek was abruptly reminded of all the years of harassment she’d had to suffer at the hands of her male coworkers, treated like shit because she was a woman and had said no to sexual advances by a superior officer.
“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly deflated and feeling ashamed of himself for his outburst.
“It’s okay,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t have to remind you. That was tactless on my part. I could have handled it better.”
He slumped down onto a couch. “Dragons are the answer, Elin. You know that. I know that. We can beat these things, and we can do a better job of it than your men. Certainly with less casualties than humans.”
“I know. I’m working hard over here to convince them of that, even though it doesn’t seem like it. But they don’t want to listen. Most of them still can’t accept that you’re even real, despite the various video footage we have to prove it. They’re stubborn old men who refuse to change.”
“I’m old and stubborn too,” he reminded her. “I can change. So can they. It will just take time.”
“Time we might not have, much as I hate to say it.”
“We’ll have to have it. Three days. We can do this. I just need something, Elin. Anything, really, to track these blasted things down so that I can take the head from its ugly body,” he growled. “My fire will burn it to a crisp, if I can only find it. My claws will rend its body asunder, you have my word. But I need to find it.”
“I’m going to get back to work. I’ll try to have something for you.”
“Thank you, Colonel. I’ll show you that we dragons can save us all. Mark my words.”
They hung up and he slumped onto the couch, not feeling the same level of confidence that he was projecting. All his earlier words rang true. He was sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of depression. Even the past three days with Harlow hadn’t pulled him out of it. It had resulted in the opposite, actually, as the misery of knowing he had just won his mate over and was about to lose her sank in.
“Again with the dragon thing.”
Vanek shot to his feet, turning to find Harlow standing at the top of the stairs.
“Harlow,” he said, wondering just how much of everything she’d heard.
Did she have any idea of the vast morass that yawned before him, waiting to suck him down into its depths? He worried that their relationship was still too tenuous for her to know the pressures under which he operated. She had enough going on within herself, and he’d already potentially lied to her once, in a major way. Harlow didn’t need any more weight on her shoulders. His were broader and stronger; it should be up to him to carry this burden. Not her.
“I need to know something,” she said slowly, pacing across the open upper floor to the kitchen and grabbing a beer from the fridge. “And I need to know it now, in case I’ve made a critical mistake.”
“Which is?”
“Well, before things get too serious between us, I have to ask. Are you insane? I’d like to know now if you think you can turn yourself into a thirty-foot-long creature with wings who can spit fire.”
Vanek stared for a moment as she took a sip of her beer, eyed it appreciatively, and took another. Then he began to laugh. “No, that’s ridiculous,” he said.
“Oh thank goodness,” she sighed.
“I’m over fifty feet long in dragon form.”
Harlow’s beer spewed outward from her in a cone and she hacked and coughed to rid herself of it.
“What a waste,” he said, tsking quietly.
“You waited to deliver that line on purpose, didn’t you?”
He smiled, giving her a wink but refusing to answer.
“Fine, have it your way, comedian.”
“Come on,” he said, sticking out a hand. “There’s something I want to show you.”
Although somewhat reluctant and still coated in sticky beer, she took his hand and followed as he led them to the elevator and then up to the roof.
“Oh this is fun,” she said as they emerged, the wind whipping his hair wildly, while hers stayed mostly in place, the short strands not nearly the problem his were up here. He quickly tied it back and then guided her up onto the helipad on top of the building.
“Awww, I thought we were maybe going for a helicopter ride,” she said sadly.
“No. Now, stay there.” He put his hands out to keep her still while he moved to the center of the platform, but her attention was already riveted elsewhere.
“Oh wow, you were right, Vanek,” she said softly. “It’s far more beautiful up here.”
He followed her gaze. She was watching the sunset. The sunset! He was about to change into a dragon over here and she was watching the sun?
She doesn’t believe you’re a dragon, and thinks you brought her up here to show her that, you oaf!
Vanek sighed and walked back over to her, standing behind Harlow and draping his arms over her shoulders. She crossed them in front of her and leaned into his right arm, holding tightly to his forearms.
“Thank you. This is so peaceful. I needed this after today.”
As Vanek stood there he realized something. It was what he needed too. After his conversation with Colonel Mara, he’d been far too strung out to go about changing. But now, up here in the harmony of nature with his mate, he could relax. Tension fled from his shoulders, and a renewed sense of confidence that he would be able to work things out in time came over him.
“Thank you for coming after me,” she said at last, as the first edges of the sun disappeared into the mountains. “For not letting me run.”
“Does this mean you’re not planning on running anymore?”
Harlow glanced back at the sun. “I don’t think so. The sunsets are quite stunning from up here, and I don’t think I’ve seen quite enough of the view yet.”
“I agree,” he said whisper-quiet, his eyes focused on her. “It is stunning.”
They stood that way for several moments, until only the top of the sun remained. Then, with his heart nearly full to bursting, Vanek tilted his mate’s head back and kissed her, their lips touching as the last of the sun disappeared from view.
“Can I take you somewhere tomorrow?” he asked when they broke for air.
“You can take me anywhere,” she said dreamily, resting her head on his chest and looking back out to the mountains, admiring the way they reflected the sun’s light, the peaks looking various shades of orange and red. “Anywhere at all.”