Elin
She fell into a sleep with unaccustomed ease that night.
Kallore had been wonderful. After ensuring that she was okay, he’d handled everything to do with removing the general’s security team from her base. The regulars on the base, those who liked her and respected her, were more than eager to be rid of the interlopers. They hadn’t balked at taking orders from Kallore, despite him having no military standing. Apparently CCTV of the fight had discreetly made its rounds. Her guards were fighting men, and they respected one of their own. Especially with how he’d done it all for her.
The rest of the day she’d decided to take off. After the adrenaline wore off, her nerves had been shot. A hot shower had helped to restore them, but even still, she was nearly useless. Tomorrow would be a fresh start. She intended to have a very frank conversation with Kallore on just what it was that he could and could not do with his powers. None of them had any idea about the whip, or the snake, or the armor that seemed to rise up out of his skin to protect him. This was all brand new to her, but she could just see them now, cutting through the Outsiders and driving them back into the portal to their own world.
Elin knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but it would certainly be wonderful if it were.
For the first time in longer than she cared to admit, Elin didn’t have a nightmare. She dreamt of the desert. Sand squished underfoot as she walked aimlessly along the top of a ridge of giant dunes. Little trails bounced and slithered down the slopes, the grains disturbed by her passing falling like miniature avalanches.
It was warm. The sun was just starting to rise over the horizon, she noted, looking around at her surroundings. When it lifted into the air it would banish any remaining hint of the night’s cold. She needed to find shelter and soon. She looked around, but there was nothing besides sand and dunes. No structures, no hard rock with the possibility of a cave. She was exposed. Vulnerable.
The temperature rose swiftly as the rose-red sun lifted above the horizon, an orange sheen coming over the sand. Shortly thereafter waves of heat began to lift into the sky, obscuring the distance. Elin stumbled forward, desperate for any sort of shelter. The pores of her skin opened and sweat began to stream from her skin. She was losing precious moisture at an alarming rate. Without any water she would never make it.
She struggled onward against the increase in heat, but soon breathing grew difficult and her skin on the right side of her body started to burn. Elin frowned. There was something wrong with that. Why didn’t that last part make sense? She looked down, and realized that the sun was on her right. Why wasn’t that side burning? All at once her brain realized it was a dream and she woke up.
The burning didn’t stop.
She opened her eyes. They were staying in Kallore’s quarters that night, and he was passed out on his side in front of her. Obviously in the middle of the night she’d moved closer to try and steal some of his delightful warmth. But this was too much! She yanked her arm away from where it was touching him.
Rolling over, she flicked the light on, gasping at the sight of steam curling into the air from his skin.
“Kallore,” she said. When he didn’t respond she reached forward to shake him gently, hoping he would wake. “Ow!” She snatched her fingers back, sucking on the tips to help ease the pain from the burn. His skin was hot to the touch.
As she watched the steam became smoke. The bedsheets were starting to burn.
“Kallore!” she shouted, grabbing her pillow and moving to hit him with it.
The sheets burst into flames and she smacked him square in the side with the pillow. The dragon shifter jerked awake just as the sheets and her pillow erupted into flames.
“Elin!” he shouted, turning around.
“What the fuck is going on?” she asked, but he ignored her as the blaze grew bigger.
Shaking his head, he stuck his hand out and into the flames. Elin cried out that he was going to hurt himself, but she watched in shock as the flames wavered, as if resisting him, and then suddenly they flowed into him. Wherever he moved his hand, the flames leapt into it, and then were absorbed into his skin. In moments the fire was out. She flicked the ventilation system on high and it whisked the smoke away, hopefully before it triggered the alarm.
“Are you okay?” Kal asked, walking around the bed. “I’m so sorry.”
She waved him off, taking a step back. “I’m fine. Nothing serious, just a minor burn.”
Kallore seemed to fold in on himself, as if he’d just been hit in the gut. “I caused you harm.”
“No, it’s nothing. I touched your skin to try and wake you, and it was hot enough to sting the tips of my fingers. I’ll be fine.”
But he wasn’t listening. Kallore had sunk to the floor, absorbed in himself.
“Kal? Kal! Hey, listen to me. It’s fine. No worse than accidentally stepping on my toe while trying to dance with me.”
He shook his head. “I am a wonderful dancer.”
The comment left her momentarily speechless. Kallore the dancer? Interesting.
“Kal, what was that all about?”
“I can handle it.”
She looked at him through half-closed eyelids. Well, that confirmed her suspicions that something was bugging him at least. There had been a few occasions she’d felt he was harboring something, when his aura hadn’t matched the mood he was trying to project. Like he was trying to hide something from her. Unfortunately, whatever it was, it was too deeply buried for her to pick up with ease.
Looking around the quarters, Elin wondered about that last statement of his. “Is that why the sheets are a disaster and you nearly incinerated the bed? You know, with me on it?”
There was no reply.
“Kal, come on. Talk to me. You said I’m your mate, right?”
He nodded.
“Then that means you need to trust me. Especially if you want me to trust you about all this. What kind of relationship would this be if we don’t have trust between us? That’s not one I could be a part of.”
She regretted the words immediately. That wasn’t what he needed to hear just then. Whatever was bothering Kallore, he would need her full support. The proud dragon didn’t know how to talk about his problems. This was something he had likely buried away for years, decades, or maybe even centuries. He had run away from it before, like he was trying to do now, just burying it ever deeper inside of him. How was she supposed to convince such a stubborn creature that it was perfectly okay to show weakness, to talk about it? That everyone was vulnerable, even her big, strong, macho dragon shifter?
The whole mental health issue thing had never been a strong suit of hers. Not when it came to helping others deal with it. She acknowledged that perhaps society as a whole needed to change when it came to dealing with it, but Elin Mara was not the one to help with that. She could barely keep her own house in order, much less help someone else sort out theirs. But for Kallore she would try. If he would let her in.
“So what do you say, Kal? Can you tell me?”
Elin hadn’t expected him to just open up to her, to spill the deep, dark secret that he was harboring. She knew that was too much to hope for right away. But a continuing dialogue seemed perfectly reasonable to her. Instead, she was greeted with silence, the only acknowledgment that she’d spoken a haunted tint to his blue eyes, fading them out of their usual striking clarity.
Nothing.
“Fine.” She felt defeated, and angry. Angry that after all she’d been through, he couldn’t do something for her. “Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through for you? I risked my reputation and job by giving in to temptation and sleeping with you,” she snapped, her frustration boiling over. “Years of personal choices and restraint, shoved to the side to make room for you in my life. All because you insisted that you were meant to be here. That we were mated. A pair. That we shared some sort of bond between each other that only you could tell was forever.”
Kallore cringed away from her, but she wasn’t letting up. The mighty dragon was going to have to learn some humility if he wanted to be with her, and that started now.
“So here we are. I’ve opened my life up to you. I’ve shown you my weakness, my vulnerabilities, and the parts of me that are broken. You know all about it now. No secrets on my end; it’s out in the open. Yet when I turn around and ask for the same from you, you refuse? What the hell kind of relationship is that? Let me make this clear to you, Kal. This is a relationship of equals, do you understand that?”
He was looking at her now. “Yes. I get that.”
“Then you need to treat me like one, and stop trying to protect me from whatever it is you’re hiding. You can’t save me from everything, Kal. I’m an adult, I need the freedom to make my own choices.”
Opposite her Kal, who had risen to his feet at some point during her tirade, staggered backward, his face draining of all blood. She tried to get his attention, but his eyes were focused elsewhere, seeing something else.
“Kal?” she stepped forward, but he backed away. She stood still, shocked at the rejection. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
But there was still no answer. Elin sighed, suddenly drained, weary from her efforts to reach out to him, and still unnerved by the way she’d almost been turned into a roast turkey in her sleep.
“I’m going to my quarters for the night.” Grabbing her uniform she changed, annoyed that sweats and a T-shirt weren’t appropriate attire for her to move between rooms in, but decorum had to be maintained.
The entire time she waited for Kallore to snap out of his funk and stop her, but he didn’t. He stayed where he was, his mind someplace else, unwilling to acknowledge her. She paused at the door, glancing back at him one last time, but there was nothing. With a sigh she pushed the door open and walked into the hallway.
Things had been going so well! Or so she’d thought. Turns out, they weren’t after all. Kallore couldn’t even fight for her to make her stay. He wasn’t willing to utter a single word, anything, that would acknowledge he wished for her help, her presence…anything! It angered her, especially as she’d told him after all her own personal rules and lines she’d crossed to give him a chance in the first place.
Maybe it was a mistake after all. She shouldn’t have gotten involved with him. This was one of the exact reasons why she’d always maintained a no-military rule when it came to men. Enlisted, officers, private contractors, ex-military. All of them had been strictly off-limits to her, to ensure that this sort of shit didn’t happen. Now she’d gone and broken all of her rules for Kallore, and it was blowing up in her face. Everyone was going to know it too, because she’d passed two guards already, unable to avoid them unless she took a major roundabout route to her quarters, which would raise even more questions. Her wall held up until she heard the latch click shut on her door.
Then the tears fell.
There was no recovering from this, she thought.
She and Kallore were probably done.