Cobalt Dragon (Dragon Guard of Drakkaris Book 5)

by Terry Bolryder

  But he sensed that the only way out of this was to pretend he didn’t care if she left and just listen.

  “Well. It’s up to you.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

  He nodded. “I mean, you’ll probably die out there. You’re not a dragon after all, and you still have people looking for you. But well, it’s your choice, and no one should take it from you.”

  “Cobalt would.”

  Chromium nodded. “True. He loves you. It would destroy him.”

  “I told you he can’t love me yet. He doesn’t know me.”

  “And I told you dragons don’t work like that. His dragon knows you were meant for him. That’s all that matters. Forces greater than you know you’d be good together. I think you know that deep down as well. But if you want to screw over the both of you, no one could really stop you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You could.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t believe in taking away people’s choices.” A small lie wouldn’t hurt. She couldn’t read his mind after all.

  “I… Would I really destroy him?”

  “If something happened to you? Utterly.”

  “Ugh.” She put her face in her hands. “I didn’t want to hurt him. I don’t know what I’m doing. Tonight was so wonderful. It’s all been so wonderful, and I just…”

  “Freaked out?”

  “Yeah.”

  Chromium looked at the empty road again, glad this time for no sign of a bus. “I get it. Caring for someone is frightening. You think they’ll hurt you. When I was being bullied, when I was mute, I was pretty sure Cobalt was going to get sick of me. Leave me in the dust.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  “Of course not. It’s not in his nature. When he loves, he loves hard. So when he stuck up for me, I decided I would never leave him. We’ve been best friends ever since.” He looked down at her. “Well, he’s been a little distracted lately. But I suppose I could give him up if it was to you.” He frowned. “Though, not if you’re going to leave him.”

  “Wow, you sure can talk a lot when you want to,” she said with a grin, leaning back on the bench and looking concerned once again.

  “I can listen, too.”

  She took a deep breath, and her short curls lifted slightly in the air. His cousin’s mate was stunning, and as long as Chromium could keep her from doing something incredibly stupid, maybe it all could work out okay.

  “I… used to sleep at bus stops.”

  “Why? Were you homeless?”

  “Sometimes. Other times, being away from home was being better than being back at home. Nothing good was waiting for me there. So after a fight, I’d run. Just kill time either sitting on benches or riding buses along their entire route, watching houses go by until it was so late I knew nobody would be awake when I got home.”

  “You don’t need to run away from Cobalt. It is perfectly safe to go home.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s that I should have left my home for good long before I did. Before I finally stood up to them and got thrown out. If I’d known how things were going, that my mom would choose him over me, then I wouldn’t have stayed. It just hurt more that I couldn’t leave her, but she could leave me.”

  “Who is he? Who did she choose over you?” Chromium’s neck was feeling tight at the thought that someone could hurt her. Could hurt everyone. Being bullied as a kid had given him a keen sense of justice, and he hated anyone who picked on anyone else.

  He went around punishing them now.

  “My stepdad.” She crossed her legs nervously. “At first, he was a creep, but then he got more aggressive. Finally, I decided to fight him one night, and I hurt him. I was proud because I’d protected myself. But he told my mom I’d tried to seduce him, and my mom, who’d pretended to love me, threw me out.”

  “That’s pretty terrible,” he said sympathetically, secretly logging a reminder to ask her later for this man’s name and address so he and Cobalt could hunt him down and exterminate him.

  To his surprise, she leaned forward, making muffled sounds with her hands over her face, and he realized she was crying.

  “I guess I can’t really believe anyone would love me. Why would they when she didn’t? Everyone I’ve met since then, I’ve waited around, hoping to prove someone could love me, but they all leave. They all abandon me. And Cobalt, he’s so wonderful. More wonderful than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. I couldn’t stand it if he abandoned me. I really don’t think I’d survive.”

  At another choked sob, he pulled her in against him, wrapping her in a brotherly hug and stroking his hand through her hair. There was nothing sexual about it. He just wanted to help heal her heartbreak and needed time to think about how to convince her that Cobalt wasn’t like that at all.

  “I swear he’s not going to abandon you,” Chromium said. “That’s not how dragons are. He’d die first.” He pulled back, wiping her tears with one thumb. “And besides, Cobalt isn’t like that. When he loves, he loves for life. No matter how much the person doesn’t deserve it.”

  He could feel his own guilt for the times he’d let Cobalt down and for keeping secrets now. “Please, just give him a chance. You weren’t wrong for holding on for someone to love you. If you run now, you’ll lose your best chance for proving your mother wrong.”

  She nodded quietly, swiping at her cheeks. “I suppose you’re right. It’s terrifying, but I’ll have to stay. I love him, after all.” She gave him a weak but genuine smile. “Thank you, Chromium.”

  “What are brothers for?”

  She grinned and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight. “I think I’d like to have a brother.” She sighed, not letting go. “I guess I have to go back and face him now, huh?”

  A loud roar rent the night, and Chromium looked up with panic to see a tall figure walking toward them, quickly emerging out of the darkness. “Shit.”

  Sylvie pulled back and looked up at Chromium and then in the direction he was looking.

  A fierce, furious Cobalt was approaching, gray hair whipping in the dark, and he was wearing an expression Chromium had never seen before.

  “You might just be facing him sooner than you thought.”

  “Yeah,” Sylvie said. “What are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know.” Chromium stood and moved in front of her. “But it’s going to be all right. I promise.”

  All right for her anyway. Judging by the murderous gleam in Cobalt’s eyes, things were about to get rough for Chromium.

  He cracked his neck and got ready to face his cousin.

  Chapter 15

  Cobalt couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Of all the audacious, despicable things he could have possibly imagined, seeing his own cousin and best friend embracing Sylvie, his mate, at a fucking bus stop waiting to presumably go somewhere together was the last thing he could have possibly concocted.

  There were no words.

  Just rage.

  Chromium just standing there looking calmer than ever only made Cobalt angrier.

  “Cobalt, what’s wrong?” Chromium asked, acting chill despite the fact that he was a traitor and a liar.

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? How can you fucking ask me that?” Cobalt barely kept from shouting, a razor’s edge away from losing it on the person who used to be his best friend and only family.

  “I know what this looks like, Cobalt. But it’s not what you think.” Chromium waved a hand, trying to placate him.

  The gesture only pissed him off more.

  “Not what it looks like? Not what it looks like!” Cobalt got in Chromium’s face, not seeing a brother anymore. No, Chromium was a backstabber, the worst kind.

  “Dude, back off. Stop losing your shit over nothing.” Chromium squared off with him, jaw clenching defiantly. But he had no right to make requests of Cobalt now.

  “For days, you two have been chumming together, just playing it off like some buddy-buddy thin
g. I trusted you, Chromium, and this is what you throw in my face?” Cobalt was starting to see red. Chromium was going to run off with his mate. What had the world come to?

  His dragon was ready to burn everything to the ground.

  “Cobalt, just stop it. Fucking think for a second. Use that oversized brain of yours and realize you’ve got this all wrong!” Chromium was starting to get angry, too, which only made Cobalt feel more justified in his rage.

  “You want me to think that. It all makes so much sense. But I’m not going to let you get away with it, you fucking turncoat.”

  Cobalt pushed into Chromium, bringing them face to face, chest to chest now. A pin could drop and send both of them at each other’s necks. Chromium looked as though he was trying to hold back, but he was nowhere near backing down.

  “Guys, guys, break it up!” Sylvie tried to wedge herself between them and push them apart. For a moment, it worked, the two dragons aware of the much smaller human in their midst. But Cobalt was far from finished with them.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” Cobalt pointed an accusatory finger at her. “You said you wouldn’t leave me. You lied to me, Sylvie. And for what? So you can run off with my own cousin? The fucking chef?”

  “Low blow, man.” Chromium shook his head in disgust.

  The logical part of Cobalt knew what he was saying was all wrong. But it was too upside-down to make sense. He couldn’t think with his emotions running so wild; it was like a stampede was running over his heart.

  “Not nearly as low a blow as you’re dealing me right now.” Cobalt waved his hand furiously at the display before his eyes, playing out over and over. Chromium and Sylvie together, all alone on the bench only a few feet from there seconds ago. Holding each other.

  “Like I told you, I can explain,” Chromium replied, trying to keep control of the situation. But Chromium’s training as personal bodyguard to the king meant he never backed down from a fight, ever.

  And neither would Cobalt.

  “Explain this—” Cobalt said, pushing Chromium. For a second, Chromium kept his composure, then returned the action with a forceful shove of his own.

  “Guys… Guys!” Cobalt could hear Sylvie trying to get their attention. But all sound was drowned by the feeling of his own blood pumping in his veins.

  “Oh, I’ll explain it. After I knock you out and drag you back to the mansion,” Chromium threatened, rolling up his sleeves.

  “Guys!” Sylvie’s voice finally broke through the moment, catching both of their attention. When they looked over, she was facing toward the darkened road, pointing a finger at something approaching in the distance.

  Cobalt had to squint for a second to see past his own rage. When he did, he spotted a large vehicle, a bus, heading toward them. But there was something very different about it. It was bigger than most human buses he’d seen on TV. And instead of yellow headlights, the bus cast a long, bright purple glow onto the asphalt beneath it as it came at them with surprising speed.

  And were those tails hanging out the windows?

  “Looks like we’re in for trouble,” Chromium muttered. With a flash, his sword was in his hand as he stood at the ready.

  Cobalt quickly took stock of their surroundings before summoning his blade as well, the cold blue steel of it somewhat calming.

  “No dragon fire unless we want this whole gas station going up in flames,” Cobalt stated.

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  With likely danger fast approaching, the rage of Cobalt’s confrontation with Chromium was held back far enough for Cobalt to be able to think straight. He looked over at Sylvie, uncertainty and sadness and frustration in her eyes, and his heart cracked a little.

  What was he doing? She was his mate. He was his cousin, his best friend, and basically his brother.

  Yet they’d lied to him. Both lied to him. He didn’t know what to think.

  “We’ll settle this later,” Cobalt said to Chromium. “Sylvie, run. Get out of here. That seems to be what you’re best at anyway,” he said, unable to hold back the hurt in his heart from waking up alone and worrying she was dead all the way until he’d found her here with Chromium.

  Sylvie frowned at his remark, but didn’t throw whatever she was feeling back at him, which only made the vitriol of his own words sting harder. Instead, she moved away a few steps, getting behind a handful of empty water barrels standing in a row not far from them.

  “Shut up, Cobalt. There’s nothing to settle later. I was just helping Sylvie out. We weren’t doing anything.” Cobalt’s light, blue-green eyes reflected the oncoming hue of the purple headlights, his gigantic, long blade a light silver instead of its normally blazing white steel.

  And as the bus emerged from the darkness into the bleak haze of light around the gas station, Cobalt could spot wyverns huddled on top of the vehicle as well as dozens filling the interior.

  And based on the unnatural purple aura around the bus, there was nothing normal about this vehicle. He could sense magic in the air, but there was no use trying to analyze it now.

  The vehicle screeched to a halt, and with feral shrieks and red-eyed glances, the wyverns on top of the bus leapt down at them, fangs glinting in the yellow lamplights.

  Immediately, the two dragon guards of Drakkaris jumped into action. Chromium rushed to the left, driving his sword into one wyvern’s chest while it was still midair in its descent. Cobalt moved right, heading them off so he could keep himself between the bus and Sylvie.

  The ground thumped beneath his feet as the large beasts landed, and he rolled as two of them snapped at him jointly, slashing a third across the legs as he did. It screeched in pain as he whirled around to fight off the first two.

  “Why, Chromium? Why did you go behind my back?” Cobalt called out to his cousin.

  “I was never going behind your back, you idiot,” Chromium called back.

  “Then why were you spending so much time with my mate?”

  The wyverns advanced on him as one. With a simple thought, the blade in his hands split down the middle into two, and he rushed forward, driving each sword deep into their necks.

  “I was trying to make Sylvie feel comfortable at the mansion so she wouldn’t leave. Trying to make her feel at home,” Chromium grated out as he held his sword above him, a wyvern’s jaws clenched around the thick blade.

  Another wyvern came from behind, and Cobalt ducked just in time to dodge. The creature, off balance now, didn’t even see Cobalt’s blade coming as it pierced through its heart. In the blur of motion, he could still see Sylvie watching intently from behind the cover of the barrels.

  “Sylvie, keep back. Wyvern venom is dangerous even for dragons, so just stay safe. Please.” He tried to keep his voice low so as to not attract any undue attention in her direction, but loud enough for his mate to hear. He barely had time to see her nod in response when the two sets of doors on the bus burst open and a cascade of leathered, lethal monsters emerged from inside.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was your mate?” In a flash of steel, Chromium struck a deadly blow to a wyvern on Cobalt’s left, coming alongside him.

  “I couldn’t let that out. Not after the oracle told me she might not be my mate. It could have jeopardized things if I told anyone.” Cobalt returned the favor, slashing one foul creature across the midsection, then grabbing another by the neck, forcing it onto the ground and impaling it through the jaw with his sword.

  “I’m your cousin. Of course you could tell me.” For a moment, Chromium stood facing off against a half dozen wyverns surrounding him from nearly every side. “It’s not like it wasn’t super obvious from the first night you’d been making out in the library before the oracle arrived anyways.”

  “Wait, you knew?” Cobalt didn’t have time to pull his sword from the wyvern’s jaw as several more came from behind. Instead, he grabbed his second blade and charged.

  “Of course I knew!” Chromium chose one target and leapt at it, moving effort
lessly from one wyvern to the next in a lethal dance of death with his enemies. “I’ve known you my whole life. How would I miss something so obvious?”

  As Cobalt worked his way through the wyverns now before him, the realization of what really had been going on day after day began to settle on him. So Chromium really had just been treating Sylvie like a sibling. And when she’d run from the mansion, he’d been there to help, not whisk her away like some Lothario in the night.

  The sounds of combat began to lessen, and Cobalt looked over his shoulder to see Chromium surrounded by the fallen bodies of his enemies. Cobalt finished the last one off, making sure there were none left that he’d missed, then came up to his cousin.

  “Seriously, nothing was going on. You need to talk to your mate, tell her what you really feel. And then you need to wait,” Chromium said calmly.

  “Wait for what?”

  “To see if she forgives you for acting like a dick. Wait for her feelings to come out. If it’s right, then a little patience won’t ruin everything, will it?”

  Chromium was right. Yes, he’d acted on fear, then rage, at the prospect of losing his mate. But with the truth out in the open between him and his cousin, Cobalt knew what he had to do.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I—”

  “It’s already forgiven. Now go get your mate,” Chromium said, patting Cobalt’s shoulder.

  Cobalt turned, a pit in his stomach but hopeful for the first time since waking up, when he felt something sharp go into his shoulder. He whipped around just in time to see Hora, the she-dragon who’d attempted to ruin everything for more than one of Cobalt’s friends and their mates, emerging from the bus.

  To his side, Chromium was pulling out a large, arrow-shaped steel dart from his arm.

  Cobalt couldn’t even mutter a word before his legs gave out beneath him, and he fell onto his back with a loud thump. A second later, he heard another thud as he saw Chromium fall to his knees at the periphery of his vision.

  “Ugh, technology. So useful but so repulsive,” Hora exclaimed, tossing an oddly shaped device that resembled a sort of modified gun to the side. For a moment, she casually appraised the dead and dying bodies of wyverns around her. “You know what they say. Never send a man to do a woman’s job.”