Still, he grabbed the toothbrush and got dressed, then tucked the toothbrush in his jacket pocket. He scrawled a note out to Cyrus, letting him know he had to get up early and he’d call him tomorrow.
The toothbrush, he’d give to Jenny to test for DNA. While Mark didn’t actually believe the man he loved could be a dragon, he needed to get an answer and reassure himself, otherwise he didn’t think he’d ever be able to enjoy Cyrus’s warm arms again.
Cyrus
Cyrus woke with a smile on his face. The bed smelled like Mark.
His smile faded. Mark wasn’t here anymore. Heart pounding, he sat up and looked toward the bathroom, wondering if Mark was already in the shower, but the door was open and there was no light.
A piece of paper was on Mark’s side of the bed, a note about Mark needing to go into the hospital earlier than expected. Mark promised to call.
Well, it wasn’t the same as having morning sex with the man who made his heart feel so full, but at least he’d get a phone call.
Something about Mark made him feel whole again, made him feel like the world wasn’t as harsh and cruel as his dragon kin had led him to believe.
He just wished Mark wasn’t so interesting in the dragon DNA tests. Mark’s obsession with and hatred of dragons was problematic.
But the way Mark gave those little half-smiles right before he laughed, the way he sighed into Cyrus’s kisses, the way he seemed to feel and see the world in a way wholly new yet wholly beautifully—Cyrus was falling in love.
Getting out of bed, Cyrus checked in with the station. He was scheduled to go in today, but Chief always wanted the men to sound off beforehand—it helped him know they wouldn’t be shorthanded.
Chief texted him back: Have you gotten your test done yet?
Dammit. Cyrus typed back a cursory no, then went to get in the shower. He swore when his phone buzzed again.
It was a text from Zane this time. Just do the test, get it over with. Your true friends will still be your friends, no matter what.
Could Zane have guessed? Zane had guessed that Cyrus was gay.
By the time he actually got under the spray of water, Cyrus felt like a sopping mess of emotions. There were the dragon tests going on, the tattoos that proclaimed a person’s allegiance even if he didn’t want them to, then there were all the secrets Cyrus had been holding close since he left his kin, all those secrets pressing down on him.
It was painful to live a lie.
It was painful to lie to his lover.
Cyrus turned off the shower. Washing away everything had helped everything become clear. He wasn’t going to lie to Mark anymore. He was going to live the truth, tell the truth, and be completely himself.
And once Mark knew the truth, Mark could help him decide what to do. If it came down to it, Mark could even help him fake his test…no. No, Cyrus was tired of dishonesty.
Once Mark knew, he’d start taking steps to come out as a dragon shifter.
Mark
“Mark, Mark,” Jenny hissed from behind the counter.
“Do you have the results yet?” he asked, rushing over. His heart was in his throat and pumping double time. He had a feeling that he’d break a blood pressure monitor if someone tried to use one on him right now.
“No.” Her forehead crinkled.
She was lying. Why would she lie to him about this?
Unless…
“Jenny, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing!” There was that forehead crinkle again. “I’m just—I’m just wondering if this is something you really want to do. I mean, ethically, morally, I shouldn’t have even gone along with it, and there’s so much more to this story than you’ll even know.”
“You did get the results back. And Cyrus’s test came back positive.”
“I’m not saying anything about this until we leave the hospital and go back to my apartment to talk.”
“Jenny, this is ridiculous.”
“Take an early lunch with me. We really need to have a conversation.”
He crouched next to her behind the counter. “Just tell me what you found.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Then it isn’t good news.” He rocked back on his heels. “Jenny, tell me.”
She shook her head.
“Fine, I’ll just have to find it myself…”
“Mark, no!”
But now he was determined. He went straight for the stack of pages in the tray beneath the counter. He was already acting amorally, unethically by having Cyrus’s DNA tested without his permission. Jenny was right. But if Cyrus was a dragon, Mark needed to know. It wasn’t something he could overlook, laugh away, learn to get used to.
“Stop, Mark,” Jenny said, pulling on his arm. “Those are peoples’ secrets. This is wrong.”
“I have to know.”
“Why don’t you just ask him?” Jenny whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Well you should,” she said, tugging on the sleeve of his scrubs, “because he’s right there.”
Mark looked up, mouth agape, as Cyrus strode down the long hall toward his counter. Well-fitted jeans, a sweater that fell over his shoulders perfectly, clinging to what Mark knew from carnal experience was a majestic set of abs.
“I have to go to the station in an hour,” Cyrus said, “but we need to talk. Can I take you to lunch?”
Mark shook his head. He’d never seen it before, but now he didn’t need Jenny’s paperwork. He didn’t need proof. Because he knew it in his heart. “You’re a dragon, aren’t you?”
Cyrus stopped in front of him. Jenny scampered to the other side of the counter to pretend to do something else, but Mark couldn’t tell what.
“I wanted to tell you,” Cyrus said.
“Bullshit.” Mark clenched his fists at his sides. Here he was, confronted with the enemy, and it was someone he’d grown to love. “You betrayed me in every possible way.”
“I didn’t want to lie.” Cyrus’s gray eyes were wide open and pleading.
Mark steeled his resolve. His brain felt white and blank with anger. “You’re a liar. You lied to me. You pretended to comfort me when I was sad about Eli’s death. Inside, you were probably laughing.”
“That’s not true.” Cyrus’s voice was hard. “I never was a part of that. I never wanted anyone to get hurt, least of all you, Mark. I—I love you.”
Jenny gasped, but Mark made a snort of derision. He was too blinded by pain and rage and betrayal to think clearly, but he spoke anyway. “Like I can believe that. I don’t ever want to see you again. You made me believe you were a hero, but you’re nothing but a murderer.”
As soon as he said the words, he wanted to take them back. Of everything he knew about Cyrus, he knew that Cyrus loved helping people. Cyrus was like Eli in that way. But Cyrus wasn’t really Cyrus, was he? He was one of the enemy. He was a dragon, not a person.
And right now, Cyrus the dragon was wiping fiercely at the moisture on his cheeks.
Was he crying?
No, it couldn’t be. Dragons couldn’t cry, could they?
Mark watched, numb and ashamed, as Cyrus turned around and walked back to the main doors to the hospital, and left.
Jenny came up at Mark’s side. He leaned into her shoulder and wept.
Cyrus
“My god, Cyrus, are you okay?” Zane asked, falling into step beside him.
Fifteen yards from the front of the station. Cyrus had nearly made it inside before getting hounded. He kicked at the snow bank at the edge of the lot, pissed. At least the snow had stopped coming down. “No, I’m not really okay.”
“Dude, let’s talk it out, then,” Zane said. “Whatever the problem is, you can talk to me.”
“Really?” Cyrus’s voice sounded bleak, even to himself. And the empty hole in his chest—the place where his heart had been—pounded and echoed with recklessness.
How come Mark couldn’t even give Cyrus a chance? Cyrus had tried to tell him
that he’d had nothing to do with Eli’s death. He’d tried to talk to him.
But Mark wouldn’t listen. Mark felt like Cyrus had betrayed him, but this felt like a betrayal, too. Cyrus had thought they’d meant more to each other than that.
Fuck, he loved Mark.
Zane walked to the front stoop of the station and pulled Cyrus down to sit next to him. The stoop was freezing cold against Cyrus’s ass, but it didn’t seem to bother Zane, so Cyrus stayed put.
“Yeah, you can talk to me about anything,” Zane said. “You didn’t even need to come out to me. But there’s more to your story, isn’t there?”
It was hard to believe this giant of a man was such a mushy teddy bear on the inside. Cyrus grinned despite everything else.
“And if I told you I was a dragon—”
“Shit, no way. That’s a big deal.” Zane’s face was a mask of feigned surprise.
“Shut up,” Cyrus said. “You’d already guessed.”
“It’s not hard,” Zane said. “You’re all secretive, you get all weird around fires, you won’t get the tests done. All of it points to one thing.”
“I think those tests are stupid, and I wouldn’t have had it done even if they were testing for shapeshifting jellyfish.”
Zane laughed. “Find someone to do your tat on the sly, then. Chief won’t know or care.”
Cyrus shook his head. “I’m taking off. This is going to be my last shift. I’m not wanted here—humans are too intolerant. Not all of them,” he added quickly when he saw Zane’s wounded expression. “But it’s too soon for most of you guys.”
Not even the man he loved could see past Cyrus’s dragon nature to love him back. Everything in the world felt wrong and unfair.
“Take off where?” Chief asked, coming up behind them.
Cyrus jumped. How long had Chief been listening?
Chief’s mustache twitched. “Son, I always knew there was something different about you. It didn’t make me like you any less before, and it doesn’t make me like you any less now. Screw the tattoo. You always have a place here with us.”
Cyrus couldn’t believe his ears. At the same time, he still felt the sharp pang of disappointment. “I appreciate that, Chief, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me. But I can’t stick around.”
Not with a broken heart, he thought. If Mark was here, and Mark hated him, then the only thing for Cyrus to do was leave.
“Think it over, okay, son?” Chief said. “Don’t make any decisions now, on a broken heart. Emotions are high right now, for everybody.”
Cyrus nodded. The chief had that right. Zane stood up and offered Cyrus his hand. Taking it, Cyrus allowed Zane to pull him up so he was standing again.
Even though his heart was broken, Cyrus could take some small comfort in the fact that he was among friends.
Mark
“Oh my god, I made a mistake,” Mark said.
“Damn right you did,” Jenny said from beside him.
Mark gripped his hair in both hands. Nothing was as it had seemed. His boyfriend—ex-boyfriend?—was a dragon. And Mark had just yelled at him about it.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I love him, too,” Mark said. “He’s my everything, Jenny.”
“There’s more to it than that,” she whispered. Her eyes filled with tears. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, either.”
Mark sat down at the swivel chair behind the hospital counter. “What are you talking about?”
“Shit.” Jenny wrung her hands together. “That test result I gave you?”
“Yeah?” Mark said slowly. Where was she going with this?
“Shit, shit, shit,” Jenny said.
“Jenny, it’s okay,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. I learned my lesson.” He gestured at the hallway, at the place he’d last seen Cyrus. “I’m not going to lash out at the people I love.”
“The thing is, I don’t even know how it’s possible,” she said. “I mean, you’d know, wouldn’t you? You’d have to know. And you wouldn’t keep something like this from me.”
“Tell me, please,” Mark begged. “Just spit it out and we’ll figure it out together.”
She pulled a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket on her scrubs. “Here.”
With shaking hands, Mark took the paper. He opened it up and saw the hospital’s letterhead at the top. Dragon DNA Test Results, it read below that.
There was Mark’s name, Mark A. Rollens, followed by his medical record number. And next to that, the word positive.
“Jenny?” he said.
“I don’t know, Mark. I saw it and panicked. So I made a fake one for you. I just…I didn’t know what to think or do, and I knew you couldn’t know. I knew you’d be devastated.”
“Devastated?” Of course he was devastated. Now he was one of them—one of the enemy. Mark was a dragon, and he hadn’t known. “Are you sure this is real?”
“I had them run the test multiple times. It’s real.”
She reached out to him, to pull him into a hug, but Mark lurched back. He was dangerous. “Don’t touch me,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do to you. I don’t know what…I don’t know anything.”
“Wait,” Jenny said.
Abruptly, he stood and backed away farther. “I have to go, I—I—I have to think about all of this. I just need to think.”
Already tears were streaming down his face, and he pushed past several surprised nurses and patients as he ran from the hospital.
“Mark, you’re not dangerous!” Jenny shouted after him.
The snow that had been coming down earlier had stopped, and the sun had come out. The glistening white parking lot was completely at odds with his mood.
A dragon. He was a fucking dragon. He got into his old Toyota pick-up and started the engine. The windshield wipers easily sloughed off the melting snow, and he pulled out of his spot, wondering where he could even go.
The person he most wanted to talk to, Cyrus, would probably laugh in his face. Mark had been a complete jerk, and he didn’t deserve Cyrus’s comfort, anyway, if Cyrus were even to offer it.
He just wanted to drive. He wanted to drive so far that he forgot his name and forgot where he was from and forgot that, somehow, he was a dragon.
It couldn’t be real, could it? But the test didn’t lie. But maybe it was a false positive; he saw them all the time in patients. Perhaps having sex with a dragon—having sex with a dragon—had done something weird to his blood.
He had no answers, so it was best to just keep driving.
The roads were slick with melting snow, and Mark decided that was best, because now he had to focus. Still, he was going to drive until he figured out what to do. Was there anything to do? Could there be any answer?
He didn’t want to leave Prospect and the life he’d started there. But would he be forced out? Would the residents of the town push him out because he wasn’t human? It wasn’t his fault, and he hadn’t hurt a single person, ever.
Neither has Cyrus, a voice whispered in his mind. His guilty conscience. Cyrus hadn’t hurt anyone, and he’d said as much at the hospital earlier.
“I made a huge mistake,” Mark muttered to himself. He wanted to reach for his phone, call Cyrus, and tell him, but it would be best to talk to Cyrus in person.
Besides, if Cyrus didn’t answer his phone, Mark thought it might kill him a little bit.
His phone trilled on the seat next to him, though, and he glanced down. Jenny was calling, probably worried about him. It was tempting to answer and reassure her, but the roads were bad, and Mark had seen enough car accident victims come into the ER. No way was he putting himself in that position.
He focused back on the road, thinking of Cyrus at the same time. He’d apologize to Cyrus, and leave out the part about having learned that he, Mark, was a dragon as well. Or no, that was deceitful, too, wasn’t it?
The road curved, and Mark was hit with the glare of the sunlight sparking o
ff of the wet asphalt. He tried not to slam down on the breaks, to just press gently, but the truck skidded anyway. Mark couldn’t see a thing—the sunlight had blinded him, and he steered into the skid as best he could, but it was too late.
Suddenly he felt the truck’s tires leave the road. He was airborne for a few seconds, and then, teeth knocking, he slammed into the steering wheel at the same time the truck slammed into the steep side of the mountain.
Everything went dark.
Cyrus
Cyrus was spooning stew into his mouth when a rough bump from behind him caused him to spill.
“Heard you were a dragon, asshole,” a deep voice said.
“Then you must be an idiot, Pelant,” Zane growled from Cyrus’s side. “Because only a total idiot would start a fight with a dragon. You wanna be burnt to a crisp?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Cyrus mumbled. Of course Pelant was being an idiot. He was notorious in the station for stirring shit up.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” Pelant said. “A big pansy-ass dragon.”
“That’s it,” Zane said, standing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cyrus said.
Chief walked into the room, clearing his throat. “Is someone starting trouble in here?”
“No sir,” Pelant said, rubbing a hand over his brown buzz cut. “No trouble at all.”
“My bullshit-o-meter must be acting up again, then,” Chief said. “Pelant, you can finish your stew alone in your bunk. And if you even think about making one of our own feel unwelcome, you can find a new job.”
Cursing, Pelant stalked out of the kitchen, bowl in his hand.
“Sorry about that—” Chief started, but then the bell started ringing.
Chief reached for his radio and was already talking to the dispatcher as everyone left their bowls where they were and rushed from the kitchen. Cyrus doubled back to make sure the burner was off on the stove. Always good to be safe.
Back in his bunk, he put on his gear quickly, methodically. This was a routine call, but something felt urgent. Rushing would cause mistakes, though, so he forced himself to check and re-check every movement, every piece of gear.
Down in the garage, everyone was moving forward. “On the truck!” Chief called. “Car accident on Prospect Highway, going east out of the town.”
Arrested by the Dragon: Gay Police Paranormal Romance Page 12