by Amelia Jade
Electro Dragon
Top Scale Academy Book 3
By Amelia Jade
Electro Dragon
Copyright @ 2016 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: November 2016
Amelia Jade
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Electro Dragon
Chapter One
Dominick
Long fingers wrapped around the dirty mug, lifting the ridged glass to his mouth. Tilting it upward, he dumped some more of the contents into his mouth, taking several long chugs before returning it to the pitted and well-used surface in front of him.
To either side, others did the same, everyone staring blankly at the wall in front of them, as if the slightly-cleaner mugs and half-empty bottles of cheap booze just out of reach might give them some answers if only they just drank enough for it all to make sense.
He squinted, but everything was still sharply in focus.
Damn.
The brew was much stronger than anything that might be found in a human bar. A glass of it would put all but the staunchest of humans flat on their back, babbling nonsense at best. It was more likely they’d end up in the hospital.
This was the fourth glass he’d drunk that night. The brew was having an effect on him, he knew it. There was a warm buzz in his stomach that was trying to reach up and overwhelm the darkness that gnawed at the rest of him. That was usually as far as he let it go. Having too many drinks would lead him down a road best left to others—like the bear to his right, who was at least twice as many drinks into his night.
“Hey, hot stuff, fetch me one from the bottom row, would ya?” the grizzled shifter said.
Hah. The bear is grizzled. Now that’s humor.
He didn’t think the others would appreciate the humor though, so he kept his mouth shut, even as the drunk harassed the younger waitress. He was forcing her to bend over so he could stare down her shirt, ogling the barest hints of her breasts that the outfit showed. It wasn’t a particularly revealing outfit either, which was probably a smart choice for a place like this.
It wasn’t the worst bar in Cadia, the shifter stronghold where he lived. But it wasn’t the best either.
Changeling.
Even the name was a less-than-shining reference to the abilities of everyone in there. They were shifters, and that was the term they preferred. Even the more formal "shapeshifter" was better than being called a Changeling. That word implied something devious, evil, and unnatural.
It also perfectly described the attitude of those who came in. Outside they all put on the façades they were expected to wear in public. Big, bright smiles, happy attitudes and general courteousness to others. Generally. But it was expected that you didn’t let others into the darkness of your mind, that bleak void, the abyss tucked away behind the outer exterior, but always looking to take control.
That was what Changeling was for. A place for that other to come out. To reveal itself in a crowd of the like-minded. Although he wasn’t as far down the path as most in the bar, his downhill slope was rapidly becoming a sheer-faced cliff. He was the wrong side of thirty by almost a handful of years, with only one bright spot in his life.
A bright spot which didn’t seem as shiny as it once had. Hell, it didn’t even seem attainable. Nine months ago, he had been admitted to Top Scale Academy. It had been the happiest day of his life. As a thirty-four-year-old construction worker who had begun to think he’d never amount to much, no matter how hard he’d tried, the day he’d been told to report had been his best.
Over the past nine months, he’d learned what it truly meant to be a dragon, taught by the best of the best. His full powers had begun to form within him, and his instructors had shown him how to use them.
That was what Top Scale did. Unlike in the books of legends and stories, shapeshifters, upon coming into their animals during puberty, were not automatically imbued with the natural animalistic grace and abilities of their feral halves. What that meant was he’d suddenly been able to shift into a dragon. But it had taken him four years of practice to learn to even fly. It had been two years after that before he’d been able to do so for any length of time.
But at Top Scale, he’d gone from a bumbling, awkward, and downright brutal flier, to something out of his enemies’ worst nightmares. His muscles had grown and strengthened. His wings were more powerful than ever. In the air he was as graceful as a bird, and could hit with more brute strength than one of the humans’ attack helicopters. He could shoot bolts of lightning or breathe entire sheets of electricity at his enemies, before closing and rending them with his razor-sharp talons.
He was the stuff of legend now.
And yet despite all his accomplishments, and the progress he continued to make, Dominick Carunno still felt like his life was empty and devoid of something.
His thought train was interrupted by the burly man next to him, who guffawed loudly as the waitress walked by and his thick, meaty hands pawed at her black skirt, pulling at the tight material, trying to hike it up over her voluptuous rear.
“Hey!” she cried, slapping his hand away.
The man growled as her bladed fingers chopped against his wrist with enough force to bruise.
Dominick smiled. In his stupor, the man had forgotten that she was a shifter too.
Everyone was a shifter in Cadia.
Okay, not everyone. Asher and Zeke both found human women. But the majority of the residents of Cadia are shifters of every type and breed out there.
Asher and Zeke were the other two dragon shifters who made up his cadet class at Top Scale.
They were also indirectly the reason he was drinking. They were off on a date night, spending it with their mates. Dominick couldn’t fault them for it, and in fact, he was quite happy for them. But it only emphasized the aching loneliness in his life.
Maybe you should talk to her.
He chopped that off abruptly, focusing on his surroundings. Something was changing in the bar.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” the bear slurred, his superhuman system now intoxicated from the brew. “Don’t like it when a real man touches you?”
The waitress, a wolf shifter, snorted. “I’ll let you know when one does.”
Several others in the bar laughed, but the man looked entirely unimpressed.
“Whatever,
bitch. You wouldn’t know a good thing if it reached out and slapped you.”
The waitress smashed one of the glasses over his head.
“That’ll be enough out of you, Torre. You best pay up and head on home. Otherwise you’re going to get in trouble.”
The bear shifter roared and turned, his hand raising up to strike the woman.
“What are you—” She never got to finish her sentence as the hand flashed toward her.
And stopped inches short, the muscles in the man’s arm quivering. Caught in Dominick’s vise-like grip, his arm didn’t move forward another inch.
“This doesn’t concern you, dragon,” the bear said gruffly, turning his attention to Dominick.
As he did, several others at a nearby table pushed their chairs back. They didn’t do anything more than that, but they didn’t have to. Dominick knew what they were saying. “Mess with him, and you mess with us.”
That was fine.
“Actually, I think it does,” he rumbled, his baritone voice cutting through the remaining idle bar chatter fairly easily.
The background noise died immediately as everyone sensed a confrontation.
“It’s okay,” the waitress said to Dominick. “I can handle it.”
“I know you can,” he said, his voice still calm and even. “But that doesn’t mean you should have to.”
“Piss. Off,” the bear shifter said before the waitress could reply, wrenching his arm free from Dominick’s grip.
“Leave her alone, and I’ll leave you alone,” Dominick said, giving the other shifter a neutral shrug of his shoulders.
He wasn’t taunting the man. That wasn’t his style. He didn’t want to fight either, but he knew when it was right to intervene. He may have some dissatisfaction with his personal life, but he wasn’t going to take it out on others. That wasn’t Dominick’s way.
“Fuck you,” the bear shifter said, grinning drunkenly as he remembered he had friends with him.
Dominick just shook his head and turned back to his drink. The waitress moved on, hoping the conflict was over.
“I didn’t tell you to go anywhere, Minnie,” he called at the waitress.
She ignored him.
“This is your fault,” he said, turning his anger on Dominick, grabbing his right shoulder and spinning him back around from the bar.
Dominick had had enough. As he turned, his left hand moved with the spin and lashed out, cracking the bear across the jaw. It was an off-balance, off-handed shot, and though it rocked the other shifter back, it didn’t have the leveling force Dominick might have hoped for.
Not that leveling a bear shifter with one punch was easy. Although dragons were naturally stronger, the other shifter was easily two or three inches taller than Dominick, with a good fifty pounds of bulk. They didn’t go down easily when fighting in this form.
And shifting inside the bar was a big no-no. He was going to have to fight.
Glasses and furniture clattered when his friends came to join the fray, and the other patrons moved away to give the combatants a wide berth.
“Oh come on guys,” Minnie the waitress said. “Can we not do this inside? I just got the chairs replaced from last time.
“You heard her,” Dominick said, ducking a blow. “Shall we take this outside?”
The man sneered at him, spittle dripping down into his beard as he worked himself into a frenzy. “So you can use your dragon like a cheat? Hell no.”
He launched himself at Dominick, but the agile, and more sober dragon shifter ducked down and to his left, snapping out a backhand, rapping his knuckles off the other shifter's skull while he moved to deal with his friends.
His left hand, bent at the elbow, slid across his face and deflected a blow as he planted his left foot and spun, snap-kicking his right foot up and around. The booted foot plowed through the defenses of the hapless bear shifter, driving the man’s own fist into his temple and dropping him to the floor unconscious as Dominick re-centered his weight and reached forward to grab the smallest of the three bear shifters facing him.
Four on one wasn’t normally a fair fight, but Dominick was no ordinary shifter either, and it appeared these fools were beginning to learn their lessons about that.
His fingers closed around the man’s shirt and he started to lift.
A massive, meaty fist crashed into his face, throwing him to the floor as blood spurted from his nose and his jaw cracked.
“Ow,” he snarled, gracefully returning to his feet.
He placed both thumbs on either side of his nose, and with a painful stab, reset it back into position so that it could begin to heal.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he said, his voice slightly slurred as his nose immediately began to swell.
He tilted his head to the left, cracking his neck, and then to the other side, as the three remaining on their feet awaited him.
Then Dominick charged. It caught the three of them off guard. He grabbed a chair on his way, whirling it around and smashing the heavy, reinforced wooden piece of furniture to pieces against the shifter’s head. Pieces rained down on the others, forcing them to raise their arms to shield their eyes against splinters.
In that moment, Dominick reached them. He dropped to one knee, sliding across the peanut shell-covered wooden floor, and his left hand connected squarely with the side of one’s knee. It buckled immediately and the man began to crumble.
As Dominick rose, he drove up with his right forearm and delivered a knockout blow to the man’s jaw, snapping his head back almost as fast as his eyes rolled up into his head. The man fell to the floor in a clatter of limp limbs.
That only left the two biggest bear shifters on their feet.
The door opened and four more men came storming in from outside.
“Ah, a fair fight!” he said nonchalantly as they came and stood on either side of the original antagonist and his friend.
The group charged at him.
The next flurry happened too fast for him. He lashed out with every weapon he had. His fists. His forearms. Elbows, feet, knees. His head.
Bloodied, bruised, and reeling, he crashed to the floor once, then twice, as blows hit him faster than he could react.
That isn’t to say it was one-sided. He was, after all, a dragon shifter. One opponent went down. Then another. But that still left four.
On one knee, his nose broken and bleeding again, and one eye rapidly closing due to swelling, Dominick looked up just in time to see the finishing blow speeding toward his face.
He closed his eyes and waited.
There was the sound of a punch hitting flesh. He heard himself groan in pain, and felt his body hit the floor.
But the strangest thing happened. When Dominick opened his eyes, he was still on his knee.
And the fight was still raging. Two other tall men, one with a goatee, the other with eyes so light blue they were almost white, were taking on the remaining foes.
Reinforcements.
Dominick rose to his feet and swept his leg out, taking one of the bears down. He fell with the man, driving a knee into his stomach before his forearm crunched against the man’s face, driving his head back into the wood.
Dominick drew his right fist back and slammed it into the bear shifter’s face.
And again.
After the third time, the man went limp, blood bubbling at his nose as he drew ragged breaths.
Still alive. Good.
The fight was over. The two new contestants, both dragon shifters as well, were too strong and too fresh, for it to be much of a fight.
“Dom.”
“Asher,” he said, spitting blood out of his mouth and accepting the help up.
“What the hell did you get yourself into tonight?” the other man, a slightly tanned male in his late twenties, asked.
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “Thanks for the assist.”
Then he tried to push his way past them.
“Get out of my way, Zeke,”
he said as the second man stood his ground.
“We were worried about you,” he said. “Word got to us that you were here. Again. So we came to find you.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. But I promise I’m fine.”
He shouldered his way past the two of them and through the swinging door, out into the streets of what passed for downtown in Cadia. There were perhaps ten thousand or so shifters living in the territory, carved out of the plains on the western half of one of the more populous human continents.
To the west, the Quicksilver mountain range rose high into the night, blocking the stars with their dark shapes. There was forest to the east, plains to the north, and desert to the south.
It was its own miniature ecosystem, all in one place.
“What the fuck, man?” Asher said as the others followed him. “Where’s the real Dom? This guy lately, this isn’t you. Distant, violent, coming unhinged. What the hell is wrong?”
“Not wasting any time, are you?” he replied to the bluntness of the conversation.
“No.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint you boys. But this is the real Dom.”
Zeke snorted. “Bullshit. You’re lying to yourself on that one, and trust me man, we can see right through it. You can talk to us, buddy. We’re your friends.”
“I know,” he said, relenting slightly. “But just not right now. Okay?”
“Then when, Dom?” Asher asked, coming up alongside him. “How much longer can you go around getting into fights and such? What if one of the instructors catches you?”
“Indeed, what if?” The strong, feminine contralto echoed down the alleyway where they were headed.
Dom froze in his tracks.
He knew that voice.
“Rhynne,” he said, turning to look at her.
He saw the way her eyes widened slightly in shock—and something else, but in his state, he couldn’t identify what—before narrowing in disgust.
“I. It was. Um, I mean,” he stammered, taken aback as one of the instructors of Top Scale stared at him.
With a disappointed shake of her head, she turned from the mouth of the alley and disappeared back into the streets.