“We will fight with all that we are to ensure the peoples of this planet, all the people on every continent and every country, in every fucking metropolis, city, or two-bit town remain safe and able to live the lives they are meant to have.” Re’nal appeared surprised by the words coming out of his mouth uninhibited, but with the growl underneath them, Ti’eron knew the man’s words had come from the heart of Re’nal’s dragon.
“S-so that means, what, e-exactly?” Brecon stuttered as his eyes slid around the other men at the table.
When no one spoke, Ti’eron felt it was he and Ver’gren’s duty to explain in human terms the connection he and his brother warriors all knew as fact. “It means, you and your machinery can either try to fuck up what our dragons were created to do or you can kiss our ass and your expensive war toys good-bye.”
“We can’t be held responsible if we destroy your pretty-assed planes as we protect Earth from those bugs,” Re’nal said.
M’dobe, one of the oldest in the group, was more conciliatory. “We emerged to protect the whole of the planet, not just the portion you wish to control, General.”
But it was Hu’ang who drove the point home. “In a word? Stay out of our way and let us do the job we were created to do. Any other action will be deemed as a hostile intrusion. And you don’t want to have a dragon, of any color, consider you or your war toys as the enemy. Go home, General and allow our dragons to do what is needed.”
Standing again, the highest commander of the World Militia snagged his hat. “I’ll take this back to the Global Staff and you’ll have our answer in the morning.”
Hu’ang shook his head and Re’nal sighed. Only M’dobe took the bull by the horns to make Brecon truly understand what was going on. “We did not ask you a question, General so we do not require an answer of any sort.” M’dobe looked around at his co-commanders before continuing. “This meeting, as I see it, is over. You are dismissed, General Brecon.”
Brecon again opened and shut his mouth as if to speak, his cheeks turning a bright red when no words came. After a long moment he shoved his bullion dress hat on his head, yanked his jacket into place and stormed out of the room.
The Dragon Warriors stood and said their good-byes with handshakes and smiles.
Re’nal slung an arm around Ti’eron’s shoulders and announced, “All in all I think that went pretty damn well, don’t you?” Not waiting for a response, the commander of Blue squadron went on. “Now all I want is a cold beer, a hot screw and to forget this meeting ever happened—not necessarily in that order.”
Ti’eron didn’t disagree but with his vow to stay away from the woman his dragon had claimed as their own, he was stuck unless he went back to his old ways of finding an available bed partner.
Over my dead body! Ver’gren roared bringing the entire squadron commanders’ questioning eyes to Ti’eron.
Feeling no other recourse was available, Ti’eron turned on a heel and walked away without a word.
*.*.*.*.*
Was I surprised I hadn’t seen or heard from Ti’eron for five days after he’d invaded my apartment? Not really. Not with the way he’d high-tailed it or at the words he’d used.
Shit, seriously?
Too busy?
Didn’t have time for a steady girl?
Had I effing asked for that position?
I yanked the tight handle of the draft’s spigot, filling the pitcher as my eyes slid to where Vanessa was laughing with a customer. A laugh I knew never lit her eyes.
She’d warned me, but somehow I thought what Eron and I had between us was different. More special, because we’d known each other before he’d turned into one of Earth’s saviors.
He’d proven, both in word and deed, I wasn’t.
In fact, if I was to slap a label on it, I was just another one of the adoring fans who’d started filling Toxic to capacity each and every night since the TV stations had declared them heroes of the highest variety. The kind of coverage which brought out the girls of skanky necklines and slut-hems wiggling in anticipation at even seeing a WarDrag in the flesh.
The bitches.
Daryl’s bottom line was definitely in the black because I was serving drinks hand over elbow. Wads and wads of cash filled the registers until we’d been instructed to empty the cash drawers twice a night instead of just at the end of our shift. While I was over the moon Toxic had become an overnight success, I’d already been putting feelers out for other manager positions at bars in the neighboring states. Anything to get me away from Ti’eron and how he’d walked away from me for a second time in my life.
A girl could only take so much rejection before she needed to call it quits.
So lost in my thoughts, caught up in maintaining the friendly bartender role I was sporting, I didn’t even hear the door to the backstairs as it thudded closed after dispelling a conclave of WarDrags who’d been missing in action over the last few days.
But as soon as my eyes hit on Ti’eron, they didn’t want to let go. He seemed shocked by the callings of the crowd, the adulation and attention he received but quickly acclimated himself as he posed for pictures, his arm around whatever slut or attention-seeking succubus who glommed onto him.
Only able to take a certain amount of shit being slung in my face as all my emotions slipped into the ‘jealous’ arena, I turned to Vanessa and called out, “break” before I practically ran from behind the bar, away the waves of adoring fans throwing themselves against the two commanders—a brown and a blue—who were having to force themselves through the crowds.
I wanted to scream as I slammed my palms against the outside doors, swinging them outward as I cussed him to hell and beyond for being so damned hot, so banging sexy and for rejecting me so thoroughly.
I’d given that night a lot of thought, tried to put myself in his shoes, but I hadn’t been able to come up with a reasonable justification for his behavior or his attitude. What had I done or said that made him think he could just show up at my place uninvited, have sex and then leave, with some kind of weak-assed promise he’d call me sometime?
Shit, when I thought of it in those terms it sounded like some sort of…goddamned booty call!
I’d chosen the front entrance to make my exit, since it was the closest to my station, but quickly regretted my choice when a really big, very warm hand grasped my bicep and pulled me to a stop three steps outside. “Going somewhere?”
At his touch I sharply inhaled, taking in air that held a tang of metallic, of snow as my eyes darted to the small clusters of people who’d gone outside for a smoke. I wanted to blast him with the anger boiling inside but not in front of an avid audience who were watching our every move.
Pasting a half-assed smile on my face, I flicked my eyes at him before looking away. “Hey Ti’eron, how are you? Haven’t seen you around for a while.”
He pulled me around the edge of the building towards the parking lot and spun me towards him without a word but with a glower. I yanked my arm out of his grip before crossing my arms over my chest. “We need to talk, Adri.”
“So talk,” I shot back heatedly. “But isn’t that what you said we needed to do the last time I saw you? Seems to me, your idea of a conversation is a lot different than mine.”
He blinked and rocked back on his heels which I thought was because of the hard-to-miss venom in my voice. “I, ah—“
“Ah, what?” I threw out a hand to the side as my other one fisted on a canted hip. “What do you have to say to me that is so important, Eron? What?” I leaned closer and narrowed my eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, you made everything clear, extremely clear the other night.”
“Maybe you misunderstood what I said—“
Oh hell to the no. He wasn’t gonna pull that shit on me! “What part do you think I didn’t get? The part where you told me you have no time for a girlfriend, but obviously made time to get laid? Or was it that you said you’d call when things calmed down? Whatever the hell that means.”
“If you’ll give me a goddamn moment, I can explain.”
I poked a finger into his chest and tried to talk through lips so tight they hurt. “You listen to me, you big, dumb ass-hat! As far as I’m concerned you can…”
But I didn’t get to finish because without warning, Ti’eron grabbed my finger, twisting my hand away as he snatched me to him and crashed his lips to mine. The anger beating within me turned into a different sort of throbbing heat as he tongued the seam of my lips demanding entrance. When I didn’t comply, he bit my bottom one, making me gasp, and immediately took advantage of the opening he’d created.
I honestly didn’t know how my body could go from furious to aching want in the span of micro-seconds but it did, despite how hard I tried to push myself away. At least that’s what I ordered my hands to do, not to clutch at his vest to bring him closer. And was that my tongue tangling with his? An involuntary moan rolled from my lips to his, accompanied by an unconscious hip wiggle.
The hand he’d dropped to my ass squeezed at the same time his lips tilted up in a smile, a move which took me back into the Adri-anger zone. “Get off of me!”
“No.”
“I said, get off of me now, dickhead! I warned you what could happen if you pulled that snatch and grab shit again.”
He loosened his arms and pulled back to study my face. “It was the only way I could think of to get you to shut up and listen.”
How do you reply to such a stupid, caveman-esque statement? “All right then. I’m listening. So get whatever you have to say over with, okay? I’ve got to get back inside.”
“What I said the other night came out wrong.” I couldn’t look at him but stared at his chest, at the gold skin exposed in the vee of his vest. “What I should’ve said was you’re right about us taking things too fast, that we need to get reacquainted. Unfortunately, my time isn’t my own and I’d hate to schedule something and then cancel it or have to leave in the middle of our time together. That wouldn’t be fair to either one of us.”
Since he put it like that, I couldn’t fault his logic. “So what are we supposed to do then, Eron? Just walk away with a breezy ‘I’ll see you when I see you’?”
He sighed and settled me more closely to him, tightening the arm he had around my back. “I don’t know, Adri. Maybe we should take it one day, one hour at a time until this is over.”
Mulling through his suggestion wasn’t easy because his idea was a little too hit-or-miss for me. Did we have any other option though? “What about the bedroom…ah, activities? Do you think I’m going to fall into bed with you whenever you can spare a few moments to be with me?”
“Think? No.” I could hear the grin in his voice without even looking. “But, hope? A guy’s gotta have hope, baby.”
He bent his knees bringing his face down to my level. Yep, he was smiling. “Are we good now?”
One part of me still wanted to be pissed at him, but the rest of me was delighted to know he was at least willing to work with me on this. “Yeah, we are.”
The kiss he gave me to seal the deal, though not as heated as before, managed to curl my toes. Proving whatever connection we’d started way back when was still firmly in place and growing stronger by the minute.
Chapter Nine
Ti’eron rolled out of bed and scrubbed at his face, blearily looking at the mess that was his room at the compound. He was exhausted on every level but couldn’t go back to sleep. He had to attend the weekly commander meeting scheduled in thirty minutes.
He already knew this was to be another strategy session, yet another one to find a way for their dragons to toil in the skies without working both themselves and their men to a frazzle. This was becoming the norm since, over the last couple of weeks, the swarms of Berstats increased both in size and in frequency.
Striding quickly into the conference room, Ti’eron called out greetings as he quickly stepped to the coffee pot. Christ, he was damn near living on the stuff but it was the only thing that seemed to help him stay alert and focused.
Dropping into the chair next to Re’nal, he noticed all the commanders looked much as he felt—overwhelmed, overtired and beleaguered as hell. “Okay, I’m here. Let’s get started.”
“Before we jump right in,” the Blue leader began. “I want to bring up something we haven’t talked about before. Something I noticed when I was entering my report last night.”
Re’nal pulled the wireless keyboard towards him, accessing his personal files and then opened a picture of a world atlas. Pushing another couple of buttons, lines of blue, brown, green and black appeared. The man had been charting the different squadron’s movements as they’d battled the goddamn Berstat as they tried to gain access to Earth’s natural resources.
“Here you can see how we’re all working during any twenty-hour period and it looks pretty good, yeah? Like we’re doing what we were made to do. Kicking creature ass and doing it right!” He clicked another button and beside each line, which ended in an arrow, a box appeared. “Now this shows the start and stop time of each attack before the squads move onto the next one.”
Ti’eron studied the map closely. Had he and his men really been up in the sky for that many hours? And that was just in one day, one solitary twenty-four period. Christ! No wonder they were all almost falling asleep over their food. When they actually found the time to eat.
“Notice anything unusual?” Re’nal sat back in his chair and looked at Ti’eron sitting next to him before glancing at the monitors holding both the black and green leader’s images.
M’dobe snorted. “Other than we’re working our dragons to an early grave?”
“It’s the timing, isn’t it?” Hu’ang found something Ti’eron hadn’t yet seen.
Wait a second!
But that couldn’t be right.
“It looks like the swarm begins at daybreak and ceases at dusk.”
“Close but no cigar, Bronze.” Re’nal looked to the screen that held the images of Hu’ang and M’dobe. “Anyone else?”
“They’re following the daylight,” Hu’ang muttered with a frown.
“Right-a-mundo!” Re’nal held down the shift key while pressing another one. “But here’s the other portion of it.”
Another world atlas, same colored lines, but pink dots began to appear. Intermittent at first, the amount increased, joining together into a vertical band as it steadily moved from east to west.
“They move in formation? Am I seeing this right?”
“Yep.”
M’dobe started nodding. “And we’re hitting them from behind when we should be coming in from the front!”
“Why didn’t we see this before?” Ti’eron searched but couldn’t find anything in Ver’gren’s memory showing what Re’nal’s graph indicated so plainly.
Re’nal shrugged. “It’s hard to see the forest when you flaming one tree at a time.”
“But are we sure we’re fighting only one swarm each day? They’re not adding more throughout the daylight hours?” Hu’ang’s question was right on the money in Ti’eron’s opinion.
“I’m sure. I even went back through the data and checked.” Re’nal’s fingers sped across the keyboard, its clicks the only sound in the room. “Watch what happens when I put this puppy in motion, combining all four weeks of info.”
Ti’eron’s eyes stayed glued to the large screen as the pink dots appeared along the far edge of eastern portion of the Americas, coming together until they formed a thick band. As the band moved towards the west, the right-hand edge of pink began to thin as the dragons decimated their way through the slowly moving band.
“Now watch what happens when they hit the Pacific Ocean.” As pink edged to the light blue representation of the ocean, the band dissolved into little dots before disappearing altogether.
Only to reform much as they’d broken apart over the eastern coast of Australia.
“Son of a bitch,” Ti’eron breathed. That more than explained why they’d all only
slept in three hours cycles, twice a day.
“Why is the band wider at the bottom than the top?” M’dobe asked.
Instead of Re’nal, it was Hu’ang who answered first. “I’m guessing it’s seasonal as Earth tilts on its axis. Less daylight in the Northern Hemisphere means there’s more in the south.”
“There is no pink at either pole,” M’dobe pointed out.
Ti’eron shook his head, afraid to hope they might actually be able to overcome the enemy with the right strategy. “Remember what our dragons told us? The Berstats are on the hunt for all greenery, wood and fresh water. Not much of them at the Poles.” He drummed his fingers on the table, staring at Re’nal’s atlas. “If only we had more dragons.”
M’dobe and Hu’ang both nodded their agreement.
“Don’t you guys ever read your damn emails? I got mine yesterday from Dr. Smythe with a breakdown of the new dragons he’s sending. He swears they’re ready to be included in our squads.” He flipped to a new screen and pulled up his account before maximizing Dr. Smythe’s communiqué. “I’ve already been going through my roster to figure out which of my more experienced warriors I can promote to lieutenant. I’m hoping to create a ratio of twenty or twenty-five to one just so’s I ain’t gotta listen to two-hundred and forty-nine chatterboxes in my head at a time.”
That was a problem for Ti’eron as well. Hearing all his men, his Bronze warrior-brothers, while he and Ver’gren both listened and gave orders in the heat of battle was just too much sometimes. To only have ten plus his dragon in his head, Ti’eron could definitely handle while maintaining his focus.
“Commanders? I think I have an idea,” Hu’ang announced, smiling into the video camera.
Ti’eron leaned forward, directing all his attention towards the commander of the Black Squad while mentally rubbing his hands together.
Now they were getting somewhere!
*.*.*.*.*
Vanessa always seemed to carry a cloud of sad around her but ever since she’d come back from the roof, where Re’nal had taken her during her last break, that cloud had expanded to a thunderstorm. I left her alone, figuring I’d wait until she came to me rather than offering some buttinski kind of advice out of hand.
Bound By Heat - Dragon Shifter Page 21