“And you don’t think Commander Hawkins fully shares your appreciation for the High Council?”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe at one point he did. But Commander Hawkins is a dangerous man. He’s the type of man who hungers for power, and the more you give him the more he wants. I saw the transcripts of all the meetings he had with the High Council. Not one of them mentioned anything about instructing Mandy to try to seduce you. You know what they did mention, though?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“They mentioned how much Commander Hawkins hates women. He went into great detail for the Council about how under-qualified women are to work as recovery agents, and warned that any of his female agents sent on a job were sure to fail.”
“I’m not seeing how all of this relates to why I shouldn’t be angry with Mandy.”
“Dammit, Russ, you’re a stubborn one. Don’t you see? Mandy herself was coerced. She was tricked into thinking that the only way she could get the job was to try to flirt with you. She’s been an agent for years and she’s watched agent after agent get jobs while she had to sit in an office, even though she’s by far the most talented agent the Dragon Recovery Division has. I can guarantee you that she wasn’t happy about taking a job that required her to flirt, but she thought it was the only way she’d ever be given a chance.”
“If she’s such an expert on dragon recovery, she should have known that trying to trick a dragon by seduction would never work. Dragons are far too clever and have far too much honor for that.”
“I don’t think there was any section in her training about the pitfalls of trying to seduce a dragon, to be honest.”
Russ’s anger flashed. “Look, Jake. I like you well enough, okay? You’ve certainly been my favorite trainer while I’m here, although I still couldn’t tell you exactly what the point of all of this training is. And it was nice of you to invite me out to the bar last week. But if you came in here today to tell me that I should overlook what Mandy did, you’re wasting your breath. I don’t think it’s okay to lie, no matter how badly you want a job. What difference does it make whether Mandy thought it was the High Council giving her orders? She still agreed to trick me.”
Jake shook his head sadly. “You don’t understand what I’m saying, Russ. I’m not trying to convince you that what Mandy did was the right thing to do. But she herself was under a great deal of pressure to take the job and prove a female could do it. For all she knew, if she didn’t take that chance then none of the women in the program would ever have a chance to try their skills at dragon recovery. There was a lot of weight on her shoulders. You might even say she herself was coerced.”
Russ picked up his duffel bag and swung it over his right shoulder, glaring angrily at Jake the whole time. He didn’t have to sit here and listen to this. He’d completed his training for the day, and he was going to go home now and indulge in a pizza and some beer. But he couldn’t resist trying to get in the last word before he left. “She might have been coerced, but that doesn’t change the fact that she lied to me. Lying is not okay.”
“She never lied to you, Russ.”
Jakes voice was so loud and firm that Russ looked up in surprise. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Jake raise his voice. The other trainers did it all the time—they loved to yell and carry on like they were drill sergeants at a boot camp. But Jake was always levelheaded and calm, which is why it surprised Russ so much when the man got in his face.
“She might have gone into that bar with the intention of tricking you, but by the time she left, she had actually fallen for you, and you know it. Any fool can see the way she looks at you and know that she has feelings for you.”
Russ snorted. “She feels badly that she lied, but she doesn’t care about me.”
Jake sighed. “You’re not a dumb man, Russ, but you’re refusing to see the truth. She cares about you, and, more importantly, you care about her.”
Russ felt his heartbeat speeding up at Jake’s words, but he still shook his head. “I don’t have feelings for her, and I’ll thank you to stop making comments like that.”
Russ turned to go, storming toward the door and trying not to let the confusion he felt in his heart show on his face. Jake was hitting closer to the truth than he knew. If Russ was honest with himself, he would have to admit that he’d left the bar on Friday night because he was worried about how attracted he felt to Mandy. The feeling troubled him. Of course, he thought she was beautiful. He wouldn’t have kissed her back in Chicago if he didn’t. But her beauty only ran skin deep, it seemed. At best, she had failed to stand up to the High Council. Jake might be willing to forgive that, but Russ wasn’t.
Just as Russ reached to push open the locker room door, Jake called out to him.
“Stop, Russ. Hear me out. Mandy has been through a lot in the last few years—”
“We all have.”
Jake ignored the interruption. “Mandy has a good heart. She’s worked hard to prove herself, but she could lose everything she’s worked for if she accuses Commander Hawkins of defying the High Council. She needs friends who will back up her story, and you’re a key piece of that story. She needs you to be willing to testify to the High Council that her story about what happened in Chicago was true.”
“What does my word mean?” Russ asked, exasperated. “I’m an outsider.”
Jake looked surprised. “You’re a dragon. Your word means quite a bit, actually. Dragons are respected around here. Everyone knows that dragons are honest, and value honor.”
Russ considered this for a moment, but finally decided that it didn’t matter how the citizens of Torch Lake viewed him. “I’m not going to fix things for her. She’s the one who made a mistake.”
“And you’re about to make one, too.”
Russ rolled his eyes. “How do you figure?”
“For one thing, you’re missing a chance to help the High Council take down a man who is defying them. This is how evil wars are started, you know? When men grab too much power and it goes to their head, they start to think they’re invincible. After everything you’ve been through, I would think you’d be the first in line to stop a man trying to grab too much power. And for another thing, you can deny all you want that you care about Mandy, but the truth is written on your face. You’re letting your stupid pride get in the way of what could be someone really special for you.”
Russ laughed. “You’re overdramatizing the situation with Commander Hawkins. Even if everything you’re saying is true, that man doesn’t have what it takes to be a dictator. He’s an asshole, I’ll give you that. But he’s not going to start a new war. As for Mandy, there’s nothing special about her. She’s never going to be my special someone, so stop acting like I’m missing some big chance. She’s just an ordinary girl who couldn’t stand up to her boss. There’s nothing magical about that wizardess, so stop trying to make sparks fly where there aren’t any.”
Russ whirled around and pushed the door open, determined to leave before Jake could reply. To his surprise, he nearly slammed the large door right into someone standing on the other side of it. Thinking it was one of the other trainers coming back into the room, he started to mumble an apology, but stopped when he realized that it was Mandy standing there.
Instantly, Russ’s heart dropped. How long had she been there? How much of what he’d just said had she heard? He’d been talking in a loud enough voice that anyone in this hallway would have easily made out his words. If the shocked, hurt look on her face was any indication, she’d heard pretty much all of it. He should have made an attempt to say something nice and soften the blow, but instead he roared at her.
“What do you want? Why the hell are you over here in training headquarters?”
Mandy took a step backwards, her face turning pink. “I was just looking for Jake,” she said. “I thought he would be the only one left here by now.”
“Well he’s not,” Russ said, then pushed past Mandy. He could feel his own ch
eeks burning with embarrassment. He’d talked a big game with Jake before Mandy had shown up, but the truth was that Jake was hitting some raw nerves. Now, with Mandy standing right there in the doorway, Russ could feel his heart going crazy. It was doing flip-flops in his chest, and he could feel his whole body tensing up. He hated himself for feeling the way he did for her, and he hated eve more that Jake could so easily read the desire written across his face.
Russ kept walking down the hall at a brisk pace, not daring to look back. Dozens of troubled thoughts rolled through his mind. He wondered if he was indeed making some big mistakes here. Should he help bring Commander Hawkins down? Russ didn’t want to admit that a cause Mandy was championing was worth supporting, but Jake did have a good point. Men who gained too much power and abused that power were the greatest threat to a peaceful society. And even though Russ wanted as little as possible to do with the organized shifter and wizard communities, he did understand that preventing a repeat of the last war was important. Millionaire or not, he didn’t want to be dragged from his home in Chicago to be tossed in some shifter dungeon again.
But the most troubling thought crossing Russ’s mind was the way Mandy had looked at him when he opened the door. He could swear all he wanted that he didn’t care about her, but the look on her face had done a surprisingly good job of making his heart ache.
Russ cursed under his breath as he made his way out of the training complex. The High Council sure knew what it was doing, offering millions of dollars for dragons to complete their job assignments here. If Russ hadn’t needed that money desperately, he would have been hightailing it back to Chicago now, away from the confusing mess that was Torch Lake. The last thing he wanted to do was be close to a woman who drove him wild, especially when he had sworn that he hated that woman.
Russ gritted his teeth and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He wished he had escaped from the locker room before Jake had come in and found him. All he’d wanted for tonight was to go home and enjoy a pizza and beer, but he didn’t know how he was going to enjoy anything when Mandy’s hurt, shocked expression was haunting his mind’s eye.
With a frustrated grunt, Russ pulled out his cell phone and started typing a short message to Jake. He started the message at least a dozen times, then erased it to start over. He didn’t want to admit that Jake was right about Mandy, or about helping to take down Commander Hawkins. But a tiny part of him already knew that he was going to be more involved in this situation than he’d ever wanted to be.
“Damn it, Russ,” he said aloud to himself. “You should have said screw the money and stayed back in Chicago.”
Now, he knew, it was too late. He would never get his old job back, and without that meager income he would be bankrupt in a week. He’d left himself no option other than to stick things out in Torch Lake, no matter how crazy the situation became. With another long sigh, Russ finally hit send on his message.
What is Mandy planning to do, anyway? Just show up to the High Council and accuse Hawkins of fabricating orders?
Russ slipped his phone back into his pocket as he walked through his front door, and vowed not to look at the damn thing until he’d had some pizza and beer. He had a feeling that once he saw Jake’s reply, he was going to cross the point of no return.
He was going to be more involved in the inner workings of Torch Lake than he’d ever wanted to be, but that wasn’t the scariest part. The scariest part was that his heart was pining away for Mandy, and he didn’t know how to make it stop.
Chapter Twelve
Mandy sat in her office with the door firmly closed, twisting a long strand of hair nervously around her finger and watching the minutes tick by on the clock, ever closer to nine a.m. She’d felt reasonably confident when she left her house at seven this morning, but that confidence had slowly slipped away the closer she got to her nine o’clock meeting with the High Council. She had less than ten minutes now until she had to leave the safety of her office to walk over to Council Chambers, where she would have to convincingly tell the High Council about the lies Commander Hawkins had told her when she took on Russ’s dragon recovery job.
Mandy stood and started pacing, smoothing down her long wizard robes. She hadn’t worn these robes in years. They were only for formal occasions, and Mandy hadn’t been part of very many formal occasions. The recovery agents, despite their importance to the long term safety of Torch Lake, were treated like grunt workers. They were never invited to the fancy balls the High Council put on for the military elite, and they certainly weren’t invited to the official government proceedings that many of the high-ranking commanders regularly attended.
And so, Mandy rarely wore the deep purple robes she was wearing now. The fabric was velvet, and the purple was interwoven with golden threads, making her robes shimmer. She had a wizard hat that matched the purple of the robe, and had shimmering gold streamers flowing down from the top. The whole ensemble matched her magic ring, which was also a deep purple. Purple had been the official color of her old clan, and Mandy had decided not to replace her old clan robes with the midnight blue of Torch Lake’s official colors. Wizards assimilating into the Torch Lake clan from one of the many clans lost to the war had been given the choice of getting new robes or keeping their old ones, and most wizards had kept the old ones. It was a way of remembering the friends and family who had been lost in the war.
As much as Mandy loved a reason to dress up in her formal robes, she would have gladly skipped the formal event she was attending today. She’d been dreading this since she submitted her formal written complaint against Commander Hawkins three days ago. Any complaints against a commander were required to be submitted in writing, and, after the High Council had a chance to review the written complaint, they would call a hearing to allow all involved parties to testify. Today was that hearing, and Mandy alone would be testifying against Commander Hawkins. None of the other commanders had agreed to back her up, but she had expected that. What she hadn’t expected was for every single one of her female colleagues to decline to testify. She knew they were scared of the backlash they might get from Commander Hawkins, but she would have thought the chance to bring him down for good would have been enough for them to take a chance. No one had, though, and so she was here alone, about to face the High Council with nothing but her own word as proof. Even Russ had refused to come.
The thought of Russ sent a fresh rush of pain through her heart. She had put great effort into pushing him out of her mind, but she could not stop his angry words from replaying over and over in her head. An image of his red face with its furrowed brow constantly ran across her mind, and Mandy had finally resigned herself to the fact that he hated her. Whatever brief moment of shared passion they had enjoyed in Chicago had not been enough for him to overlook the fact that she had agreed to be part of a scheme to seduce him. It didn’t matter that she had never actually tricked him. He didn’t care that their kiss had been as real for her as it had been for him. He had decided she was a liar, and he wanted no part in helping a liar.
Mandy gave herself one last look in the mirror, pushing back a few stray strands of hair before donning her wizard hat. She felt like she was going to her doom. Without any supporting witnesses, she was unlikely to prevail today. Jake would be there to sit on her side of the hearing room and support her—a bold move, since the commanders had the ability to make his job miserable if they wanted to. But Jake had no firsthand knowledge of any of the events involving Commander Hawkins, and therefore could not testify.
Before she left, Mandy paused with her hand on the door and looked around her office. There was a good possibility that she would be losing her job, and this office, after the hearing today. She bit back tears. She loved her work here, but she had to hold it together right now. It would not do to arrive at the hearing looking like a blubbering mess.
“Well, it’s been a good run,” Mandy said to her empty office, then turned and left, closing the door firmly behind her. S
he moved as if on autopilot, not willing to let herself fully comprehend the fact that she was walking to a losing battle. If she didn’t let herself think about it too much, maybe she could actually make it through this.
The hearing room was already full when she arrived. The room looked similar to a small courtroom that you might find in a fully human town. At the front, behind a high table, sat all twelve members of the High Council. The wizard Council members all wore dress robes of Midnight Blue, with the insignia of Torch Lake embroidered on their chests in gold. The shifter council members wore uniforms of midnight blue that were designed similarly to the dress blues of an army uniform, complete with badges and decorations that denoted their high rank.
In the middle of the room, a wide, empty space was interrupted only by two wooden pulpits, where Mandy and Commander Hawkins would be called to testify. Mandy’s heart lurched just looking at the pulpits. She felt wildly unprepared to stand there and accuse one of the highest commanders in Torch Lake. She glanced down at her magic ring and wished with everything in her that she could have used an invisibility spell and disappeared right then. But no, she must follow through with this. She must hold her head high and at least try to make the High Council see what Commander Hawkins had done.
Past the pulpits in the middle of the room, several rows of benches were available for spectators and witnesses to sit and watch the proceedings. The benches were already filled with the commanders who worked under Commander Hawkins, and with several of Mandy’s colleagues from the dragon recovery bureau. No one would meet her eye, and with good reason. They all knew they were about to tell bald faced lies. They were going to stand in front of the Council and lie through their teeth, saying that Commander Hawkins had never done any of the awful things Mandy was accusing him of. What choice would the High Council have at the end of such a hearing, other than to acquit Commander Hawkins?
Dragon Returning (Torch Lake Shifters Book 1) Page 9