KC: Chapter 27

This is, in fact, the first chapter which resolves the issue I ranted about in my previous post.

We split up at the door to the Officer's Mess. Rin meekly farewelled us on the way to her own quarters in the Weaponeer's Hall, where she planned to get the details for the caravan quest for us. Suri split to go and make sure Cutthroat hadn't killed anyone. That left Karalti and I alone together, with me wound as tight as a watchspring and her radiating concern.

"This fucking quest!" I snarled at the hall ahead. "Motherfucking piece of SHIT!"

Karalti wasn't fazed by my anger, but she was worried. "Do you want to go fly it off? That always helps me."

"No! Fuck, not... not right now. Just… shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you." I stopped to lean against a wall and just breathe. I unequipped my gloves to let my palms rest against the cold wall. The Mark of Matir floated just under the surface of my skin, sucking the light into itself so that it remained perfectly dark. "Next time I see Matir, remind me to punch him in the dick."

My dragon came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my chest. She pressed her face between my shoulders and hung on tight until I began to relax.

I flexed my fingers against the stone. “I’m sorry.”

“I liked what you did back there when you stood up to those guys.” she said, shyly. "So did Suri."

"Suri?" I chuckled darkly at that. Before she'd split, there'd been no hand-holding, no goodbye smooch. "Don’t know where you're getting that idea from."

"Her smell." Karalti’s laughter was still not very human: more like a higher-pitched version of her normal draconic rumble. "She smelled like she was ready to mate."

Maybe it was just the choice of words, but I flushed. Then, I put my face against the back of my arm and groaned.

"You know, now that I think about it, people smell like that a lot.” Karalti pressed her nose in and breathed deeply. “You smell like that right now. Is that normal for all humans?”

Now? She wanted the birds and the bees talk right now? “Uhh… yes? Some humans don’t, but most of us. Yeah, sure.”

“Wait a minute: does that mean you have one of these all the time?!” Before I could stop her, she reached around and grabbed my crotch. I yelped and jumped at least half a foot off the ground.

“Karalti!” I turned on her and pushed her hand away, red-faced. “Yes! I mean, what, do you think it falls off like a deer’s horns or something?”

She pouted. “…It doesn’t?”

“No!” I paused for a moment, then held up a hand. “Are you telling me that male dragons… No. No, wait. I don’t need to know.”

“They don’t have one for most of the year… just when I’m in heat. But if you have one all the time…?” Karalti pressed in against me, molding the front of her body against me. She barely came up to my sternum: lithe, her skin soft with the scent of lotus flower.

“It is one of the few things in my life that has nothing to do with you.” Her perfume was heavy in my nostrils, and it was an effort not to lean in and bury my nose in her hair. “Besides, I’m sure dragon males are far more impressive than humans… at least once or twice a year.”

“I think humans are very impressive.” She looked up at me through her eyelashes. “That it’s there all the time, and not just when a Queen is ready to fly.”

“The queen has to be ready to fly before that’s any good, though.” My mouth went dry, and my heart began to pound in my chest as I looped an arm around her and gazed down into her eyes.

“And if she is…?” Karalti put her hands on my chest. I could feel the intense, unnatural heat of her palms through the metal.

It was the Bond that stopped me cold. She was trying to be sultry and confident, like Suri, but underneath the act? Her adoration was simple, overwhelming and complete. I made her feel loved. I made her feel safe. Like a child. 

I had raised her - this beautiful, desirable woman. There was no changing that, just as there was no-one or nothing that could change the way I felt about her. I loved this dragon, more purely and more passionately than I’d ever loved anything or anyone in my life. And if I took advantage of her now, while she was trembling like a shy flower in my arms, she would one day look back on this moment… and she would never forgive me for it.

“The queen needs to wait until she has a chance to meet a boy dragon,” I said, gently, and stroked my hand over her hair. “Then make an informed, queenly decision about who and what she wants, and how.”

Karalti froze. Her brilliant purple eyes darkened like a thunderstorm. 

“Karalti, please.” I rested my hands on her arms, putting a little space between our bodies. “You’re only just Level 10. In human years, you’re barely twenty years old-”

“So? I’m old enough to know what I want!” Her feelings boiled into a tempest of emotion: fear that she wasn’t pleasing me, anxiety that our love was somehow not real unless she did that, the thing that humans smelled like they wanted all the time. The bitter sting of rejection.

“I'm no longer an unblooded little hatchling!” She shouted over our telepathic link, sharp enough that I struggled not to wince. “ I'm old enough to make my own decisions about me!”

“Please hear me out,” I let go of her. “Look… I was twenty-seven when I died, okay? I wasn’t some wise old man or anything, but I do know that the difference between twenty and twenty-one is incredible. You have the maturity, but not the experience-”

“How am I supposed to get the experience, if you keep pushing me away!?” She stomped a foot.

I held up my hands. “I don’t know. But I know that I basically raised you and you’re still looking to me for guidance. For validation. I can’t be your mate and your guardian at the same time, and as much as my body would like to tell me otherwise, I can’t be your mate. I AM your guardian. And even if you hate me for it, I will act like one.”

“I wouldn’t hate you! Ever!” Karalti glared up at me with eyes like chips of violet obsidian. “You can’t tell me what I want, or how to want it!”

“Then what about what I want?” I took a step forward. “What if I need reassurance? What if I want to know that my partner is a mature, consenting adult? What if I want to make sure that you’re a grown-up separate person from me? What if I feel like some kind of freak for being attracted to a woman I saw hatch out of an egg, then cared for as if she were an infant? And… What if I love being your partner? Just the way we are?”

Karalti’s eyes reddened, the muscles of her face trembling in a way that was all too real.

“I love you.” I spoke softly, urgently. “And I’m thrilled you can change shape like this, and we can sleep together again and snuggle. I just-”

“Is it because I’m not human?” The first tears welled up: pearly and glowing with a pale blue light, a light that could kill men who weren’t immune to the magic woven into her flesh and blood. “I-I can change this shape, you know. I can make my shape bigger than this, like Suri, I-”

“Tidbit, no. That’s got nothing to do with this.” I reached to her, trying to pull her into my arms, but she backed away.

“What do I have to do, then?!” Just like that, the grief turned to rage. She stormed back at me, teeth bared. “All you want me for is… is… flying! And fighting! Because I’m just your ‘mount, right?”

I sighed with exasperation. “Did you listen to anything I just said? Because you're just proving my point with every word right now.”

Her teeth flashed. “Should I hit you like she did on the wall? I saw her hit you, just for making a joke! Or should I be like Rutha and get myself-”

“Do. Not.” Rage flashed through me like a bolt of lightning. I took a step forward.

“Or what?” The skin of Karalti’s face drew taut, as if she was trying to flatten the horned crest that was no longer there. She wove her neck, squared her shoulders and planted her feet. “What are you gonna do about it?”

I let the rage course up and down my limbs and drain through my feet, just like I’d had to do a hundred times in the parade ground with some screaming drill instructor spitting on my face. “I won’t do anything. But now you mention it, yeah. You could benefit from being a bit more like Suri.”

Karalti’s pupils contracted to pin-points, then flared to the edge of her iris. I stared the dragon down as dancing dark light boiled between us. In human form, the supernatural gravity of Karalti’s charisma, her presence, was not lessened. At a glance, maybe – but my lizard brain still knew that I was staring down the barrel at a predator who could burst out of her human suit and turn into a monster the size of a train carriage.

“Ever since Suri became a part of our life, she has handled our relationship – me and you – with grace, and patience, and care.” I took another step toward her, biting each word off at the end. “Not once has she ever resented you. Not once.”

A rumbling, inhuman snarl rumbled up from deep in Karalti’s small chest.

“Just before we left for Myszno, we spoke about Rutha. And you know what she said?” I returned Karalti’s predatory stare without blinking. “She asked me to tell Rutha that she had her back. That she’d fight for her. That she’d avenge her if she had the chance. That she is incapable of being jealous of what I’d shared with Rutha. And if Rutha gets up and kisses me, Suri will be there, ready to clasp her hand and welcome her back to life.”

“But she-!”

“Suri is an adult who cares for you like her adopted daughter, while you attack her, put her down, and lash out at her like a selfish child.” I mimicked her stance, straightening my shoulders and lowering my chin. “So yeah, you could stand to be more like her. Because she cares about how I feel.”

“She… I do! I… I just...” The tears welled up a second time: but this time, they had nothing to do with me. The guilt that washed over her was so intense that I reeled back as Karalti turned with a sob and fled down the hall away from me. She was headed for our quarters to throw herself face down on the bed and cry her twin hearts out... just like a teenage girl.

The sound of her feet slapping the stone faded, and the fight drained out of me. I leaned back against the wall and rubbed my face. For the first time since I’d been digitized, I wished to hell that I had my motorcycle. A machine: a fast, sexy, uncomplicated thrill ride. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t. So I’d have to do something else.

[Warning! You are Fatigued! 5% to skill -]

“SHUT THE FUCK UP! PIECE OF SHIT GAME!” I stormed in the opposite direction: toward the courtyard and the Hospital. It would be filthy, stinky, and full of people moaning in pain after the battle at the Western Wall. It was still the closest thing to a happy place I had in this shit-heap of a fort.