Authors: Emma Taylor
The enemy alpha and the other guy closest to me morphed. The alpha stayed inside as the other took off to join the fight as it moved outside. The large dark brown wolf paced back and forth in front of me, his eyes on the doors that hung off of their hinges ominously. I could hear the sounds of a huge pack fight outside and it didn’t sound pretty.
Suddenly the doors to the old shack were pushed off of their hinges and I could make out the shapes of wolves fighting out beyond the entryway in the small clearing the shack was built on. It was dusk out already. When that guy knocked me out back at my house I must have been unconscious for a while. I recognized the large white wolf that stalked into the room then. His moonlight-colored eyes was trained on the enemy alpha, pacing in front of me.
I wanted to weep with relief. Tarik and Roland were here and they were going to rescue me! Tarik circled around the enemy alpha, until Tarik was the one in front of me, protecting me. Tarik growled once menacingly, and the other wolf growled in kind.
Tarik launched at the other alpha, his teeth tearing into the other wolf’s flank, gouging a chunk out of its hind leg. The other wolf was thrown off balance and tried to shove Tarik off of him using his shoulder, but Tarik clearly had the advantage. The fight was over even before it could get started. Tarik shoved the other wolf out into the fight outside. I listened as an eerie silence descended outside.
After what felt like forever Tarik walked into the room, followed closely by Roland. My eyes roamed over their bodies. They didn’t have a scratch on them and their clothes were intact.
“You’re okay!” I said in relief, the feeling was dizzying. They both looked at me as if I’d lost it.
“You’re worried about
us
?” Roland said incredulously. “I should go chase those bastards down and kill that son of a bitch for putting his hands on you,” Roland said angrily while Tarik untied my hands silently and pulled me up into his arms.
“You guys ran them off?” I asked. Tarik nodded, his eyes searching mine, his features colored with remorse.
“Christina, I’m so sorry you got involved in this. Here we’re supposed to be protecting you and…we led the enemy right to you,” Tarik said, obviously hating himself for what happened.
“It’ll be alright Tarik, I’ll be okay. As long as I have you and Roland I’ll be fine,” I said, my eyes shifting from Tarik to Roland, whose frown lifted slightly. He seemed a bit relieved.
“You’ll come home with us? You’ll be our mate?” Roland asked eagerly, clearly beside himself, after all that had gone on in the past twenty-four hours.
“I thought I was already?” I said, almost pouting, a frown touching my expression. Tarik laughed and then he kissed me softly on the lips.
“You are Christina, you’re
ours
and we’re yours,” he said solemnly. I looked over to Roland and beckoned him with finger. He stepped closer to me with a grin and read my mind, kissing me just as tenderly as Tarik had.
“Good, because I wouldn’t have it any other way…now can you guys please take me home?” I asked. They both sprang into action. Tarik passed me off to Roland carefully and escorted us out to Roland’s truck. I saw a few guys milling around outside and they snapped to attention as soon as they saw us.
“Everything good Jeremy?” Tarik asked one of the guys and he nodded.
“The guys are running them well into Canada by now, they won’t be returning,” said Jeremy. Tarik nodded.
Roland settled me into the truck and strapped the seat belt across my chest before closing the door and getting into the driver’s seat. I watched as Tarik continued to speak to his brothers before dismissing them. They shifted into their wolf forms and took off into the woods. Tarik got in the truck on the other side of me and I relaxed for the first time since he had dropped me off at my house. I felt safe with Roland and Tarik. I knew they’d always protect me.
“Sorry I freaked out earlier…” I said softly and both Tarik and Roland glanced at me.
“Christina you have nothing to be sorry for,
we’re
the ones that are sorry. Sorry we let you get…captured, sorry that mongrel hit you,” Roland said. I put my hand on Roland’s thigh and I felt him relax after releasing a deep breath.
“He’s right, we’ll spend every moment making it up to you Christina if you’ll let us,” said Tarik while lacing his fingers with mine.
“In the short time I’ve been with you guys I experienced more than I have in the past few years combined, possibly longer. I meant it when I said I wouldn’t trade you for the world,” I said. I rested my head against Tarik’s shoulder. “Plus, if it will make you feel better, you guys can draw me a nice bath when we get to your place and feed me fruit.”
They both chuckled and I smiled.
“Don’t worry, we’ve got you,” Roland said. Smiling, I finally let myself doze off, feeling happier than I’ve been in a long time.
THE END
She dreamed she was flying. Stacie Simmons, the girl who had been teased at school because she hadn’t worn a bra until she was fourteen, was flying. The girl who had spent most of her lunchtimes huddled in the library, away from the cold and the coldness of children. The girl who only had two lovers her entire life. The twenty-five-year-old working a dead-end job in a call center that just about paid the bills for her one-bedroom apartment. Yes, Stacie Simmons was soaring over America, looking down at her countrymen and smiling. They were not
beneath
her, but she was definitely above them in some hitherto indefinable way. Now it was real. Now she was
really
flying.
She woke with a small smile on her lips, and then remembered she had work today and the winter clouds were pouring down some unholy combination of hailstone and rain. She rose from her bed with a grunt. The dream had been so full of sunlight; streams of it curling around her. Her real-life window was white with frost and had a sloshy film of ice-hail-rain at the bottom. She turned the heating to maximum and sat on her bed with a blanket wrapped around her, waiting for the apartment to heat. When it did, she rose and got ready for work.
She showered, dressed, did her makeup, and then left for work.
But I was flying.
She felt stupid thinking such crazy thoughts.
I was soaring through the air. I was soaring like an eagle. Nobody could touch me
. She smiled as she exited her building.
“I
saw
it,” Michael was saying, and his fat, red face was full of excitement. His sausage-fingered hands were gripping the edges of his desk, and he was leaning forward in his chair, making his jowls sag. “I saw it
last night
. It flew right over the city, and the rain made its wings
shine
, goddam it. Shine! I swear to you, man, I
saw
it!”
“Wow!” Stacie said, in that faux-chirpy voice she used at work, especially on the phone.
Hello, you’re through to blah-blah-blah this is Stacie blah-blah speaking blah how can I blah-blah.
“It must’ve been a pretty big bat.”
Michael looked at her like she was a mischievous child. The man was almost fifty and attracted to her. Stacie knew this because she had caught him looking through her Facebook pictures two months ago. He had asked her out twice. On the second refusal, he had become aggressive. ‘No-one
else
wants you.’ He had growled, leaning forward with his predominating girth. But somehow a simple apology had made faux-chirpy Stacie forget all about that.
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “It wasn’t a bat. It was a dragon.”
Stacie laughed. She couldn’t help it. This was the worst, and strangest tactic Michael had tried. He beamed at her when she laughed, and then he tried to make it into a ‘moment’ by leaning on his desk. “I love it when you la—”
Stacie’s phone began to ring. Sickened and glad, she picked it up. Michael kept looking at her with hungry, ugly eyes. “Hello, this is blah-blah-blah—”
A dragon!
A dragon, just like my dreams. Maybe I was the dragon he saw. Maybe I was really flying. Maybe
I’m
a dragon! Not a boring call-center worker, but a dragon, the stuff of legends. Yes, it is me, the secret dragon!
Yeah, right.
You’re also the second coming of Christ, a wizard and a superhero all rolled into one. Get a grip, Stacie!
She got home around five, which was normal for her because she lived around the corner from the office. Michael had offered to walk her home but she had declined. ‘Leave me alone, you old, fat pervert!’ she had spat. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you. Why can’t you see that? It’s disgusting. You’re twice my age.’
You wish.
Her thoughts were mean but he was disgusting. No, she hadn’t said that because that wasn’t
nice
, and Stacie was always so,
so nice
. No, she had thanked him and politely refused.
She wanted nothing more than to veg out and watch some bad TV. Maybe cook herself a nice casserole and eat the whole thing at midnight, like she sometimes did. Or maybe she would order Chinese food and have a nice pig out. Stacie dinners were always inconsistent in substance. One day, it would be a banquet and the next, a mere slice of bread. This resulted in a medium-sized figure that she was neither happy nor upset with.
She walked through her door feeling tired and hungry and almost turned right around and ran out of the apartment. There was a man standing a few feet away from her door,
inside her apartment
, and another man sitting on the couch, his back turned. The first man was tall with Viking-blonde hair tied in a ponytail and reptilian-yellow eyes. His face was clean-shaven, showing a square jaw, and he regarded her coldly. The other man had long black hair; that was all she could see.
This is it. This is how I die. I’m going to be one of those people employees stand around muttering. ‘What a shame, so sad.’ And they’ll drink their coffee while I am cold and dead in a box.
Stacie’s heart was pounding and she thought for sure they could hear it. Her ears were ringing and she could feel sweat sliding down her back.
Gosh he’s gorgeous. Too bad he’s here to kill me.
The man stepped toward her.
*****
Stacie wanted to run. She wanted to turn and race down the stairs like the Boogeyman was after her. She wanted to leave her apartment building and never return. She knew what would happen next. The men would attack her. She had watched enough crime shows to know what was about to happen. It was inevitable. The question was, how would they do it? Did the Viking-like man have a weapon? Or was the black-haired man the aggressor? Who was the leader here? Who should she present the blackest heart of her fear?
The Viking-like man stepped closer.
It’s him. He’s the one who’s going to take my life. I wonder if it will hurt. I wonder how badly they’re going to hurt me
before
they kill me. I hope they don’t leave me in a mess. Mom really wouldn’t like that. She’s had enough since dad died.
“What do you want?” Stacie asked. Her voice was remarkably clear and detached. “I haven’t got much money.” She knew how clichéd that sounded but there was nothing else to say. She really didn’t have much money; only three-hundred dollars stuffed into a pillow case in the back of her closet. “Please, just tell me what you want.”
And now it would come. He would growl and pull out a knife, or the man on the couch would stand up with an axe. ‘
We want you
, he would tell her.
We want to chop you into little pieces and feed you to our dogs. Yes, we have dogs. They’re not here with us. Don’t worry about the dogs. Worry about us
.’
Instead, the Viking-like man smiled at her. “We have frightened you,” he said, in an English accent. “We did not mean to frighten you. I apologize. I understand it is strange our being in your flat, err, I mean apartment, but there is a good reason, I promise you. And I promise you this, too, we are
not
going to hurt you.”
The black-haired man stood up. He was taller than the English man. He had a big, bushy black beard and wild, black hair. His muscles were visible through his shirt and he had the look of a beast. A wild,
untamed
beast. His eyes were a black-silver that seemed to sparkle like scales in the moonlight. “Don’t be scared,” he said, in a rough Texan accent. “We’re not going to hurt you, girl. We didn’t mean to scare you. My name is Joshua Mathewson. My friend here goes by the name of Ragnar, after some famous warrior in the Viking age.” A
Viking!
Joshua laughed and shook his head. “He has never told me his real name, and I’ve never asked. Have I, Ragnar?”
“I do not need my old name,” Ragnar said, smiling fondly at his name. “And neither do you.”
“No? Well, I don’t need a fancy new one neither.”
“What is happening?” Stacie asked. She actually felt like she might
faint
. “Can somebody please just tell me what is happening?”
“You should sit down,” Ragnar said.
Stacie knew she should tell them no, she wouldn’t sit down. What kind of idiot did they think she was? But she didn’t. She did the most stupid thing; she walked to the couch and slumped down, glad to be off her feet.
The men sat on chairs opposite the couch. Stacie didn’t feel as though any of this was really happening to her. A distinct feeling of unreality had come over everything. She, Stacie Simmons, was not sitting opposite two strange men in her apartment, one of whom was an English man with a Viking name. No, that was too strange. In reality she had passed out at work from exhaustion and was having the most lucid, strangest dream of her life.
“What do you want?” Stacie asked again. “Why are you in my apartment?” She was talking robotically, each word enunciated clearly, without inflection or distortion.
Ragnar looked at Joshua and then back to Stacie. “This is going to sound strange,” he said, in his ‘James Bond’ voice. “This is going to sound very, very strange.”
“Even stranger than two random men showing up in my apartment?” Stacie said.
“Yeah,” Joshua said, and then shrugged. “It probably will.”
“Right,” Stacie said. She was angry with herself by how badly she wanted to know. They had piqued her curiosity. If they were not here to rape, rob, or kill her, then why
were
they here? “Go on, then,” she said, when neither of them spoke.
“You had a dream last night that you were flying,” Ragnar said, and the bottom fell out of Stacie’s world. But somehow she didn’t cry or flee or attack him. How did this man know about her
dreams
? “You had a dream that you were flying over the country. Am I right?”
“No!” Stacie blurted. “No, you’re
not
right!” Suddenly, she wanted all of this to rewind; for these men to return to whatever mad place they’d come from. She didn’t want men in here who knew what she
dreamt
. Dreams were a private place, a special place, a place without interference. In her dreams she could explore her darkest and most stupid and most beautiful ideas and feelings. And now, here were these—these
dream-sharers
.
“I am,” Ragnar said calmly. Joshua just stared at her. “I am,” Ragnar went on. “And you know I am. That’s why we’re here, Stacie. Yes, we know your name. And no, we are not stalking you. We have shared your dream.”
Dream-sharers!
“In a way, at least. In fact, what your dreamt was a memory, Joshua’s memory. You see—”
Ragnar stopped and looked to Joshua. Joshua, without taking his eyes from Stacie, nodded. Ragnar nodded in return and turned back to Stacie. “You see, Stacie, Joshua and I are dragons.”
That was it. The shock was too much. The absurdity was too much.
Stacie threw her head back and laughed.
The men regarded her oddly, like two types of creature who had never encountered each other before. They looked at her like she was mad, like there was something wrong with her. And they looked at her understandingly. They looked at her in all of these ways at the same time, and she felt both ridiculed and protected by them. “I’m sorry,” she said, when she’d calmed down. “I’m sorry but this is so
ridiculous
. I can’t help but laugh. How on Earth can you be
dragons
? I mean, I can see you here, before me. You are clearly men. You do not have wings, or any reptilian features at—” She stopped short. Ragnar’s eyes were yellow, and hadn’t she thought they were—
No, don’t think like that. You can’t think like that. These men have broken into your home and now they’re making a fool of you. Don’t give them the satisfaction of thinking like that
.
Ragnar leaned forward, with a serious expression on his face, and Joshua smiled at her. “This isn’t a joke, Stacie,” Ragnar said. “This is dead-serious. We are dragons, and I believe that you have a bit of dragon in you. That is how you dreamed our memories.”
“Come on, Ragnar,” Joshua said. “You can see how the girl would laugh, can’t you? It’s damned strange, when you come out and say it like that. When you say it aloud, it sounds made up. Hell, maybe it
is
made up.”
“What?” Ragnar said, turning to him. “What the hell does that mean?”
There was a mischievous twinkle in Joshua’s dark eyes. “Maybe we’re all crazy and we’re all actually friends in an insane asylum and this is a shared dream because we’re taking too many meds.”
Ragnar shook his head. “This isn’t the time for your sick sense of humor,” he said. He looked at Stacie. “We are dragons, Stacie, and I believe you are a half-scale; that is, I believe you have some dragon blood in you.”
“Ha! Believe!” Joshua boomed. “We
know
you do, girl. We can smell it on you. We could smell it on you when we were two-hundred miles out of the city. Now we’re here next to you, it’s damned overpowering.”