Chapter 13 Tobias
It wasn’t the pair of wide hands gripping my shoulders that distracted my flight pattern, nor the hundred-and-eighty pounds I carried on my back—Private Peters was a lithe man, little more than muscle and bone. No, it was the suspicious lump that kept prodding into my spine.
When I met Private Peters at dinner last night, he seemed like an entertaining guy. With his rugged jaw and auburn hair, he was easily more attractive than most of the other soldiers—women included, though that said more about the women than him. He regaled our table with hilarious dirty jokes and was actually very charismatic for a naga. At the time, I didn’t understand why there were so many uncomfortable looks tossed his way, or why Char had warned me about him.
Now that I felt that lump grinding against me in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the movement of my wings, I understood. And I couldn’t be more miserable.
I turned my head to the left to look at the blue dragon soaring a few yards away from me. Char side-eyed me as she flew, making sure the gesture didn’t disturb the passenger she was carrying. I made a show of looking at Peters on my back, then narrowing my eyes back at her in accusation. The side of her scaly lips curled upward, and she winked before pulling ahead of me.
I trapped the growl in my throat. Damn her. She paired me with Peters on purpose. What was this, some kind of initiation hazing? Not cool.
We’d been flying for hours, and the dark sky was bruised by thick clouds that surrounded us in every direction and covered my scales with a frigid mist. I was glad that Char knew where she was going because I had no clue—not that I could focus while I was basically being dry-humped from behind. Yuck. If I wasn’t determined to reach our destination swiftly before, I definitely was now.
An ominous rumble echoed around us, shaking the very air that carried me as my scales stood on end. I snapped my head to the red dragon on my right. His eyes widened as they met my troubled gaze, understanding passing between us.
In the next instant, the clouds above and below us opened up, unleashing a heavy rain to pour down. Icy drops assaulted me like bullets, a cascade of water restricting my range of visibility even further to the point I could barely see the tip of my own wing.
I was determined to keep going. Not rain, nor sleet, nor snow would keep me from getting to Arya. And this was just water. A little rain never hurt anyone.
A crack ripped the air only an instant before a blinding flash sliced through clouds mere feet in front of me, and I was bucked backwards by the electric force of it, nearly knocking Peters right off of me. If my heart wasn’t about to stampede out of my chest, it would have bothered me that the incident made Peters hug me even tighter, digging his damn erection right into my fucking rib. But at the moment, I was just glad not to be barbeque.
“We have to descend!” Specialist Tekashi shouted from Char’s back, though I could barely make out the words over the roar of the rain and the reverberating sizzle that charged the atmosphere. “We can’t risk hitting the equipment.”
She clutched a pack against herself like it mattered more than her own life. Considering that it contained powerful explosives, it might mean the end of it—of all of our lives.
Char swooped downward, and the other dragon, Private Hennessey, and I followed her. Panic was a heavy metal song in my head as we zigzagged and dove around the bolts of lightning that played wack-a-dragon with us. I’d never flown in weather like this before, and the drills I’d run in the simulation room for stealth flight training was nothing compared to this nightmare.
All I could do was pretend that this was a simulation, that it was a test. I had never failed a test before, and I wasn’t about to start now.
After several heart-stopping almosts, we finally broke through the cloud layer, descending lower and lower until we were nearing a canopy of pine trees. My heart continued to race even as we slowed our descent and entered the trees. The branches that whipped against my wings were like a gentle caress compared to the biting rain above.
I landed with my claws digging into the brush and damp earth, more relieved than ever to be on solid ground. The others landed around me and their passengers disembarked. I angled my body to help Peters climb down, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to dismount.
Okay, I’m done with this.
In one swift motion like a wild horse, I bucked him off, spinning around in time to see him land flat on his ass. Ah, that was satisfying.
I shifted to my human form and offered him a hand. “Sorry, I had an itch. Let me help you up.”
He readily accepted my hand, and I tugged him up. But he didn’t let go right away, gripping my hand for longer than was necessary or pleasant, so I had to jerk my hand away. He just flashed me an innocent grin before following the rest of our team under the sheltering branches of a redwood.
Slimy motherfu—
“Is the cargo intact?” Char asked the rainbow-haired kitsune.
Tekashi unzipped her pack and took a quick inventory of everything inside. “Yes, everything looks fine. As long as we keep it dry, we shouldn’t have any problems.”
“Great job, Specialist,” Char said, patting her on the back. Then she looked to the rest of us. “We’ll have to stay here until the storm clears.”
I ground my teeth at that, frustration and urgency electrifying my insides more than the storm could have. I hated having to pause our journey, hated each second that ticked by without getting closer to Arya. I didn’t care that I was soaked and water was dripping from my hair into my face, or that the wind was forcing a chill over every inch of my exposed—and wet—skin. I just wanted to get to my mate as soon as possible.
But this couldn’t be helped. The storm was absolutely too thick and treacherous to fly through, and I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of triggering the explosives in a lightning strike mid-flight. I would just have to suck it up and wait it out.
My mother used to always tell me as a child, “Patience is a virtue,” and with Arthur as my father, I didn’t have a choice but to adopt that virtue. Since I had met Arya, patience had been harder and harder to come by.
Peters leaned against the tree right beside me, his arm pressing up against mine. I slowly turned my head to look at him, and the suggestive heat in his brown eyes sent a slimy shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the biting wind.
I sidestepped away from him, then rounded the tree trunk to where Char was sitting on an unearthed knotted root, hugging herself against the cold. She scooted over when she saw me, leaving just enough room for half of my butt to sit on, and I gratefully accepted.
“How long do you think until the storm clears?” I asked low enough for just her to hear me.
She shook her head and looked up into the branches that only partially shielded us from the falling torrent of rain. “I don’t know. An hour, at least.”
I growled in my throat, frustration flaring in my chest.
“Hey, it’s fine,” she said. “We’ll still get there with plenty of daylight to spare. This won’t set us back too much.”
“And if the storm rages all night?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the irritation from my tone.
She shrugged. “Then we’ll just push the attack to the next day. It’s all we can do if we want the mission to succeed.”
I nodded, although I didn’t like the sound of any of that. As much as I had hated the imprint for so long, I missed it so much now. At least before, I would’ve been able to sense if Arya was in danger, if she was being hurt. Without it, I had no idea what she was going through, and the mystery of it was a plaguing anxiety that never left me.
I closed my eyes to will those fears away. I needed a distraction. Anything.
I looked up and around at my fellow teammates. Peters sat down beside Tekashi on the damp ground where she was hugging her pack against her, again getting close enough for her thigh to brush against hers. Without a word, she scooted to the side. After a minute or two, Peters scooted closer, and Tekashi climbed to her feet and walked to the other side of the tree.
“What’s the story with…” I whispered to Char, tipping my head toward Peters.
She grimaced. “Yeah. He’s creepy but mostly harmless. He’s only been reprimanded once for sexual harassment.”
“ Only once?” I asked, my gut knotting with disgust. “Isn’t that enough? What did he do?”
She inclined her head closer, and I did the same so that I could hear her over the patter of rain that surrounded us in stereo. “Apparently, he inappropriately touched a senior officer while she was in her mao form.”
I balked, cocking my head. “Wait, in her mao form?”
She nodded. “I think he’s got a thing for shifters. You know, in their creature form.”
The knot in my stomach clenched even tighter, threatening to expel the early dinner I had before we left. So it wasn’t my imagination that he was grinding into me.
“Do me a favor?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she replied.
I looked into her eyes, expressing as much of my desperation as I could through our shared gaze. “Don’t pair me with Peters again when the rain stops.”