Chapter Five
Theo
This limbo position with my mate sucked. It crawled up suck mountain and made camp. I hated every ounce of it. My dragon hated it. I hated that he hated it.
More than that, I didn’t know what to do about it.
Brent apologized for leaving me high and dry that morning but then, when I tried to move forward, he said he wasn’t ready for anything serious.
I wanted everything serious with him. Mating. Marking. Living together. Kids. Family. All the seriousness.
It was better when I thought he broke my heart. Which he did. But now? Being stuck, not knowing? The worst.
“What’s got you so distracted?” Darris, one of the other firefighters, asked me.
We were cleaning up the truck in the driveway, and I’d been holding the brush and not scrubbing for who knew how long.
The others had already rinsed the truck off and almost finished drying it.
And here I was, standing like a useless lump.
Darris was human, so I couldn’t really explain to him that I was having a mating dilemma.
“Just thinking about someone.”
He chuckled. “I’d know that look anywhere.”
Shaking my head, I put up the brush and began to help. “That obvious?”
He nodded. “Anything you want to talk about?”
My inner dragon feels like he’s been twice rejected by his fated mate?
“No. Just trying to come up with a plan. I have no clue how to romance someone who seems like they want nothing serious.”
“And you want it to be serious?”
I paused, thinking about the answer. No. There was no thinking about it. I wanted Brent. Not just to date or to court. I wanted him forever. That was the thing about shifters but especially dragons. We knew what we wanted and we wanted it now.
Three times as much when it was our mate.
Possessive creature I had inside me.
“Yes. I do. Very much.”
Darris pushed my shoulder with his. “Then you have to be patient. I’ve dated this kind of omega. If you push them, they back away even further. Be yourself. Be patient. The thing is, once that type falls, they fall hard and fast.”
His last word was buried under a blaring alarm. A fire. After gearing up, we got on the truck and headed out in a matter of seconds.
The fire was at a residence, we learned on the way.
It wasn’t until we got there that we realized how dangerous this fire was.
An older home. Within minutes, flames licked at the sky and had nearly consumed the entire building.
Older homes were made of more wood, dry wood, and it acted like fuel, taking over quickly.
Thank goodness the elderly owner was safe in the care of her neighbor across the street. No matter how many years I’d been a firefighter, I was happily surprised at the kindness of strangers and neighbors in times like these.
Taking the captain’s orders, I assisted while some of the other seasoned firefighters did what they could from a distance. The house was engulfed in flames and, other than stop the fire from spreading, nothing that could be done. We watched as the roof collapsed and the poor older woman sobbed.
Parts of this job were heartbreaking at times. While I was assisting with the hoses, I noticed a huge tank on the ground.
Shit! A propane tank.
I abandoned my post and sprinted to the area between the structure and the propane tank intended to fuel the house for the winter. If this blew up, the house would be the least of anyone’s worries.
Calling on my dragon, I asked him to use his breath, not his fire, to push the fire at the corner of the house away from the tank.
“The tank!” Finally, someone else noticed it. “Cut the gas!”
While they were working on this, I hid, just out of sight from the others. They didn’t know about my dragon. Our station was a mix of shifters and humans, so we often kept our animals to ourselves.
Especially me. Dragons weren’t exactly welcome in the fire station.
But mine had a special gift. He could cool fires down.
And I could burn things as long as there was an existing fire to borrow from.
His breath was cold enough to freeze anything within reach.
And while freezing this house would be a dead giveaway, I could use some cool breath to make sure the fires didn’t reach the propane tank.
My dragon turned down the temperature of the fire, not enough to be noticeable but enough to keep everyone safe.
I’d blown one last breath on the fire after hearing the gas had been turned off. We were out of danger.
“Whoa!” Darris said. He was out of breath from running over. “You…you had no water. How did you…”
I shrugged. Darris was human. I had to cover for myself. “I don’t know. The fire cooled off over here. Maybe the center was on the other side of the house. I’m just glad it didn’t reach the propane tank.”
Darris looked at the house and to me and back again. “Huh. That was some luck.”
“Yeah. Let’s go help the others.”
While I walked away, I looked over my shoulder. Darris was stumped, but the way he looked at me…I might have some questions to answer later from my friend.