Page 21 of Bartender Mate

That… thing… can’t be Argon, can it?

I watched in shocked awe as the huge reptile held its position over Last Chance Bar, beating almighty wings to hover gracefully in place. It was staring directly down at the Stellar Misfits–at one particular biker, in fact–as he let out an earth-shattering roar.

Zinc didn’t blink.

The power of that call, however, raced through my brain and lit up every primal spark in my being. My bowels shook. It felt as though the mighty creature was bellowing its prehistoric claim of these mountains to all who were gathered below.

The Stellar Misfits watched the monster in respectful silence.

Now that the fierce bellow had gone unchallenged, Argon’s bristling demeanor changed. The dragon began doing lazy loop-the-loops in the air, almost as though the prehistoric monster above us was throwing the metaphorical finger at the VP.

Whatever he thought of the display, Zinc’s carefully blank expression gave nothing away.

However, my former classmate was practically hopping from foot-to-foot in excitement by this point. “You hear that, Zinc?” Eden hollered as the VP kick-started his bike and his men did the same. “My dragon’s gonna kick your dragon’s mangey ass.”

Zinc’s lip curled up, whether in a sneer of derision or anticipation I couldn’t tell, but his reptilian gaze was locked onto the dragon still doing lazy acrobatics while it waited for the Stellar Misfits to get going. “Now,” Zinc murmured, his tone hushed and almost respectful. “We ride.”

The motorcycle club–including my purple-skinned hotties–rolled out of my parking lot, leaving an empty hole in my middle as that invisible band that had been connecting us was stretched past breaking point. I winced at the feeling of dislocation when it snapped, biting my tongue so I didn’t call out to bring them back.

“Yeah.” Eden bumped me in the shoulder as she passed in commiseration. “Stings like a bitch until it’s all shored up. You’ll get used to it. Or you won’t, and that’ll get your ass moving in the right direction. Either way, win-win, hey?”

A wave of dizziness hit me. Dragon. Argon could turn into a muthafucking dragon. And folks had been talking about witches and curses and...

“Hey, Sam?” I murmured, sagging against the door jamb again because my legs just wouldn’t hold me up anymore. “I think I hit my head harder than I thought. Either that, or I’m losing my marbles. You might wanna call Cobalt.”

8

Radon

Watching Quasar moon over our mate was almost too much to bear. No, not mate. Tess wouldn’t be our mate–wouldn’tearnthat venerable title–at least not inmyhead, until she accepted the bond. Something she was dead set against.

All evidence thus far pointed to the fact that she didn’t feel the same pull we felt to her. Or, if she did, then she had no intention of entertaining it. That woman was as prideful and thick-skulled as a true Drakon female. And, being human, Tess could hold out for the rest of her life being none-the-worse for it.

The stars might be gleefully fucking with the three of us–turning both our beasts and gravity inside out–but Tess seemed to be determined to continue on. Business as fucking usual. Caught up in her petty human concerns.

So, while Quasar waxed poetic about the different colors that shone in her hair, and how the purple matched each of our hides in different light, I shoved a hydro drill in between the deck plates of the upper most floor of our ship. I’d been tasked with stripping the bridge down to studs by our head mechanic, Bromine, so we could build our prefabricated temporary village in the woods around her bar.

Another thing the ungrateful human had made her views crystal clear on.

Tess was not interested in being under the wing of our Wyer’s generous protection.

The feeling of being unwanted crept under my skin, souring every aspect of my mood.

I wasn’t sure what I had envisioned when our mating comet had pointed us squarely at Earth in search of our final mate but it sure hadn’t been this rude awakening.

In truth, I couldn’t envision much of anything that day, because the magitech confirmation plagued me. An unwelcome revelation which had plunged my future straight back into the black hole of uncertainty, one I’d barely escaped from with my life the last time I’d circled that dead star. Now the bone-crushing force of fate was back, sucking me and my fierce mates straight into its lethal hold once more.

I’d been secretly hoping for a different outcome. One where the mating comet remained grounded on Drakonis, proving once and for all that the three of us were enough. However, according to the wisdom of the stars, there was a fourth intended mate required to complete our bond. What was worse, now that we were aware of it, our beasts would either wither and die without that connection, or go on a rampage fit to destroy this brave new world and everything we were trying to achieve as a colony. Fucking meddling stars.

The unsettling knowledge that our survival was literally in another’s hands had formed a dead-weight deep in my gut, weighing my beast down in flight.

Humans, it seemed, were blissfully unaware of fate. They knew nothing of what lay beyond their inconsequential solar system, huddled out here on the back edge of the galaxy.

“Expect growing pains.” Our brusk advisors had repeated that stupid phrase so often that it ceased to have meaning and had my ears wanting to melt from my very skull. Their tiresome briefings had been crammed into any available space in our schedules in between the far more important tasks leading up to our departure. “You will have to adapt to the inhabitants' ways, not expect them to adapt to ours. Or you’ll risk exposure of our kind and attract an even greater pressure for survival than the deadly Drakon Hunters can provide. The destabilization of Earth’s status quo.”

We had been warned of this truth, time and again, as we prepared for our mission. Yet still, I had followed my mates onto an experimental ship, on a mission that was always going to be a one way ticket, landing us here on Earth, where our mate was supposed to do… What? Fall into our laps? Be chomping at the bit for us to knot her and bond her? It was childish to have thought that would be the outcome. And yet, that was exactly what I had let my mates convince me would happen.

A part of me had always known this inconvenient truth.

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