Page 28 of Nine-Tenths

Chapter Twenty-Two

M y phone rings as I’m opening my front door. I drop it in my eagerness, cursing and hoping they don’t hang up.

"You seriously don't know when to quit, do you?" the voice from earlier asks, when I finally fumble my phone up to my ear.

"Is he really okay?" I ask, instead of answering. Besides, what would I say? That's what my therapist says ? Yeah, not exactly the first impression I want to make. "Is he okay ?"

"He's fine."

"Where has he been?" I stalk into the kitchen, find a bottle of whiskey, and pull the cork with my teeth like a TV villain. I don't give a fuck that it's still early afternoon. "Did they hurt him?"

She snorts. "They don't have to beat the shit out of him to hurt him. That's something you should know. If you're serious."

"Of course I'm serious!" I take a swig. "Uh… what am I serious about?"

"Well shit. There's two of you," she groans. "The pin, you dipshit."

I set down the whiskey long enough to fumble the pin into my palm. "What about it?"

There's a groan, loud and long, from the other side of the phone. It carries some of the rough growl that only homo draconis can make.

"Wait," I say. "Are you… uh… are you…" I rifle through my brain for the name of the only friend that Dav has ever mentioned. "Onatah?"

"Aren't you the clever boy."

"You're the awesome sock lady."

"You know, I'm gonna accept that," Onatah says. "But only because you called me awesome."

"Dav hasn't told me much else about you. Except that your territories touch. Sorry, is that rude to say?"

"Nah, it's fine for a Dragon's Own."

I choke on whiskey. "Sorry?"

"Yeah, you just might be when this is all over. Listen, he's back, and he's sleeping right now. I'm gonna let him keep sleeping because fuck knows he needs it." I try not to think of torture chambers and deprivation pods. "So that gives you some time to sober up."

"Fuck you," I say, but in that heartfelt breathless way that means the opposite. "How did you know?" I set the whiskey back on the counter top, head starting to get light and shame prickling at the back of my neck.

"I know the sound of a cork coming out of a bottle."

"Uh. Okay. I can do that."

"I'll be there at four," Onatah says. "And this is significant, so wear something nice."

"Nice," I repeat. That blazer Rebekah picked out has seen the light more in the last two months than it ever did when we were together. But I don't have anything else. "See you soon," I try to tell Onatah, but she's already hung up.

I save her in my phone as Snap-Dragon.

Onatah shows up on a motherfucking motorcycle.

If I wasn't already in love with one dragon, I might have fallen head over heels for this one on the spot.

It's all I can do not to swoon when she swings one muscle-thick, denim-clad thigh over the saddle.

She pulls off her helmet, and a dark shining braid uncoils down her back.

Bone-bead earrings flash gold and cream in the streetlight.

The back of her leather jacket has been embroidered with a swirling, interconnected mass of animal motifs, picked out in beads that wink as she moves.

I've never seen a dragon who isn't beautiful in their own magnetic, not-quite-human way, and Onatah’s eyes are an arresting onyx, pools of deep space and starlight, striking against her bronze skin.

I had no idea that any Indigenous dragons still held Territory, and here's one who is not only Dav's neighbor, but enough of a friend to give him stupid novelty socks.

"Uh," I say. "I don't have a helmet."

She tosses me hers. I catch it on the first bounce.

"I don't need it." She brushes a hand over the top of her head, and what I took for rows of intricate braids turns out to be four thin, twisting horns that wrap from her forehead back across her skull.

That's so fucking cool.

I wonder if Dav has horns, and if he’s able to manifest them like he does his claws. I've had my hands in his hair enough to know that he doesn't wear them daily, but if they make him look as badass as Onatah…

…right, no.

My Dav is charming, fussy, curated, and kind. He's handsome. When he's upset, he’s intimidating and, I'm not gonna lie, sexy. But he is not, and will never be, badass .

While I was checking her out, she was returning the favor.

"Will I do?" I ask.

"You’re good but, yeah, that boy's got a type," Onatah chuckles as I clamber on the bike.

'A type' implies that Dav's dated before. There were people—humans? dragons?—before me. He's over two hundred years old. I shove down the bitterness that comes with remembering that Dav wasn't the one who told me so. Of course he's dated before.

Before I can indulge my curiosity about Dav’s ‘taste’, we’re speeding off into the sticky afternoon.

The ride is smooth, which I appreciate like whoa. Onatah doesn't seem like she needs to prove how macho she is with crazy stunts. Or maybe it's that she knows Dav will kill her if something happens.

A knot of emotion makes it hard to swallow—old grief, and giddy relief, anticipatory joy, and a simmering resentment I hadn't realized was still on low-heat in my veins.

Dav had kissed me like that in the Murder Basement, and then gone upstairs and left me there, literally in the dark, knowing full well that he intended to walk out of the door with Lt.

Gov. Jerkface. Onatah made it sound like he hadn't had a choice in staying away, but the point is: he went in the first place.

Calm and docile. Like a lamb to slaughter. Or a soldier obeying orders.

Marquess , I had learned in my panicked scan of Wikipedia, was a title given to those who presided over border territories on behalf of a monarch.

Military leaders granted land and titles, responsible for the safety of their March and tasked with being the first line of defense.

Dav had told me he was insignificant. But Marches are important.

And Marquessate of Niagara encompasses the whole peninsula.

Including where I live.

Including, that means, me.

And he'd never said.

He'd never used it.

He could have. He had every right to. I realize that now.

And he hadn't .

That's the important part.

He sat in that corner, nervous and patient, and hadn't been pushy or selfish.

Granted, I don't think either of us could have predicted a kitchen fire is what would have brought us together.

But I think we were already two proto-planets, just starting the slow dance of gravity that would lead to our inevitable fusion.

The fact that I had been excited, thinking that I'd run into Dav at the bar the night before the fire was proof that I had already been thinking about him that way.

The sudden, gut-dropping reminder that I'm in way over my head makes me tighten my grip on Onatah's waist. Man, I don't even know who Onatah is.

Do I have my arms currently wrapped around the waist of a princess?

Do her people ascribe to the colonizer hierarchy of royalty?

Is she a chieftain or a… fuck, should I bow or something when we get off the bike? Fuck.

Lost in my introspection, torn between excitement and lingering resentment, I miss when Onatah exits the highway.

Suddenly we’re bordered by fenced-in pastures, and hedges planted along the roadside to protect the delicate grape vines in the fields beyond them from the wind and exhaust. That smokey-warm scent that follows dragons like expensive cologne fills the helmet, but I can imagine the scent of the countryside in the glowing, humid late afternoon—barnyard, foliage, and the pungent scent of fallen fruit.

That's when we start skimming by the walls.

They're about three meters high, I'd guess, made of local golden sandstone, and heavily wreathed in trailing vines with bright trumpet-shaped orange flowers or little purple blossoms. There's no barbed wire, or spikes.

There's no need. The sheer solid gravity of the wall is a pretty solid 'go away' sign.

We stop in front of an ornate, art-nouveau style wrought-iron gate.

It wouldn't look out of place on the cover of a gothic romance novel.

I imagine leaning back against the iron to gasp for breath as I flee into a star-lit night, clad only in a windblown white nightgown. I giggle as Onatah drops the kickstand.

"Nerves," I lie when she cuts me a funny look.

Close-up, the swirls of the gate resolve themselves into grape vines and bunches of fruit, and a slit-eyed, content dragon winding his way bodily through the plants.

There are flowers around his ears, and his wings arch up to form peaked arches, the fingers of each wing descending to create the bars of the gate.

I wonder if it's an accurate portrait.

"How true are the stories?" I ask as I take off the helmet. I move to hand it back to Onatah, and she points at the seat, so I set it down there.

"What stories?" Onatah tilts her head to the side, earrings swaying, and it's the first time I've seen her move in a particularly reptilian way. It makes something in my chest quiver.

While Dav tries so hard to move, and blink, and breathe like a human, Onatah isn't even bothering. She's wearing skin, yeah, but she moves like a lizard. I can tell just by being near her that she's homo draconis . Like I could with Lt. Gov. Fuckstick.

How small does Dav crunch himself down every day, to suck that all in?

"I mean... the fairy tales, right? Shouldn't I have an enchanted sword if I'm going to break into a dragon's lair?"

"Going into battle, are you?" She's smirking.

"You know how he is. Shuts down. Shuts up."

"Stands at attention."

I shoot her a pair of finger-guns. "Exactly. Maybe I need a can-opener, instead."

Onatah laughs, hissingly sibilant and delighted. "Yeah, you'll be fine."

"I'm serious, though. Have you ever managed to get Dav to listen instead of just deciding what's best for everyone around him? This might be—I mean, he really is okay?"

"Yeah." Her face softens for a second, and then twists back into that amused sneer. "And to be clear, you're not the knight in this little drama."

"Oh, I'm not?"

"Honey, you're the princess."

"Fuck off."

"Gladly," she says, and mounts up.

"Whoa, no wait," I yelp and reach for her hand.

Onatah jerks away from my touch like its acid. There's no skin-to-skin contact, but she's still staring wide-eyed at my fingers. "That's a big no-no, princess."

"What?"

"Dav'll explain."

"Come with me," I say again. "I don't… I'm not scared, okay, I just don't know what I'm… please."

"I'm not going in," Onatah explains patiently. "Not without an explicit invitation to cross into his nesting grounds. Which he's never given."

"Fuck, man. Dragons," I blow out a sigh and shove my hands into my back pockets. "Why do you make everything so complicated?"

"It's you humans who make it hard to know where you stand with each other. You're weird."

I feel like sticking out my tongue at her, so I do.

She laughs. I take it as a good sign. "Go on. House is at the end of the walk."

She's roaring off down the road before I can say thank you.