Secrets in Smoke by Ashe Moon
1
Rainor
The soft lightfrom the overhead gas lamp lit the page of the book I had open on my chest, an old chronicle of the days when humans and dragons formed flights and took each other as mates. A time so long past that most dragons didn’t remember how it’d been, and most humans would’ve found it too shocking to believe. I was interested in that period. I wanted to know how humans managed in dragon flights, because it was hard to see what they had to contribute that we didn’t already excel at. Were those humans back then different because they’d been raised with dragons? Or were they just different? More magic in their blood than the men today? I knew few exceptional humans these days: Grayson, who Altair had taken as his mate. And, of course, Dalia.
The thudding of tiny feet announced her arrival, and she squealed and threw herself onto my chest, setting the hammock swaying and knocking the book to the floor. The two-year-old flopped up and down on me like I was a giant pillow and shrieked in my face.
“Uncle RAINOR!”
Dalia was an obvious exception to the human rule. She was Grayson’s baby and had been adopted into the flight when Altair had taken him as a mate, so she was a daughter to all of us. She was turning out to be very bright, and I hoped she would be able to learn dragon ways even though she didn’t have dragon blood.
“What are you up to, kid?” I said. “Are you getting in trouble?”
“I’m hiding.”
I heard Altair walking up the stairs to the common area where I was lounging. “Dalia! Bath!” he shouted, and his exhaustion was obvious. She squealed again, rolled off my chest, and toddled down the hall. Altair stomped past me, and I lay still in the hammock and listened with amusement. Dalia shrieked with laughter and a moment later he came stomping back the way he came with her tucked underneath his arm, wriggling like a fish trying to escape.
Grayson was out taking care of errands, which put Altair in charge of Dalia, and even though he’d learned a lot about how to be a father during her infancy, she’d become an entirely different handful as a two-year-old. Both Delos, the third alpha of our flight, and I did what we could to help, but Altair being Altair saw her as his ultimate responsibility when Grayson was away and refused our assistance.
And I wasn’t going to complain. I was more than happy to lend a hand, but I was perfectly fine with being the fun uncle to play with rather than the one chasing her down for her bath, and all the other less entertaining moments of parenthood the two of them struggled with. There were some things that no book could teach, and I was content with my station in life. I didn’t need a mate of my own. Everything I had now was far more than I could’ve ever expected just over a decade ago, and there was nothing else I could want. I had a mission and a purpose these days, to protect my family and this town of Old Shore Port.
I scooped the book off the floor and put it back on the shelf. My collection of books had miraculously been untouched in the Marro incident two years ago when a rogue dragon had nearly torched the entire town and burned down part of the station. I’d been lucky. Delos’s room had gotten torched through and nearly all of his plants had died, and all of his alchemy and chemistry equipment had to be replaced. Since then, the station had been renovated and repaired with extra space for our growing flight. Delos had taken to keeping his room icy cold with only winter-hardy plants as decoration, with the excuse that if we ever caught fire again, the ice magic would at least keep his space from burning first.
The roof rumbled, a sign that he’d come in for a landing from his routine patrol. Then, the loud clang of the alarm bell filled the air. I threw myself out of the hammock and bolted for the stairs to the watchtower. Delos shouted through the trapdoor, “Fire in the north factory district! A steam engine exploded!”
The sudden noise sent our station cat Soot scrambling out from wherever he’d been sleeping, and he darted up to the watchtower like he was going to join us on the mission.
Altair burst out from the bathroom on the first floor, Dalia wriggling in his arms, her head covered in a puff of soap. “Gods be damned,” he said. “Grayson isn’t back yet!”
“Then you’ll have to take her with us,” I called down to him from the railing.
“Grayson would kill me!”
“Kill me!” Dalia repeated, laughing and flinging soap everywhere.
“I’ll have to stay behind,” said Altair, pained. “I’ll fly to find Grayson and meet with you as soon as I can.”
Each of us played a key role in the fire flight, and without Altair’s keen heat vision, it would be harder to determine if and how many people might be inside a building before Delos blanketed it with ice. As a fellow fire dragon, I could see heat auras, too, but my strength was in my size and the thick skin that could protect us from very high temperatures. It would be a struggle to shift roles without Altair there if we needed him, but there was no time to think about it. I nodded to him and then came up onto the watchtower, where Delos was waiting on the perch in his dragon form. Soot watched us from the ledge, his green eyes glinting.
“Altair isn’t coming,” I said.
“What?”
“Dalia. He can’t bring her.”
“Shit. I sometimes forget she’s a human. No choice.”
I nodded and we leaped from the perch. I shifted into my dragon form in mid-air, my bones and muscles rapidly expanding and contorting until I was three times my human size, and my wings filled with the updraft and carried me into the dusky sky. Behind me, the sharp cliffs dropped down to a sea that caught the light of a rising moon, and in front of me, Old Shore Port went until the Ivilirst Forest in the north. Our town was not large compared to the cities beyond the mountains, or at least that’s what books showed and what others said who had been to those far places. I hadn’t—I’d been born here and had spent my whole thirty years here, and it was the same for most who lived in Old Shore Port, human and dragon.
The fire was visible from the air, gray smoke rising next to the white trails of steam from the factory buildings. As we got closer I could see that the fire had engulfed the iron engine used for crushing rocks from the nearby mine, and had spread to a small building.
“The Watch is there,” Delos said, speaking of the human organization whose efforts to secure the town had always been less than impressive. “Their response time is improving.”
I snorted. “Response time means nothing if all they do is stand around and stare at the flames like a campfire.”
When we swooped in, we found the officers of the Watch had cleared out the affected building and its surroundings and were heaving buckets of water onto the fire. It was more than I expected but only barely enough to keep it from spreading much further. Once again, it was up to us to do the heavy lifting. One officer got too close to the blaze and the flames jumped to his uniform, and he screamed and ran back and forth slapping at himself to put it out. I landed quickly and flapped my wings to roll a heavy torrent of wind over him, knocking him to the ground and putting the fire out.
“The fire flight is here,” they chattered.
“Who’s in charge?” I demanded. In dragon form, my voice was loud enough to vibrate stone, and the humans shrunk back in pathetic reaction. Delos circled above the fire, waiting for me to give him the all-clear. “Is the building secure?”
“There was no one inside.” I turned and saw Thomas Everheart, the captain of the Watch, walking towards me. When I looked at him he staggered slightly, like he’d caught his foot on a rock. So many years he’d been working around me and he still was not used to my dragon form.
“Thomas,” I said. “I’m surprised you got here before us. It’s too bad the Watch still can’t handle a fire on their own.”
“Where’s Altair?” he asked, his blue eyes flashing up at me with irritation.
I probably took too much pleasure in giving him shit. He was too easy to tease, always so serious. If Thomas were an omega, I’d probably find him adorable.
“What?” I said, feigning hurt. “You don’t want to talk to me? Are you scared?”
“Altair is easier to talk to,” he grumbled.
“Altair had to stay at the station with Dalia.” I scanned the burning building with my heat vision. It was empty like they’d said, so I sounded a clipped roar to signal Delos to do his thing. He hovered where he was and unleashed a powerful breath that covered the building in ice and immediately suffocated the majority of the flames, turning them into a massive plume of white steam. The officers of the Watch doused the remaining embers with their pathetic buckets, and afterward, they gathered around the building trying to figure out what to do next while workers from the factory gawked.
“We did have things under control, you know,” Thomas said.
“It sure didn’t look like it.”
“Give us a break,” he said angrily. “My men are out here risking their safety and doing the best they can. We don’t have the luxury of fire resistance and ice breath, but we make do.”
I knew I’d gone a bit too far. I transformed back to human form to get on his level—even though I was still more than two heads taller than him and could probably perch him on my forearm like a bird—and looked him in his eyes. He glared back at me, and I kept my apologies to myself.
“It seems like we’re never going to see eye to eye,” I said. “Even if you grow a foot taller.”
Thomas huffed and turned to walk away from me.
“Hey,” I called after. “I was kidding, you know? Lighten up.”
He held his middle finger up and returned to his men. I shrugged and, with a running start, shifted and took flight. As I was beating my wings to catch the air, I guided one well-aimed blast of wind at Thomas and sent him stumbling to the side, his hair frothed into a wild mess. He fumed at me and I laughed as I joined Delos.
“Thomas really can’t stand you,” he said.
“Nah, he loves me,” I replied with a laugh.
“I don’t understand your fascination with him. You go after him like a schoolboy teasing the one he likes.”
I laughed again. “I go after him because he’s much too easy a target.”
Delos was a dragon of few words, true to the icy personality of most cold drakes, and he said nothing back to me. We climbed higher into the sky, and I took one more glance behind me and could make out Thomas’s form as he rode away from the scene on horseback with the other officers of the Watch following behind. For as much shit as I gave that man, I didn’t dislike him. He frustrated me at times, yes, but I knew he had noble intentions and his dedication to his work was as strong as ours. He’d proved himself a friend of the flight two years ago, during the Marro incident. But I couldn’t help myself. I probably would tease him until the end of time.
“It’s Altair,” Delos said, and I looked forward and saw him flying towards us.
“It’s been handled?” he said when we met.
“No one hurt, no one in need of rescue, and the fire was easily extinguished,” I answered. “And you won’t believe this: The Watch had gotten there first. Thomas was there. He wasn’t pleased to have to talk to me in your stead.”
“I wonder why,” said Altair.
We flew in silence in the direction of the station, and I could tell that Altair was bothered, not because of any expression on his face but because of the bond we shared as flight mates.
“You’re frustrated,” I said. “You feel like you weren’t there to have our backs. Don’t worry, Altair. There’s no fault here, you had to take care of Dalia, and we can’t expect Grayson to never leave the station.”
“I know. But if the fire were worse and there were people inside and you needed my help… I need to be there. And things are only going to get more difficult.”
“Dalia is becoming more of a handful,” Delos said.
“She’s reaching a defiant age. But…” Altair paused. “There’s something else.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, it’s good news. But it’s going to mean we’ll need to figure out a solution to this situation.”
“Okay… Are you going to tell us what it is?” Delos said.
“Better to save it until we get back to the station. It’s not entirely my news to share.”
Delos and I exchanged a curious glance.
When we returned to the station, Grayson was waiting for us downstairs. He’d put Dalia to bed and tidied up the toys she’d scattered around the floor before her bath. He rose to meet us and immediately began to apologize.
“None of us are blaming you,” said Altair.
“Indeed,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
“However,” Altair went on, “like I said, we’re going to have to change things so that we don’t all need to be present during missions.”
“Delos will always need to be,” I said. “And to only have one fire-breather assisting is dangerous. We won’t always be as lucky as today. So, what can we do?”
“I don’t like this,” Grayson said. “I don’t want to be a burden on anyone, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“You’re not burdening anyone,” Delos said.
“I haven’t exactly been able to contribute much to the flight,” he said regretfully. “I have my hands full with Dalia.”
Altair took Grayson’s hands and spoke to him in a low, reassuring voice full of love. “Two years and you still feel like you need to prove your value. You are a member of this flight. You take care of us and you take care of our daughter. There’s nothing else you need to do.”
Delos and I both nodded in agreement. “When we accepted you as a flight mate, that was a life bond,” I said. “You know we care deeply for you.”
Grayson smiled. “I know. Sometimes I forget. It can be difficult as a human to fully comprehend the flight dynamic. I guess I’m still getting used to it. But I can’t help but want to say I should do more so that the three of you can work unhindered as a team.”
“The reality is that times like this are bound to happen,” Delos said. “It can’t be helped. Even if you try to always be at the station.”
“And it’s only going to become more difficult,” Altair said.
“With Dalia getting older, yes,” I said. “Our expertise is in fires, not children. We can tame the wildest blaze, but now that she’s gotten the use of her legs… I guess I should be thankful she doesn’t have wings.”
“Well,” Grayson said. “There’s that, but there’s something else, too.”
A smile crossed Altair’s face like he knew a secret that he couldn’t wait for everyone else to hear. He and Grayson looked at each other, and Grayson laughed.
“I’m pregnant,” he said.
“What?” I had to pick my jaw off the floor. Delos’s eyes were wide.
“I’m pregnant,” Grayson repeated, grinning. “Altair and I—and us—we’re going to have another baby. A half-dragon.”
Shock turned to joy and I threw my arms around Grayson and the others, pulling the three of them against my chest. Even Delos was laughing, and his cool expression had been temporarily thawed with rosy cheeks.
“By the Gods,” I murmured. “A new baby. Pregnant. Yeah, Altair, you’re right. We’re going to need to figure something out.”
“I think I know what can be done,” he said. “And you’re the dragon who can make it happen.”
He had a look in his eye, the one he always got when coming up with his wild plans, and I raised an eyebrow and had a weird feeling I wasn’t exactly going to enjoy what he had to say.
