Secrets in Smoke by Ashe Moon
2
Thomas
I checkedmy uniform in the mirror, smoothing the burgundy fabric across my chest, and fastened the silver triquetra pin of captainship to my collar. I polished it with my palm and took a second to admire it. I’d worked damn hard to become Captain Palebridge’s successor, to make sure I was the one who took on the mantle when he died. I’d fought through odds and obstacles taller than anyone could ever know. In fact, there was only one person alive who did, and she was knocking on my door.
Castelle, my second in command and most trusted friend, called, “Sir, permission to come in?”
“Come in,” I said, and she entered my room.
I kept my residence at the Watch headquarters, along with Castelle and a rotating crew of about thirty men, with around seventy others spread out through Old Shore Port. I lived and breathed my work, only resting for sleep.
“Sir,” she said, “you have a visitor.”
Her voice wavered slightly and I thought I knew why. “A dragon?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it one of the fire flight?”
“Rainor,” she replied stiffly. She thought I wasn’t going to like hearing his name, and she was right. My eye twitched.
“Rainor,” I muttered. “Always Rainor.”
“Will you be ready for him? Do you want me to tell him you’re busy?”
“No, he wouldn’t leave me alone even if I was. But hold on. My scent mask. Can you check me?”
From a locked drawer, I got out a small glass bottle filled with a rose-colored liquid. It was probably the most important thing I owned, the most precious. I dabbed a small amount of the liquid onto my fingers and rubbed it onto the scent glands on my neck, and then turned to Castelle.
She leaned in and sniffed. “Not a trace of omega.”
I nodded and put the bottle away. “Thanks,” I said. “Alright, let’s go see what the brute wants.”
Castelle had been with me almost since the beginning. We’d come up through the ranks together and had grown close as siblings. I trusted her with my life and, most importantly, my biggest secret: I was not an alpha.
Omegas, while not strictly prohibited from being in the Watch, could never climb past clerk, or assistant, or someone who helped old ladies cross the street and find their way to the market, and my father never missed an opportunity to remind me of this fact. “An omega is only worth as much as the child he can produce,” was what he used to always tell me. Omegas never left the ground.
So, I wanted to climb. I wanted to get to a place only the top alphas could reach, and that was captain of the Watch. And I was willing to change myself to make it happen. To hide my truth. I’d sacrificed relationships, never allowing myself to get close to anyone except Castelle. I’d given up everything to get to where I was. But the frustrating thing? Despite everything I did, all the changes I’d made to the Watch when I’d taken over, all the blood, sweat, and tears I’d committed… I could never be as good as the fire flight.
I hated to admit it to myself and I never did out loud, but it seemed like the Watch would always be behind the dragons. I would hate them if I didn’t respect them so much. I wanted to be as good as they were, but I was only human; no powers, no flight, and it seemed like nothing I could do could bring the Watch to their level. Even when we beat them to the scene, all we could do was wait for them to arrive.
Castelle and I left my room and made our way through the headquarters down to the hall where Rainor was waiting. Word had gotten around that he was there, and I heard the officers whispering about it. The presence of a dragon of the fire flight always got the men talking, a mixture of fear, awe, and respect. Most humans spent their childhoods hearing terrifying stories of dragons and most didn’t want anything to do with them if they could help it, but every officer of the Watch knew the three dragons of the fire flight and what they did for Old Shore Port. Still, only a small number of people dared to talk to them whenever they showed up at headquarters. Maybe it was human instinct, the natural reaction to knowing a man could turn into a fifteen-foot-tall dragon in the blink of an eye, and my heart started thumping hard the closer I got to the hall. Or maybe it was because I knew Rainor was there. Why couldn’t it have been Altair? Altair was easy to talk to. Altair was reasonable. He didn’t incessantly insult me like Rainor always did. And Rainor was so massive, it felt like I was talking to a mountain.
There he was, standing impatiently with his arms folded across a chest as broad as boulders, his mahogany hair catching the sunlight in ways that made it look like it was aflame. Officers working nearby snuck glances at him, and when he caught their eye, he gave them a sharp glare that made them jolt in surprise and turn away. I sighed quietly. These were the alphas I was working with, the men who had joined the Watch to keep order in our home. But Old Shore Port was a small town, tucked away on the coast. The people here were not especially brave or experienced with things beyond the walls of their gardens, and the dragons who lived here kept to themselves and were hardly seen in their true forms except by those who worked alongside them in the mines or factories. It was the fire flight that was the most open with their forms—but even then, most people only saw them from a distance, flying through the air on their patrols.
Rainor heard me coming and turned around, and I fought the urge to flinch. I could tell Castelle was doing the same thing—she held herself stiff and rigid like she was facing down a bear that might lash out at any second.
“Aw, you didn’t have to get all cleaned up just for me, Thomas,” Rainor said. “How was your beauty sleep?”
“Have you added sleeping to your list of things to criticize me for?” I asked. “Last time I checked, even dragons need to close their eyes once in a while. Now, what do you need, Rainor? Or have you run out of things to do and are here just to annoy me?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I heard Castelle whisper to herself.
“As much as I love to annoy you, I wouldn’t waste my day coming to see you just for that,” he said.
“And, somehow, you always seem to turn up to laugh at me whenever I make a misstep. It’s almost as if you follow me around all day. I can see your shadow when you’re flying overhead, you know?”
The smirk slid off his face and he frowned. “It’s called a patrol. Watching the town. You should try it, it might make you more effective. I’m not following you, why would I do that?”
“Because you love seeing when I screw up.”
He shrugged, and the smirk was back. “Well, you do have talent in it.”
Castelle stepped forward, fuming. “You watch your mouth. Dragonfire be damned, I won’t stand for you talking that way to the Captain, or about the Watch. Let me remind you, we work toward the same goals.”
Rainor laughed. “Relax. You two are too easy to bother. And I wouldn’t set you on fire. No point, it would just be more work for me in the end. But I apologize anyway. You should know I’m an asshole by now. Anyway, speaking of ‘same goals,’ that’s why I’m here. Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?”
“This way,” I said sharply and moved past him.
Castelle was right behind me and she cut him off, nearly checking him in the chest with her shoulder. He grinned and held up his hands like he was avoiding touching something about to explode and trailed a few steps after us.
“I can take it from here,” I said to Castelle.
“I hate to leave you alone with him without backup,” she said in a low voice.
“Castelle,” I said with a tinge of admonishment in my voice. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I apologize.” And, after shooting a hot glare at Rainor, she peeled away from us.
A slow tension began to build inside of me, the same fear I had to fight every time I was alone with any alpha. Though my scent mask had never failed to hide my secret, there would always be a low-lying dread in the pit of my stomach, the worry of being found out. I’d gotten used to it, but it didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.
I took a few deep breaths and discreetly rubbed my palms against my pants. I’d never spent much time entirely alone with any dragon. And for as many books as I’d read about his kind, I wasn’t sure of the extent of their abilities. They could see a man’s body heat through a wall, and I’d read they could smell a small fire from miles away. Would he be able to smell me? I told myself that I was overthinking things—even though we’d never been alone together, I’d dealt with the fire flight plenty of times and never had a problem.
“You’re sweating,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of me, Thomas? I thought you were used to us dragons by now.”
“I know,” I said. “Turns out it’s a natural human reaction to giant monsters.”
“Monsters? I don’t look any different from you in human form.”
I looked up at him and huffed. “Rainor, any taller and you’d hit your head against the doorframe. Shit, I could fit myself entirely inside of you and have room to move around.”
“Please, never say that again,” he said.
We reached the empty room the Watch used for planning and coordination. In the center of the room was a long table with a map of Old Shore Port and the surrounding region. Along two of the walls were a set of chairs and a shelf filled with reference and research material: books, scrolls, and old maps. The far wall had a window with a view of the gravel field next to headquarters where we ran exercises and trained new volunteers.
Rainor walked over to the shelf and ran his finger along the spines of the books. “This is a good collection,” he said. “Lore, history, geography… I’m surprised the Watch keeps these things here.”
“I had them brought from the archive when I became captain,” I said. “I admit, if there’s one thing we could do better on, it’s getting more of my officers to do their reading.”
“There’s a lot of other things you could do better on.”
“Yeah, alright. When it comes to fighting fires, we’re not going to be as good as you are.”
Rainor flipped through a book before placing it back onto the shelf. It looked tiny in his hand. “And that’s why I’m here,” he said, and his tone changed. For maybe the first time in any of our interactions, Rainor spoke to me with complete earnestness. “The fire flight has come to a point where we’ve realized that we can’t do this on our own anymore. We need help. Grayson is pregnant again.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “That's great news.”
I felt a strange sensation spread through my body, something that took me by surprise. It was like a quiet ache that started deep inside of my stomach, an empty feeling, and it was met by heaviness in my heart. It came from the thought of being pregnant and knowing I never would be. It wasn’t that I even wanted to have a child. Quite the opposite; I already had an entire town as my responsibility. But I could never have a mate, and although I’d made up my mind about that a long time ago when I’d first started on this path, that feeling of melancholy had come creeping back, like a chronic pain you only thought you’d managed to get rid of.
“Well, the Watch will continue to help as we do. We might not be as fast or effective at fighting fires, but we’ll manage.”
“I don’t say this to insult, but you know the Watch can’t manage,” Rainor said. “Even with the horse-drawn water trucks, the Watch struggles to control heavy blazes. It’s why Altair formed the flight. You don’t have the tools or the training to keep this town safe from fire.”
His words stung me, and as much as I hated to admit it out loud to him, he was right. “So, what are you suggesting?”
He pulled out a small glass ball from inside his coat with a corked top and shook it lightly back and forth. The liquid inside swirled and gave off a faint blue glow, like a light shining through dense ice. He held it up between his finger and thumb so I could see it.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Dragon ice,” he said. “Delos formulated it. Come here. It’s too dangerous to let you handle it without explaining how it works.”
I went over to his side and leaned in to look, all of my trepidation about him silenced by the curiosity I felt about the sparkling ball. It reminded me of the way the waves glowed a bright blue at certain times of the year, beautiful and strange to look at. He uncorked the bottle and poured a small amount of the liquid onto the table, and immediately a frosty white plume expanded outwards across the wood. I heard two small pops, and then a louder one, and I jerked back in surprise when a crack split across a frozen spot on the wood. The cold continued to spread and I realized it was freezing straight through the thing.
“Hey, hey, hey. Is it going to turn the entire table into ice?”
Rainor pressed his fingertip next to the frost and immediately it thawed out. Little dew droplets gathered along the surface where the ice had spread. The wood rippled and warped.
“Grayson used these before,” I said, remembering what I’d seen two years ago when the town had nearly been burnt down by an arsonist dragon. Grayson had managed to fight the fire in the station by himself, and now I finally understood how he’d done it. “Hey,” I said, suddenly realizing Rainor had just ruined our table. “Couldn’t you have done that to something else?” Irritated, I rubbed the ruined area with my palm.
“Got your attention?” he said. “Throw these onto a fire and you’ll have it out in seconds. Here.”
He corked the glass and put it into my hand. I gasped and nearly dropped it, expecting it to be freezing, but it was only slightly cold.
“Delos figured out how to alchemize a lot of them,” he went on. “If the Watch used these, then maybe you guys could keep up with us. Shit, maybe eventually you could handle some fires on your own.”
I bounced it on my palm, getting a feel for its weight. “This is amazing. Small, easy to use, and we wouldn’t have to rely on local wells or water carts. And—”
Damn my terrible coordination. I bounced the glass a little too hard and it spun in the air so that the protruding mouth bumped against the side of my hand. I fumbled to catch it, popping it back and forth between my hands, but missed it. Before it hit the floor and shattered, Rainor cursed and stepped in front of me, swinging his shoulder around so that his chest was in my face like a wall of muscle. I saw little blooms of frost where the liquid had splashed onto him, and they melted away into little puffs of steam. A radiant heat bloomed from his body, and for a moment it felt like I was standing next to a fireplace.
“I-I apologize,” I muttered, and he shook his head in frustration. The embarrassment burned as hot as he had, and it was a wonder how I managed to keep it from showing on my cheeks.
“A reminder that this stuff is dangerous,” he grunted. “Especially to human skin. Gods, it's a wonder you were able to become captain at all with how clumsy you are.”
I looked up at Rainor, angry in both embarrassment and insult. He was very close to me, and his eyes narrowed. He looked around and inhaled like he’d sensed something unusual in the air. My heart jumped and I quickly stepped away from him, unsure if I was imagining he could smell me or not. Either way, it passed and he crossed his arms over his chest.
“We’re not going to just give you these. It’d be an awful fucking idea. You’d probably end up causing more trouble than help. I wouldn’t want to find out you’d turned yourself into an ice sculpture.” Then he shrugged. “Although that would be kind of funny.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “Yes. We’ll need training.”
“Yup. And luckily for you, we’ll help you with that.”
“Great. So…Delos? He doesn’t seem like the teaching type.”
“No, not Delos,” Rainor said. “Can’t have a fire flight without an ice dragon.”
“Okay, then Altair. He’d make a great teacher.”
Rainor made a low displeased grumbling noise and scratched his head. “You think Altair has the time to spend training you guys? With a two-year-old and a pregnant mate?”
I sighed. “Oh, boy.”
“You’re never getting rid of me, Thomas,” he said, and he clapped me on the shoulder. I shrugged his hand away. “Trust me, coming out to train you and your boys is not my idea of a good time. But both of us need this. So, is there a consensus?”
He held out his hand, and I begrudgingly shook it.
After Rainor had left, I met with Castelle and told her about the situation. She was not happy. Furious, actually.
“Sir! I can deal with that dragon from a distance, but to have him here training us? Training you? You’re our captain! You don’t need training.”
“Castelle, you’re the only person I will say this out loud to, but we need his help.”
“We’re perfectly capable,” she said. “We don’t need a dragon to show us how to do our job.”
“If we’re going to fight fires as well as they do, we’re going to need a dragon to help us. Honestly, it’s been something I’ve been thinking about asking them for a while. The truth is that we do need a dragon to show us how to do it. Trust me, I hate it as much as you do. But you know me, and you know where I’ve come from to get here. I’m going to prove that I’m worth something.”
Frowning, she nodded. I could tell that she had more to say about it, but she kept it to herself.
“The mask is still working, right?” I said. “You can’t smell anything?”
She sniffed the air. “No. Why? What happened?”
In my mind, I saw Rainor’s face when I’d been close to him. Had he noticed something, or was I just paranoid?
“Nothing,” I said. “Just wondering. I get worried about it sometimes.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine the stress of it. I wish you didn’t have to hide it. I mean, maybe—”
“I know what you’re going to say. I have to keep it hidden. Maybe in a perfect world, an omega could captain the Watch, but not in this world. Nobody would respect me. Not a single alpha would listen to my command.”
“I would, sir,” she said, and I laughed.
“Thanks, Castelle. Well, I think I’d better start planning for our guest. Rainor will be here tomorrow to train me first. The Gods know I’m going to need as much time as possible to prepare myself to deal with his shit.”
