A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania 2)

He nodded, which, given the fact that he was smashing his face against mine, caused me to nod too. “I understand,” he said. “Now repeat after me. I am Sam of Wilds.”

“I am Sam of Wilds.”

“Not some punk-ass bitch.”

“Not some punk-ass bitch.”

“Gary is awesome.”

“Gary is awesome—oh godsdammit.”

Gary preened as he took a step back. “Thank you. It’s about time I get the recognition I so obviously deserve. Tiggy, oh Tiggy, please take note of this date. The apprentice to the King’s Wizard has declared me awesome.”

Tiggy tapped the side of his head and winked at Gary. “Noted.”

“Good,” Gary said. “Now that that’s out of the way—” He turned and snarled at me, eyes blazing.

“Eep!” I said, because even though it was scary, it was still a scary unicorn, and I couldn’t help but fall in love just a little bit more.

“If you ever lock yourself in a room like a spoiled brat again, I will track down my horn, go on a quest to get said horn, defeat whatever creature has the horn, restore it to its rightful place atop my head, come back to the City of Lockes, march in a parade in my honor, and then come up to your room and gore you to death. Do you understand?”

“Your eyelashes are made of stars,” I whispered reverently.

“I know,” he hissed angrily. “It’s because I’m beautiful. Now are we clear?”

“I understand,” I said, because I did. Even without the overtly plotted threat of being gored, he was right. I couldn’t lock myself away. Not with the threat of a destiny hanging over me. I had to face it head-on.

Like a man.

“Oh goodie,” Gary said, dropping the rage façade like it was nothing. “Because you just have to see how Ryan is acting around Ruv. It’s positively adorable. But mostly embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for him. And for you.”

I sighed dreamily. Like a man. “He does posture whenever his masculinity is threatened.”

“Knight Delicious Face threatened all the time,” Tiggy said wisely.

“This is true,” Gary said. “Why, even before we left, Ryan was challenging Ruv to a shirtless pull-up contest in the gym.”

That… made my mouth a little dry. “And you didn’t stay to watch?”

“Now you see what I do for you,” Gary said. “I could have been watching sweaty muscled torsos, but instead I was up here saving your life.” His eyes glistened suddenly with tears. “Why would you do this to me?” he asked, lip trembling.

I knew then what was the right thing to do. “To the gym!” I cried.

I SHOULD have realized that we weren’t the only ones who would have found a Ryan versus Ruv shirtless pull-up contest to be the event of the season. The castle was eerily quiet as we made our way down the stairs toward the labs.

“Where the hell is everyone?” I asked, wondering what would have caused the guards to mostly abandon their posts and the maids to leave their cleaning supplies haphazardly strewn across the floor. Even the kitchen was empty, large mixing bowls left on countertops, the smell of something burning slightly coming from the oven.

“Oh, my young, naïve little boy,” Gary said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing that you still have some innocence left. On one hand, it means you’re still starry-eyed. On the other, it means that I need to work that much harder in corrupting you.”

The closer we got to the gym, the louder it got, until it hit me where everyone was. And that… was both amazing and annoying. “Everyone is ogling my man?” I asked incredulously.

“To be fair,” Gary said, “Ryan is the owner of dat ass. And even if he is sometimes the star of the stage show Douchetacular Douchetacular, he at least looks like a masturbatory wet dream while doing so. I know I’ve masturbated to thoughts of him before. Why, just last week even, I had this extended fantasy involving Ryan, a jar of bubbles, and an original dance number choreographed by an elf midget. Can I say midget or is that racist? Little person? I don’t even know anymore. You say one thing and someone’s offended, you say something else and another person is offended. People should probably just calm the fuck down.”

I was too busy thinking about dat ass to defend my one true love against Gary’s weird barb, even if it was sort of true about Ryan being douchetacular. Granted, I was sure the same thing could be said about me, so I figured it was probably better that we were together so no one else had to be subjected to us.

We reached the entrance to the gym, a large stone room where the Knights of Verania worked out on a daily basis. I usually avoided this place, given that it stank of sweat and I had an a

version to doing anything that required me to stand in place for an hour and try to lift weights over my head. Ryan wanted to make working out together a thing we did, because it could bring us closer together, Sam, just stop complaining and do it. But after a disaster that somehow ended up with me strung up upside-down from the ceiling due to a combination of a jump rope, a twenty-five-pound free weight, and the laws of physics, he never made me go down there again. I found another way to bring us closer together by giving him a sloppy blow job whenever he got back from working out. He couldn’t find a reason to complain when I was choking on his dick, so. Win-win.