Chapter 3
Marco
“Officer Matchers,”I spun the pen on my desk as I watched the rainy landscape outside, “I don’t really give a fuck what phase your son is going through. I have given him several warnings. He needs to be punished. Either your community handles it, or I’m going to. I expect to hear back from you within the next hour.” Hanging up I shook my head and ran a hand over my face feeling exhausted. What a piece of shit.
It infuriated me on one level, making me want to kill him. On the other level, it was exhausting to play these pointless politics back and forth.
Atlas offered me a dry look from where he lounged on the leather couch facing my desk.
This day was shaping up to be a long one. I was annoyed as it was that the executive officers’ meeting had been moved because that had been an hour I’d lost from spending time with Maya.
Edmund had arrived on time but now that we were waiting on the other two, he had gone to run some apparent errand before our now afternoon meeting.
On the bright side, it was becoming a far better day now that Maya was coming here. My brows furrowed thinking about how she probably shouldn’t even be in school. She fucking died last week, and I’m sorry, but the woman was already brilliant and had never been in school a day in her life. Did she have to start now? Couldn’t she just do an at home school program? Far safer with that psycho bastard walking around.
Plus, I felt like the restrained classroom structure was the opposite of what my little artist actually needed. She should be somewhere where she could go from painting in those cute overalls to cooking up whatever the hell she wanted.
Honestly, I would give Maya anything she wanted with just a word. She didn’t need to go through the pointless school system if she didn’t want to. Hell, I’d have her signed up with an art school in fucking Paris if that was what she wanted. Maybe, I should tell her that. Maybe she hadn’t considered that as an option, after all, everyone had been telling her it was ‘normal’ to finish school. I’d never finished school and I liked to think I turned out fine.
My chest squeezed as my dragon let out another rumble. If I’d thought he was being a bastard before we put a mating claim on Maya, now it was ten times worse. He was constantly urging me to do stupid shit and I could barely sit through a tv show without knowing where her perfect self was. The woman was absolutely shattering me and she had no idea. No fucking idea. I just wanted to wrap her up and keep her locked in our house...preferably in my bedroom. Naked.
I inhaled trying to not think about her naked. Or else I would be holding a closed-door meeting with just her and I. Actually, that sounded pretty fucking perfect.
My hearing perked up the minute that a familiar car pulled into the parking lot of our low modern gray building.
Sai, his office one down from mine, stepped out eagerly, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he no doubt attempted to not run towards the door. I understood that more than anyone. In some ways, Sai and I were very alike, and in others, we clashed. Being brothers but still maintaining a flight hierarchy was a lot more work than you would imagine.
I watched as he finally gave in and walked towards the front of the building. The building that I wanted to get out of as soon as possible. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic building and honestly one of my favorites within the ‘Moretti empire’, as Atlas referred to it. I wished that I could feel guilty about dominating so many markets, but I just didn’t.
Henry didn’t ever feel guilty about his love for investing in stocks, so why would I feel bad about monopolizing the West coast? The best part was that I could do it from home. Something I hadn’t realized the value in until now. Now, when the flexibility of my schedule allowed me to see my little artist more.
Normally, I came into work about as much as I worked from home, split evenly. I didn’t do well sitting around. Coming into work, even for a few hours, kept me busy. Only two weeks ago, I’d been trying to decide what venture to scope out next because to be this successful at twenty-four was fantastic...until you remembered as a dragon, you have several hundred years ahead of you.
I no longer worried, ever since finding Maya. I was very aware of what I would be doing and I couldn’t be happier about it. My businesses essentially ran themselves so it gave me time to get our flight settled into this new situation.
We had always been fairly adaptable though, so I wasn’t very concerned. I mean, shit, four years ago we hadjustarrived on Earth. A concept that seemed less and less real as the days passed. Our universe existed on a massive spectrum of different realms with delicate Earth being the center point through which different portals could be reached. The Dreki realm, where we had originated from, was very accessible...just no one wanted to access it. It was, in a word, archaic.
You still had a ruling family, made up of the only other phoenix that we knew of, and the technological advancements, compared to what existed here, were lacking. Mind you, that had been changing throughout the few years we’d been here, making an active effort to relay what the dragon community as a whole were achieving here. They didn’t care though. I could tell.
Our society back home was a militant one at its heart and at ten, boys were sent to the military academy. There were very few women in the realm because any pure-blood dragons were male. That was why Maya was so precious within our community and why the council were being such assholes.
When a phoenix and dragon mate, they create sons that are dragons and daughters that are phoenixes. Any other coupling with another supernatural creates a hybrid. Those hybrids usually weren’t welcome long term in the Dreki realm, so the families ended up either splitting up or leaving. And they wondered why the population was growing older with such a small number of youth.
I mumbled a curse thinking about one day having a family with Maya. I mean, it had always been a thought in my head, the idea of having a family. Until you are in the position that you can see a future with someone, it is always more hypothetical. At least for me.
But yes, adaptable. Our flight had grown slowly over time. My original establishment of it when I’d been sixteen and our youngest, the twins, had been ten. I had no idea what I had been doing at the time but I knew I wasn’t about to wait around to become an alpha when I already was one.
It wasn’t long before I got fed up with all the military bullshit. I’d been twenty when I decided we were leaving Dreki. Not only had Henry suffered a terrible eye injury during a training exercise, due to poor direction from one of our commanders, but the twin’s parents were still able to reach them. Abusive assholes.
So I packed my flight up and we appeared before the council of four in Los Angeles, where I essentially demanded being placed on the council. Considering the importance my own father played in Dreki’s military, they conceded. What they didn’t tell us? Was how to be human.
We spent the first year in Los Angeles pursuing whatever the hell we wanted. Except we far exceeded even our own expectations. It was possible that it was due to our lack of preconceived notions about how humans were supposed to act. Or, we were really fucking lucky. One of those.
The twins ended up becoming media-loved music prodigies despite finding it entertaining and a hobby at best. I had to admit, I think the positive attention did help to heal some of the very deep emotional wounds that were left from being abused as children.
Henry had started investing in the stock market. Then began developing software that was still to this day getting daily offers. The bastard found it far too hilarious. Then again, I think he might be a tad insane since he willingly subjected himself to medical school for fun while still attending high school. It was an odd situation, to say the least, and after about a full year, we realized it was too much. People were starting to notice us, and not in a positive way.
Sai had started to train for fighting, entering underage and illegally. When the media became aware of it, the human law enforcement establishment essentially tried to blame it on me, his guardian.