DPOV

I was up before Rose, but that was no surprise. First of all, I didn't need as much sleep as she did, and secondly she actually fit in the bed, whereas my feet had been sticking out all night. These beds were not made for six foot seven Dragons.

Rose woke up just when I was putting on my shirt. I saw her pout as I was covering up my naked form.

She was still naked in bed and only covered by a sheet, despite the temperature. She was lying on her side and looking up at me, only slightly bent towards the ceiling. She was holding up the sheets to her breasts, covering most of them, but I could still see a little side boob. The sheets covered her stomach and one leg, but the other one was flipped over it. So I had a good view from her toes all the way up to her shoulder. Her hair was tousled, and I remembered exactly how her hair ended up that way. I think we failed in our promise to stay quiet and I could only assume the entire establishment had heard Rose scream my name and that of several deities last night. Of course, the sound of the bed hitting the wall over and over again must have alerted others as well.

But I had no regrets. Who knows when we would be able to be together again?

"Come on, Roza. I am going downstairs to order some breakfast for everyone. If you get dressed, we can get to the fun part of this morning."

She looked at me like I was crazy. To her there wasn't anything fun about waking up early. But she would soon realize, it had its advantages.

"Waking everyone up," I said way too chipper. She must have seen the gleam in my eyes as realization dawned on her. Waking up sleepy, hungover Dragons was an art form, one I truly enjoyed.

She quickly got out of bed to get dressed. I let out a small growl as I exited the room to head downstairs to arrange breakfast, reluctantly leaving behind a naked Rose.

I saw Stan sitting in a chair by the fire waiting patiently for the rest of us to wake up. I saw Meredith passed out in a corner. She never made it back to her room, but she seemed very comfortable hugging a pillow of a chair and lying on the ground with her head on an empty mug. I would leave her for a few moments more. Only a few moments though.

I walked up to the barkeeper.

"I need a large breakfast for sixteen and has there been any damage?"

He scowled at me as he placed the order to the kitchen and then returned to hand me a list. I frowned as I read the list and sighed at the length of it. At the bottom he had noted down a broken bed and wall with a question mark, no doubt referring to the sounds coming from our room last night. But I don't think we broke the wall or the bed.

I handed him a sack of coins.

"This should suffice."

I had been very generous, as I always was. It wasn't just about replacing the stuff. Some of these things will take a lot of effort to fix, and if there was something Dragons had no shortage of it was gold.

"You lot heading up North?"

I nodded. He looked me up and down curiously. Not many humans recognized us, but this barkeeper seemed to know who he was talking to. He must have seen his fair share of Dragons coming through here.

Dragons were no stranger to human towns and certainly weren't strangers to bars. There was something about being able to outdrink every human in sight that appealed to them. I know Adrian spent many hours in several around Court.

"They are moving further down, aren't they?"

This human knew his stuff. Although many humans knew about 'monsters' in the North, he'd also made the connection that we would be fighting them.

Barkeepers tend to see everything; the silent observers in many people's lives.

"Yes."

He nodded, but I could tell it wasn't the answer he wanted to hear. Although it meant someone was fighting them, it also meant they were being aggressive enough for us to have to deal with.

"You're not going in the right direction for a confrontation."

We weren't looking for a confrontation. At least not head on.

"My squad and I will infiltrate their territory, trying to take out the leaders."

He was stroking his beard and looked pensive.

"I am not sure if it will help, but I heard rumors from the Western mountains. There has been more activity than usual. I would start your search there."

I inclined my head in gratitude.

"If you lot make it back here successful, I'll let you stay here for the night for free."

I smiled.

"I guess we'll just have to make it back then."

I walked over to Stan with this new information. I took out the map we had of the region. The majority of the confrontation would be along the Eastern border to the left. Well, everything was North and cold, but we had to call it something. The Western parts we didn't send many troops, because the terrain is inhabitable, even for Snow Dragons. There are hardly any caves; it is just one big open tundra. The wind has free reign, and even Dragons would have a hard time flying there. Besides we would see them a mile away, so they would lose all strategic advantage. So it would have made no sense for Snow Dragons to be there. At least not for battle. But to be able to be close to the battle, get messages across and for the leaders to be well away from danger - it would be perfect for that.

I pointed out what the barkeeper had said, and Stan was staring at the map.

"They shouldn't be hard to find. I suppose they would need some coverage. There is a forest a little further back. I imagine they would run things from there. But just as they couldn't use it to sneak up on us, we can't use it to sneak up on them. They aren't idiots, despite their nature. They will have protection around. We don't have the men for an all-out assault."

No, we didn't. Stan was right. It would be hard going that way.

"What about looping around, from behind? We will need to cross that mountain range in the North."

"They will see us coming a mile away when we are flying."

"So we won't fly. We go in human form."

Stan just gawked at me.

"That will take ages."

I looked down at the map, and even though it wasn't to scale, I could estimate the terrain.

"It's about a hundred miles, nothing we can't do; it will take us about a week. There are freshwater supplies here and here. And I imagine there is game in these parts. We will also need less food and such when we are human. I'll ask the barkeeper to bring us some provisions."

I saw Stan didn't like it. He wasn't the fittest of our group, but certainly wasn't the worst. I could probably make it in four days, but our slowest would take about a week and a half. They would need to speed up. I wondered where Rose was in that range. I hadn't considered her fitness before because she would be flying with me most of the time. But a week on foot, climbing mountains. She wasn't trained for that. She hadn't endured our military training, and I wondered if she would be alright. Maybe I could convince her to stay here? I am sure the barkeeper could accommodate her. But I knew she wouldn't stay here. She would make it, no matter how hard it would be.

"Now, I better wake up the others, we should be on the move soon."

I may have said it with a bit more enthusiasm than I should, and I saw Stan grin. He too enjoyed this part. He never indulged too much, so I never had a chance to wake him like this. But he sure was sadistic in watching the others suffer my wrath.

Rose came downstairs looking fresh and ready.

"Roza, you want to do Meredith? I am making a round upstairs."

She looked confused. I handed her a bucket of cold water. There were even a few icicles floating around in it. I motioned towards Meredith.

"Are you serious? I am still trying to make friends here!"

"I am sure. It really is the only way to wake them up."

I took two buckets myself and headed up the stairs. Halfway up the stairs I heard the tell-tale scream of Meredith and her cursing.

I first made the entry to the boy's room. Christian was already up and grinning widely as I stepped inside. Mason and Eddie were fast asleep as were some of the other younger Dragons. The others really should have known better - they have been on missions with me before. But for Eddie and Mason, this was their first mission, so I considered this a sort of rite of passage.

Luckily for me, their heads were close together, and I would only have to use one bucket.

I lifted the bucket up and poured about half of it on them and the other half I threw around the room to hit the others. Both boys were up in a heartbeat screaming. To my pleasant surprise, Eddie was up in a battle position almost instantly. Mason, however, only grabbed his head after he had screamed. I suppose he had a hangover. I saw most of the others were in a similar state, so I shouldn't judge him too harshly.

"Come on boys. Rise and shine. We move out in an hour, breakfast is downstairs."

Mason looked at me a bit apologetically for the hangover. I wanted to tell him it was fine. I have seen a lot worse from my troops, and Rose did say I have to try and be nice to him. But somehow my face turned into a scowl, and I saw his face fall.

I moved onto the second room that held the rest of my squad. Almost all of them were up, bar one. They all smiled at me as I walked in with the bucket.

"I have breakfast downstairs."

They didn't move, they wanted to see the spectacle.

"Time to move out!"

And with that, I splashed my last bucket over my last remaining sleeping soldier who woke up with a scream and a few very original curses.

The first thing he saw when he came to his senses again was a room full of Dragons laughing. He joined in.

"I swear I told myself after the last time that I would never drink that much again. But that ale was good last night."

We all laughed, because he keeps telling himself that and he never listens to himself. I have been waking him up like this for the last few decades.

"Come on, breakfast is waiting downstairs."

About fifteen minutes later we were gathered around the breakfast table. Rose was sitting comfortably on my lap. Everyone seemed to be accepting us very easily. Well maybe except Mason. I had known he had a little crush on Rose, but the boy looked devastated. He wouldn't look at us, but maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe he was just really hungover.

"So how did you end up with a hybrid anyway, General?"

I heard murmurs going out all around. It seemed everyone wanted to know our grand love story.

"Well I didn't know she was a hybrid when we met, neither did she. I thought she was human."

That got a reaction from everybody except Christian. He had been there for the meltdowns when I was first starting to fall for Rose.

"How could you not know she had some Dragon in her?"

It was true. We could sense the flame in hybrids, just like we could sense it in pure-blooded Dragons. They gave off smoky smell and the sense of contained power. I could see it in Rose now, but because of the binding spell, I hadn't back then.

"My father bound my powers when I was a baby. It wasn't until I started to hang around Dimitri that my inner Dragon came out and weird stuff started to happen. Before that I was your average human", Rose explained.

"Your father huh? That is not an easy spell to pull off. He made a deal with Yeva?"

Rose nodded, "She is scary, but he is pretty scary too. I don't think she stiffed him."

"Nobody is scarier than Yeva the foul. Well, maybe Ibrahim the Shrewd. Zmey is pretty scary too."

Rose started to laugh as I choked on my drink. I saw realization going around the room. Several Dragons were just gawking. Some at me, some at Rose, but the overall emotion was shock, and a little fear.

"No way. No fucking way. You're fucking Zmey's daughter? Are you crazy?" I nearly ripped his head off for stating it like that, but I should have known better then to think that Rose needed me to defend us.

"Hey, first of all, he isn't 'fucking' me. He makes sweet tender love to me… and then he fucks me. And second, my father doesn't dictate my life. I can fuck whoever I want."

She was proudly sitting on my lap eating a piece of bacon as the rest of them stared at her. It was a good minute before one of them erupted in laughter.

"She really is Zmey's daughter. You are 'making love' to Zmey's hybrid daughter."

"So how did that happen?" another asked.

"Well, I didn't know she was his daughter or a hybrid. I just saw her running away from some scumbag human royal after she had kicked him in the nuts for taking too many liberties."

Rose turned around towards me.

"You were there?"

I nodded. She hadn't seen me and the topic never came up, but that was the time I first saw Rose. And as I realized it now, I had already been affecting her then. She had set fire to the tree that had distracted me.

"I saw you being chased. I thought you were very brave."

She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear, almost if she was shy.

"The douchebags guards finally caught her and dragged her back to the village, where they whipped her over and over again. He just wouldn't stop."

I was stroking Rose's back where they had peeled her flesh from her bones. I wasn't talking to the other Dragon's anymore. I was now talking to Rose, lowering my voice and conveying the pain I had felt even then as I watched them hurt her.

"I knew he would kill you, and I think you knew it too, but you stayed so strong. You didn't beg; you didn't scream, you just kept defying him. I knew I couldn't let you die. So I intervened."

I was running my hand from her back to her hair and her cheek. She softly leaned into my hand. I had forgotten there were other Dragons around.

"I took you to my cave and watched Karolina treat your wounds. They were so deep, and they were still bleeding. It took everything I had not to go back and bite that boy's head off. And then you woke up, and you looked so beautiful in just the sheet. As you were standing in front of me, it was as if you had always been standing there, like you had always belonged."

I pressed my head against her, and we came together in a gentle kiss. If it wasn't for the whistle from one of the Dragons, I think Rose and I would have stayed in our own little world.

I cleared my throat.

"I trained her so she could go back to the village and kick that guy's ass. And after she went back to the village she came back on occasion to keep training. I started noticing some weird things going on with Rose, and when I made my way to her village and saw Zmey there, I knew the truth. She had said a black Dragon had been watching over her since she was young. I put two and two together and realized Rose was a hybrid.

After her binding spell broke, I took her back to Court with me. She is still adjusting to her powers after a lifetime of having them suppressed, but I am confident she will learn to control them."

"Well, you are leaving out a few things in the middle that make the story much more interesting, but okay. I guess you got the essentials," Rose added.

Well, that certainly got the attention of everyone. Rose turned around on my lap and started to tell the bits and pieces I left out. I really wish she hadn't.

"So did you know, Dimitri has a library full of porn?"

I groaned and leaned back in my chair.

"It isn't porn."

Rose laughed.

"Could have fooled me."

"It is those knight novels from that human writer. There are some scenes in there that contain that kind of stuff, but the vast majority is just action."

I saw a few Dragons scrunch up their nose. The novels were considered a guilty pleasure for sure. Certainly among soldiers.

"Dude, it might have been better to let us all believe it was porn."

"They are good stories" I defended.

They all laughed, including Rose. I don't think I was ever going to live this down.

"And I haven't even talked about the fact that just like he didn't know I was a hybrid, I didn't know he was a Dragon. I knew a Dragon had saved me, but he failed to mention that he was the Dragon that saved me. For a while, I thought the Dragon and Dimitri, were two different people."

I could still hear the hurt in her voice. I really messed up.

"Really, so how did you find out", Mason asked, and I groaned again. I saw Rose cheeks heat up a bit.

"Umh, well. He misspoke. He was… preoccupied and he called me Roza when he was in his human form, but only the Dragon called me Roza."

"Yes, it took a lot of groveling and apologizing to get back in her good graces, and no, I won't grovel to any of you if I do something wrong. Emphasis on the if."

Rose giggled in my lap.

"That reminds me, Comrade. I haven't seen much of that groveling. We might have to fix that."

I didn't like the gleam in her eyes. I didn't like it one bit.