by Riley Storm
She stared up at the giant yellow eye with its black vertical pupil. Then she screamed some more.
“They’re going to think I’m kidnapping you at this point,” the voice—still Rann’s voice, though different—said, clearly exasperated.
“I’m flying on the back of a dragon, okay? I think I’m allowed to scream!” she shrieked back at him.
But as she did, her eyes flicked outward.
“Oh my god,” she breathed, the fear gone as she saw the world around her from a whole new vantage point. “It’s beautiful.”
“Welcome to my world,” the dragon replied in a soft voice.
“This is how you see the world around you?” she asked, sitting up straight, though her fingers were still white at the knuckles where they closed around the spike on his back.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“My jealousy is through the roof right now,” she muttered. “Just so you know.”
The entire back of the dragon vibrated. It took a second for her to understand that he was laughing.
“I just wanted to make sure you were safe,” dragon-Rann said over the beat of his wings as they rose higher into the sky.
Away from the angry mob.
“I think I’m safe,” she said quietly. “I don’t think they can get me up here.”
“No, I don’t think they can,” dragon-Rann agreed.
Gayle relaxed just a bit as they steadied. The wings stopped beating, and they simply soared through the sky. She took one hand from the horn-grip and spread it wide against the scales of his neck, feeling the power, the majesty of the creature upon which she rode.
“You get to do this all the time?” she asked, still stunned by the panoramic landscape below them.
Everything was so small!
“Not as often as I would like,” he admitted. “But yes. It is quite freeing to be up here. It makes all the problems of my world seem smaller, knowing just how much more is out there.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
His wings beat again, and this time Gayle could feel them. She felt the powerful muscles of his shoulders twitch and flex. Beneath that, she felt the slow, steady beat of a heart that was probably larger than her head.
She looked down as the tent city disappeared behind them.
“Where are we going?” she asked as Rann banked northwest over Five Peaks, making it clear he had a destination in mind. “We can’t go to the city. You’d get swarmed if you landed there. As it is, people are going to be following you like mad.”
“I know,” Rann said tightly. “That’s why we usually fly at night. But I’ll drop lower once we’re out of town, lose them in the trees. We’ll be safe.”
“I believe you,” she said, meaning it. “But where are we going to be safe?”
“My safe place,” Rann rumbled. “Somewhere we don’t have to worry about those church idiots or anyone else.”
“Where’s that?” she asked, curious.
“My home.”
“I thought you lived in town?” she asked, her tone reminding him that she’d just told him they couldn’t go there.
“I have a place there,” he corrected. “But no. My home is on the mountain, with my family. My clan.”
“The mountain?” she repeated. “What do you mean? Wait. What do you mean your clan?”
“The other dragon shifters.”
Gayle massaged her face with her hand. “There’s so much I just don’t know,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start asking questions. You’re a dragon. Okay. You have family. Great. You live on a mountain. Which one? That seems like a good place to start I guess.”
She was babbling, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself either. The shocks just kept coming, one after another, and her brain was still stuck in adrenaline-flight mode from the race through the tent city.
“Mount Atrox,” Rann said, his neck vibrating with the power of his voice every time he spoke.
Is this why some girls like motorcycles so much?
Gayle hunched over, burying her face in her arms. How could she think of something like that at a time like this? She needed to focus!
“Mount Atrox. What about the Atrox family?” she asked. “They might come looking if a dragon lands on their mountain. We don’t want that kind of attention.”
Rann chuckled. “Gayle, they are my family.”
And suddenly, so much more made sense.
“Your family,” she breathed. “The Atrox family is a clan of dragon shifters.”
“Yes. As are all the other families.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly feeling very, very small.
Rann’s wings pumped harder.
“Rann?” she said after a bit more time had passed and her brain had begun to process all this new information.
“Yes?” he said, the same vibrations running up her legs as he spoke.
Damn that’s distracting.
“You said that woman wasn’t dead. The one on the news?”
“No,” he said. “The vampires—that is what they are, before you ask—didn’t kill her. Not literally.”
“What do you mean?”
Rann was quiet, the only sound the beating of his wings and the whistle of the air around her.
“They turned her,” he said eventually, and this time the vibration of his speaking didn’t feel good. “They made her into one of them. Which can only happen if the person is willing. If they want it.”
“How do you know?” she gasped.
“I saw them do it with my own eyes last night. I went looking, after I left your place.”
“But…why let a video of it get out then?” she asked, confused.
“To put fear into humanity, I think. To make us dragons appear weak and unable to protect you. And gather more support to the Church. It’s a sect within it that is helping the vampires.”
“And you… You said you were out hunting them. Is that what you do? Hunt vampires?”
Gayle shivered nervously. The landscape below helped remind her that the world was bigger than she could see at once, but that was a double-edged sword, it appeared. The world might be larger, but there were all sorts of nasty things that inhabited it as well.
“That’s a long story,” he said. “But in short, I do now, yes. Ever since the vampires came from their dimension to ours. That’s what our job is. That’s why dragons exist. To protect humans from creatures that come through.”
“So you’re going to find them and what, kill them?” she asked, unsure of the proper process for dealing with a vampire. Did they just dump them back through to their own dimension, wherever that was?
“Hopefully,” he growled. “But someone has been working against us. Even before the vampires. Trying to stop us from doing our jobs, to let things in that will attack humans.”
“What? Why would anyone want to do that?” she asked.
“I wish I knew,” Rann growled, his voice a promise of violence if he were ever to find the guilty party. “But I promise that no one will die if I am able to do anything about it. I would sacrifice myself first.”
Gayle shivered again.
She didn’t want him to do that. At all.
Because I’d miss you, Rann…
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rann
He landed in a clearing that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere.
“I thought we were going up the mountain to meet your family?” Gayle asked from where she sat on his neck.
“Change of plans,” he said, not bothering to elaborate.
You don’t even know your own reasoning; that’s why you won’t tell her. You just changed course for no reason. You’re scared.
He was not scared! He was Rann, mighty fire dragon of Clan Atrox. He wasn’t scared of taking a woman back to his home! Why on earth should he be scared of something like that?
“Well, where are we then?” Gayle asked.
“Hang on,” he rumbled instead and shifted back into
his human form.
Gayle ended up back on his neck. He carefully helped her down until she stood facing him. Her eyes watched his face. He waited. She frowned then looked down and rather quickly right back up to his face.
Her mouth twitched, and her cheeks went bright red.
“You’re, um, you’re naked,” she pointed out, though Rann already knew that.
“Perk of the job,” he said with a shrug, wondering where his sudden reticence was coming from. Why was he so unhappy all of a sudden?
“Rightttt,” Gayle said.
“I’m serious. This is quite normal for a shifter who has to change unexpectedly. The clothes don’t exactly survive the transition.”
Gayle snorted. “Uh-huh. Sure, sure. You just wanna strut around naked cause you look so good nude, don’t you?”
Rann lifted his eyebrows. “So you like the way I look without clothes, do you?”
Cheeks going cherry red, Gayle pouted at him and looked away. “I did not say that.”
They both knew she’d said exactly that. But Rann didn’t push it. He wasn’t feeling overly flirtatious at the moment.
Except you started it.
Confused at his own emotions, he turned and started walking out of the clearing without another word. It wasn’t that he was mad at her, but he was feeling troubled. Unsure. His confidence vanished, leaving him without a clue what to do next.
“Rann, where are we? Where are we going?” Gayle called, her footsteps loud in the silence of nature.
“Come on,” he growled, trying to hold down the bite in his voice. “Let’s get inside.”
Get hold of yourself. What is wrong with you?
“Inside?” Gayle said as she caught up to him, forced to walk faster than normal to keep pace. “In case you haven’t noticed Rann, there’s nothing here. Just forest. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Gayle was understandably getting frustrated with him—he was fast getting irritated at himself, so he didn’t blame her—and her reply had more than a bit of bark to it.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Where are you taking me, and why are you acting so weird all of a sudden?”
Rann ducked low under a branch, his eyes and senses guiding his bare feet to the spots clear of undergrowth. He moved with casual silence while Gayle stomped along next to him, sounding like a parade compared to his lack of sound.
“Is this a path?” Gayle asked a minute later as they walked deeper into the bush. “It kinda looks a bit cleared.”
“Unavoidable, unfortunately,” he said. “Hauling so much stuff in created a bit of a marker. It’s growing up nicely around it though. Another few years, and it should be all but invisible, I think. I had to move it recently.”
“You had to move it? Move what?”
He came to the top of a small rise in the ground and gestured. “That.”
Gayle came to a stop next to him. “I don’t get it,” she said bluntly. “It looks like some rocks. Also, you’re still naked.”
“Yeah, I need to get some clothes. They’re inside,” he explained without explaining.
“Are you enjoying all this cryptic talk?” she asked, not bothering to try and guess what he meant by inside. “Or is it natural for dragons to be so infuriating once they’ve revealed what they really are?”
“That has nothing to do with being a dragon,” he said.
“Really,” Gayle said, sarcasm dripping from the single word reply. “Because ever since you were basically forced to show me what you are, you’ve been acting different. Are you scared about it for some reason?”
“I’m not scared,” he said stiffly. “Why would I be scared of what I’ve been my entire life?”
Even as he denied it though, Rann’s brain started down a different path. Of course he wasn’t scared of himself. That was silly and nonsensical. But perhaps Gayle was on to something. He’d gotten really defensive at her comment.
What could I be scared about though? I’m a fire dragon. I fear nothing. Not even death.
Yet he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Gayle was right. He was scared.
“It’s in there,” he said, pointing down to the rocky outcropping that jutted up from the ground, half covered in leaves and other undergrowth. “Come on.”
“It’s just rocks,” Gayle said with a sigh, but she started down the small hill after him.
“Okay, here, come on.” He extended his arms toward her.
“W-what?” she asked nervously, looking around.
Rann sighed. “I need to lift you up there. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Oh.”
Gritting his teeth, hating how his own actions were coming between them and yet not knowing how to fix it, Rann scooped her up into his arms. Even as he relished the closeness between their bodies, he somehow managed to feel the divide between them even more.
And it was all his fault.
Bending his legs, he leapt to the top of a large boulder with Gayle still pressed to his bare torso. He set her down and then hopped down into an opening that was only visible when standing atop the rocks. It swallowed him to his entire height.
“Rann?”
“I’m fine,” he said, reaching out to the blank rock wall in front of him and pushing.
His arms flexed, and with a heavy sigh, the lower half of the wall rolled backward, revealing a tunnel entrance under the rock. The wall was, in fact, a boulder that had been cut by himself to appear to fit seamlessly into the rest of the formation, looking like nothing more than the wall.
“Okay, come on down,” he said, reaching up to help Gayle down.
“What is this place?” she asked as they ducked down and went inside.
“This is my lair,” he said. “My private place.”
He lifted a hand and a tiny spark of fire shot out. It zipped around the perimeter of the room, lighting the fifteen torches that hung on the walls for just that purpose. Light blossomed, and he looked around, basking in the comforting feeling of the place.
“I don’t believe this,” Gayle said, covering up a laugh. “A dragon has a lair. Of course he has a lair. With gold!”
Rann’s lips twitched as she spied his hoard of gold and gems, all painstakingly mined and formed from the mountains nearby over the years. Much of his wealth was in the banks, of course but, like any good dragon, Rann had an emergency hoard. Not to mention it was pleasing to the eye to watch the firelight flicker against the shiny surfaces.
“Well, what did you expect? I like shiny things,” he rumbled defensively, walking over to the right where he opened a trunk, pulling out spare clothing.
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Gayle told him. “Did I?”
Rann replayed the memory briefly. “I suppose not.”
“Then why are you getting all defensive?” she asked, her voice changing. “You’ve been on edge since halfway through the flight here. You grew all quiet, I swear I even felt your neck muscles tighten up. Then we landed, and you’ve gotten almost grumpy. Did I do something wrong?”
He jerked upright, still pulling on the sweatshirt. “Of course not! You’re perfect,” he said immediately.
“Then what’s going on?” Gayle demanded.
Rann frowned, closing the trunk and sitting on it. “Nothing.”
Gayle sighed. “Okay. Well, you have clothes. Now what? You’re just going to destroy them again if you fly us out of here.”
“I’ll get you back to town,” he heard himself saying. “Without anyone seeing us.”
Gayle frowned and opened her mouth like she was going to argue, but then she sagged, shoulders slumping, head tilting downward. “Okay.”
What is the matter with you? You need to figure it out! You’re losing her.
Inside him, his dragon stirred.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gayle
“I’m sorry.”
She blinked, her mind elsewhere entirely as they flew along.
“Pardon?”
Rann’s face tightened uncomfortably. At least, that’s what she thought it was doing, but given that she was dealing with a half-human, half-dragon face, Gayle really wasn’t sure.
This secondary dragon form of his, a humanoid shaped and sized figure, but covered in scales and sprouting wings, was the second massive shock in his appearance that she’d dealt with today. Gayle’s brain was having a hard time coping with it all.
Still, it does allow us to travel back into the city much more secretively.
They were going to have to walk at some point, but that didn’t much matter to her. She knew he couldn’t drop her off at her front door looking the way he did. It would attract just a bit of attention.
Attention that Rann did not want.
“For anything I did that may have pushed you too far,” Rann continued. “Or too fast. I apologize. That was never my intention, you know.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, still trying to reorient her focus to him and not the fact that they were skimming along over the treetops, the only thing between her and certain death being Rann’s strong arms keeping her tight to his chest.
He’s so very strong though. Probably why I don’t feel scared with him.
Rann shook his head, frustration now evident even on his dragon features, but she didn’t think it was directed at her. He was having some troubles, but he wouldn’t tell her what was going on. Every time she’d tried, he’d just clammed right up, acting like it was fine. She had to let him do this his own way.
“If I’d just known your parents were coming,” he said apologetically. “I would have left. I never even would have stayed over! It wasn’t my intent to embarrass you, Gayle. I…I wanted to impress you. That was all. I wish I’d never bothered to try.”
Gayle chewed on the inside of her cheek, stewing over his words. It was nice to hear that he felt bad about it, but at the same time…
“It’s not your fault,” she said quietly. “I never told you. I forgot as well. You can’t be expected to read my mind. I’m sorry I snapped at you back in the tent. It was really actually quite sweet of you to try and make breakfast.”
Rann snorted. “Oh, I didn’t just try. Those would have been some of the best pancakes you’d ever had.”
