by Lizzy Ford
“Dawn is in an hour,” Mr. Nothing said. “I’ll give you until then to move your cabin where you want to remain permanently.”
“Can I ask you one more question?”
Mr. Nothing waited, blue eyes almost silver in the pale light of stars.
“The woman who put this curse on me in the first place was like you, wasn’t she?” Chace asked. “From some ancient line of shifters.”
“Most likely. The older a shifter becomes, the more powerful. But also the harder it is to survive, since the magic grows too strong for most shifters to handle. To turn someone into a shifter, she had to have been over five thousand years old.”
“Wow. So you’re about the same age, if you can make me human?”
“Close,” Mr. Nothing said vaguely. “We were raised in a world where the dragonkind were welcome. We had a society, mentors to teach us about our magic, humans who helped protect us. Those were lost with most of the ancient shifters.”
Chace was amazed by the information after a thousand years of being generally ignored by Mr. Nothing when he asked about the dragon shifters.
“Now. Get out of here. One hour, Chace. At dawn, you will be human again.” Mr. Nothing brushed by him and crossed the boulders that separated them from Skylar.
Every muscle of Chace’s body tensed, and every instinct cried for him not to let Skylar go, especially not with Mr. Nothing.
He turned away, his emotional turmoil calling forth the magic that was forcing his body to shift, even when he didn’t want it to. Chace dropped to all fours. His clothing split and tore, but for once, he didn’t care. He wasn’t in control of the emotions or his shifting or even his life anymore.
He’d made a choice and was about to go on his last flight ever and leave behind the first woman who made him feel in a thousand years, who made his heart whole and beat again.
He leapt into the air before his body was fully transformed. His wings struggled for a split second before they’d unfolded and lifted him into the night sky. He hovered, needing to know that Skylar was okay, before he left her for good.
Mr. Nothing didn’t speak or linger long. He stood in front of Skylar, pensive, before stepping away and shifting.
Chace watched him unhappily, wishing he’d said something else to Skylar before walking away. Farewell. Thank you. Anything.
Mr. Nothing’s wingspan was one and a half times the size of Chace, another indication of just how old he was. From above, his wings and scales were blue-black in the moonless night, silent as they unfurled around a body slightly bigger than Chace’s.
Skylar still hadn’t moved or spoken, unaware of what was going on and waiting patiently the way he’d told her to. Chace breathed in deeply to catch her scent, at once hungry for her and tormented by the knowledge of what he’d done, of how trusting she was.
Mr. Nothing lifted himself off the ground with the long wings and carefully swept her up in one clawed talon.
“Chace?” Skylar cried, startled.
A tremor went through him, ruffling the scales down his back. Two thoughts clashed in his thoughts.
It has to be this way.
She belongs with me.
The blue dragon vaulted into the sky, passing Chace in a blink and continuing upwards at a dizzying rate.
A bellow of frustration worked its way free from the depths of Chace’s chest, along with a plume of fire that crackled in the air around him. The sudden burst of fire and light faded without torching his pent-up emotion.
Chace flung himself toward the heavens, unable to stand by while someone else took away his Skylar. His eyes searched the night sky for movement.
Mr. Nothing had vanished.
Chace extended his senses, seeking any sign of where the blue dragon was. It didn’t seem possible that the creature was just … gone. Nothing on the earth could move with the speed necessary to outrace his senses!
And yet, the blue dragon had.
Mr. Nothing – and Skylar – had completely disappeared.
Loss hit him hard and deep, sinking beneath the emotions and distance he’d tried to put between himself and Skylar.
What the fuck did I just do to the other half of my heart?
Chapter Twenty
The speed with which they flew drove Skylar near unconsciousness. She hung limply in the massive talon, unable to register much more than the roar of the cold wind by her ears. The hood was torn off by their speed, giving her a view directly below. Air made her eyes water until the ocean and sky looked the same, further baffling her senses. She closed her eyes and stopped trying to orient herself.
Something bad had happened, if Chace hadn’t said anything to her before snatching her up and fleeing. She’d heard the low murmurs of two men speaking followed by the sound of breaking bones and tearing sinew, an indication Chace was changing into his dragon form.
Maybe my instincts were off. Hope surged within her. By the way he’d made love and spoken to her, she had an uneasy feeling that he was setting her up for something. Though what, she didn’t know. He’d given her the lasso, which she was able to use against him as well as the blue dragon.
Were they being chased? Was this the reason behind the breakneck speed?
Uncomfortable and helpless, she ducked her face behind a claw, trying to shield it from the cold air. The talon offered some warmth, and she wasn’t able to move her body to curl up or otherwise try to consolidate her body heat. She was shaking.
After a short while, she sensed their pace was slowing. It wasn’t enough for her to want to expose her face to the elements, but it gave her hope that maybe they weren’t being pursued.
Their speed slowed again, and the dragon began circling, a sign he was preparing to land. Huddled in his talon, she lifted her head enough to see where they were.
The first rays of sunlight pierced the dark blue skies to the east. The horizon was lined with yellow, and she got a better view of what was below them. They were headed to an isolated island in the middle of the ocean whose biggest terrain features were a building and a long beach. No other sort of land was anywhere in sight, and she ducked her head again, eyes quickly watering from the coldness of the air.
Moments later, they landed in the soft sand of the beach. She was released, and she rolled onto her belly, shaking too hard to move far. Her hands and feet were numb from cold, her stiff limbs not far behind. She rested her cheek against the cold sand and closed her eyes, comforted by the soothing sound of waves racing up and down the beach.
She guessed they had flown south, if the humidity of the air and its early morning warmth was any indication. Dawn lit up the eastern sky. The sun peered over the horizon. Bright pink and orange clouds drifted westward towards what remained of night. Sunlight warmed her face, and she closed her eyes to the brightness.
Her shivering gradually stopped, and her mind started to clear after the quick flight.
“Are you well?”
It wasn’t Chace’s voice.
So much for a pizza date. A pang of heartache almost took her breath away. She spent a moment to test her strength and reclaim her wits. The dragon was in its human form, which would make it easier to capture.
With a deep breath, Skylar pushed herself onto her knees then twisted until her back was to the sunrise.
A stranger crouched a few feet from her, watching her closely with sharp blue eyes. The ocean breeze ruffled black hair peppered with silver, the only sign of his age. He was otherwise fit and trim with olive-hued skin and a runner’s body clothed in black.
A vision from one of her dreams returned full force, almost knocking her to the ground with its intensity.
Skylar stood on a hill overlooking a large farm that was ablaze, from the old farmhouse where she’d spent her summers to the cornfields that ran in each direction as far as she could see. Her gaze followed the billowing smoke upward toward the sky. The great blue dragon circled high above. Sun glinted off his dark scales, creating small rainbows around him.
> “Mama, where is he going?” she asked.
“C’mon, Sky. You have to get out of the open. They’ll see you!” her mother replied.
Skylar retreated from the hilltop to the car waiting down below on a dirt, country road. Her mother was shaking, her face covered in soot.
Skylar looked down at her hands and saw them, too, covered with soot and streaked with blood. The sight left her rattled.
“Are we going home now?” she asked anxiously.
“No, baby. We can’t go home. They’ll find us there. We just have to keep moving,” her mother said and got into the car. “Get in, Sky.”
She obeyed her mother and climbed in. “Will he be okay?”
“If we get far enough away from him, yes,” her mother answered, tense. Her eyes flickered to the rearview mirror. “They figured out how to track the protectors, baby. That means we have to go as far from him as possible.”
“But how can we protect him from so far away?” Young Skylar grappled with the issue.
“He will find us when it’s safe, when he’s figured out who is taking away the protectors and hiding them.”
“But … I’ll miss … him.” Despite her mother’s calmness, Skylar wasn’t able to stop the tears.
“It’s okay, baby,” Ginger said softly. “I promise. Your daddy won’t let anything happen to you and neither will I.”
She shook her head to clear the vision.
“Father,” she said before she could stop herself. “You’re my father.”
“You remember.”
She barely heard him. Skylar stared at the man before her. He was much less … fatherly than she expected. There was nothing soft or caring about him. He was tense as if for battle with eyes colder than the blue sky they’d flown through to get there. And a dragon?
“Is this a joke?” she demanded, baffled. “Did you, like, scramble my brain or something?”
“I’m the only one who hasn’t scrambled your brain.” His smile was small, one of bitter amusement.
“But you’re a dragon.”
“You’re a dragon protector. You don’t shift, but you have dragon blood running through your veins.”
“You fried innocent people!”
“There was nothing innocent about the people I fried,” he snapped. “They kidnapped you when you were thirteen and spent years brainwashing you. You weren’t the only one. All of the slayers went through the same thing. Only a protector can track a shifter, so who better to use to kill off the shifters?”
“That’s absurd,” she said. Even as she said it, she knew his words built upon what Chace had told her and the memories that were emerging. The only truth that made sense was the one she didn’t want to be real. “You’re saying the last six years of my life have been fake!”
“Pretty much. You’ve got a lot to relearn about the shifter community and your own history.” The blue dragon shifter stood, squinting towards the sun in clear discomfort. “I’m nocturnal by nature. I’ll be in the house, when you’re ready to talk.”
Skylar watched him walk away, almost relieved he was leaving her alone. Her body wasn’t right yet, and her mind was about to explode. If she was a dragon, she’d burn the island to the ground.
But she wasn’t. She was a dragon protector, born to another protector and a dragon.
“This is just fucking insane.” It made her head hurt, and she gripped it, trying to rationalize everything she had learned the past few weeks. How could everything she’d ever remember knowing be a lie?
On one hand, she wanted to follow him into the house to demand answers.
On the other, she was afraid of what she’d discover.
Her eyes swept over the home of the dragon on the isolated island. He didn’t live in a cave like she expected but in a modern, low, concrete bunker-style house with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the beaches and ocean and a sliding glass door that led directly onto the beach on which she stood.
She made herself comfortable on the beach, lying on her back and staring at the sky. Her mind was trying to reconcile her dreams with her reality and the stranger she knew to be her father with the monster who fried twenty people she thought she’d know for years.
Her last dream-like memory had been when she was thirteen of Caleb coming for her and her mother disappearing.
Skylar resisted the urge to run in the house and ask after her dream-mom. She stayed on the beach, staring at the blue sky as the sun rose. She didn’t try to focus her thoughts but let her emotions collide and coalesce as she attempted to process her new world. She felt no connection to the blue dragon, even if some part of her acknowledged his relationship to her. Understanding why he hadn’t fried her did little to help her wrestle with the truth that Chace had given her up.
This she felt, deep enough to hurt. Had he known that he was turning her over to her father, or was he just getting her out of the way? There had been regret in his lovemaking, an aching despair that led her to believe he didn’t know she’d be safe with the blue dragon.
Assuming she was safe. He’s not exactly the friendly type.
Skylar clenched her hands behind her head, wishing she understood exactly what had transpired between Chace and her father. She prayed with no small amount of desperation that Chace had known she was going to be safe at least. Before this moment, she hadn’t realized just how hard she’d fallen for him. It was far more than physical; it was primal instinct that had drawn her to him.
The idea he had abandoned her – that he didn’t feel the same – was more painful for her to consider than the remains of her shattered life.
It was noon before her patience grew too thin for her to stay on the beach. The humid morning had turned into a balmy, hot early afternoon. Accustomed to a dry heat, she hated the idea of sweating when just lying around.
Skylar reluctantly approached the concrete and glass structure. She hoped the door was locked, giving her a reason not to go in and face reality, but it wasn’t.
She walked into the cool interior. The open floor plan was large and minimally decorated. A modern living area was along the curved edge of the windows and house while a kitchen of stainless steel everything sat in the middle of the rounded wing of the house. The colors were likewise cool, as if to offset the hot climate outside. Crisp white walls and ceilings, light grey furniture, tarnished silver fixtures, and light blues and greens in the rugs and pillows.
While she had no guess as to what dragons did in their down time, she didn’t expect to find this one reading on an electronic reader, seated in the living area with a glass of water on the accent table beside the light grey couch.
It was yet another reminder that nothing she’d been told about dragons had yet to be proven accurate.
He didn’t move or address her as she crossed to the living area. Skylar set down on the chair facing him, the enormity of her situation settling across her shoulders.
The dragon shifter met her gaze. For a long moment, she wasn’t certain how to start. After all, this was her father, the man she thought had died before she was a year old.
“So …” She cleared her throat. “You don’t seem happy to see your alleged, long lost daughter.”
“I spent ten years trying to find you and you turn up brainwashed. Not entirely certain happiness is what I should be feeling.”
Her face grew warm. “Right. What do I call you? Don’t think daddy is going to work for me.”
“Gavin.”
“Okay. I’m Skylar.” She paused. “Aren’t I?”
“Yes.” He offered an almost-smile.
“Okay, Gavin. What is my mother’s name?”
“Ginger.”
Ugh. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I’m assuming dead. They probably killed her to get to you.”
It was one memory Skylar was glad she didn’t recall. While she wanted to know what happened, part of her didn’t want to go through remembering seeing her mother dying.
Was t
his the next dream she’d have? She’d seen Caleb come to her house. Did he slaughter her mother then kidnap her?
Skylar rose, unable to sit still with such a thought.
“How are you so … you’re a sociopath, aren’t you?” she demanded. “You’ve got no emotions.”
“I’ve had ten years to deal with this. Dragons as old as I am tend to have more self-control than normal people,” he replied. “My focus was finding you.”
“How old are you?”
“A little over five thousand, give or take a century.”
“How many kids do you have?”
“Just you.”
She eyed him in disbelief.
“Shifters can take mates. I had hundreds of protectors who watched over me, but the only I loved was your mother. I never wanted kids. You were a surprise,” he added with a look of mild accusation.
“That shit ain’t my fault,” she retorted. “I’m not fully convinced this is the truth anyway. I mean, obviously, if I can be brainwashed once, I can be twice.” Or maybe more.
Gavin stood and breezed by her. “Follow me,” he said curtly.
She hesitated, watching him stride through the kitchen and down a hallway into the depths of the house. After a moment, her curiosity got the better of her, and she trailed him.
He went to a guest bedroom and was pulling scrapbook-sixed containers out from under the bed and setting them on top. His movements were quick and effortless but jerky – a sign he was experiencing some sort of emotion.
“The first thirteen years of your life are here,” he said in the same brusque tone. “Should be enough proof to convince you.” He didn’t wait for her response but left, the sizzle of anger in the air around him.
Skylar heard him retreat down the hallway. She considered the containers, dread in her stomach. Did she really want to remember?
She went to the bed and sat, drawing one of the containers to her. Popping it open, she pulled out one of the two scrapbooks it contained and pushed the heavy cover open.
She smiled at the definitely feminine writing and artsy display on the first page.
