Dragon's Guard

by Eva Chase

  I held up my hands. “Okay. So maybe I’m a little weird in a few ways. But I definitely don’t have an ‘animal side.’ I’ve never ‘shifted’ into anything. This is the only body I’ve ever had. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if it warped into something completely different.”

  “Hold up,” Kylie said. “I forgot about that part. You shift into animals. You’re talking, like, werewolves and shit then?” She cracked up, patting my shoulder. “Ren, you’re a werewolf! This is awesome.”

  “Not a werewolf,” West muttered where he was still skulking by the door. “Human horror stories have no idea what they’re talking about.”

  “Let’s be fair,” Marco said. “There are some similarities. But we come in a lot more forms than the garden-variety wolf. And the full moon doesn’t really factor in. When we want to shift, we do.” He snapped his fingers.

  “You know how crazy this sounds, don’t you?” I said to all of them. “Again, I repeat, I have never changed into any kind of animal. Not a wolf, not a goldfish, nada.”

  “There could be a couple of reasons for that,” Aaron said. An academic-ish enthusiasm colored his measured voice. He rocked on his heels, looking even more the part of professor—a really, really hot professor. Explaining this stuff was obviously his wheelhouse. “If your memories of knowing you’re a shifter have been locked away, you wouldn’t have thought to try to exercise those powers. You might have felt an urge, but not known what it meant.”

  My back stiffened. That clawing sensation that came into my chest when I was caught up in anger—or other sorts of passion. As if there were something inside me trying to dig its way out...

  “And,” Aaron went on, “none of us come into our full powers until we turn twenty-one. Even if you’d been fully aware of who and what you are, the shift would have taken more effort and been difficult to hold for very long. So it makes sense that it wouldn’t have happened automatically.”

  Nate leaned forward and set his large hand on the side of the settee, just inches from my arm. “Before she left, did your mother tell you anything about your twenty-first birthday? We found you because of a pulse of her magic we started sensing yesterday. I think she must have wanted you to return to your kind.”

  Kylie’s eyes widened. “Your necklace.”

  I clutched the locket. “She gave me this right before she left. And told me not to open the locket until that birthday. You’re saying it’s some kind of magic?” After everything else they’d already said, that part no longer sounded particularly absurd. Well, actually, it all sounded equally absurd.

  West must have heard the incredulity in my tone, maybe because he was so well versed in skepticism himself. “We’re all here, aren’t we?” he said. “Believe me, it’d have been a lot simpler if we’d found you earlier.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “This is still crazy. Something weird is going on. I’ll give you that. But people don’t just change into animals. My mom wasn’t some kind of witch.”

  Kylie glanced from one guy to the next, kicking her legs against the base of the settee. “It’d be pretty easy for you to prove it if what you’re saying is true, wouldn’t it? You said you don’t need a full moon. Great! Let’s have a shifter demonstration, right here, right now. Your eager audience is waiting.” She smiled at them.

  Aaron hesitated. “We don’t generally reveal ourselves outside our kind.”

  I waved off his objection. “Oh, please. If you’re telling the truth, you’ve already ‘revealed’ it. At least if Kylie’s here, I can be sure I’m not hallucinating.” Except there was such a thing as a group hallucination, wasn’t there? Well, I could worry about that if these guys really did start morphing into animals in front of us.

  “I’ll do it,” Nate said, standing up. “How else is she going to believe us?”

  He pulled off his cotton tee, revealing a chest even more densely muscled than I’d imagined. Then he reached for the fly of his jeans. My jaw just about dropped to the floor.

  “Oh. Um...” Heat flared across my face as Nate shucked off his pants.

  Marco chuckled. “You’ll find shifters don’t have the same hang-ups about getting naked as your average human being. It comes with the territory.”

  The substantial bulge in Nate’s boxers gave me a clear preview of the territory to come. I averted my eyes. I’d never seen a guy naked, not right in front of me. Not some stranger I’d only just met.

  Kylie didn’t have the same qualms. “You’re missing the best part of the show, Ren!” she said, watching avidly. Then her expression froze. Her voice came out thin and tinny. “Holy shit.”

  My head jerked back around. I wouldn’t have thought my jaw could go any more slack, but it did.

  Before our eyes, Nate’s body was... shifting. There really wasn’t a better word for it. The rich brown hair on his head was rippling down to cover all of him in a thick pelt. His torso expanded, his haunches and neck thickening. His face had already lengthened with a narrow snout.

  The entire transformation finished moving through his body in the time it took me to blink. I might have thought that kind of bodily change would have to be painful, but it had looked completely natural. Almost... beautiful. A twinge of longing shot through me from collarbone to gut.

  Longing and recognition. Yes, that was what people like them were meant to do.

  People like us.

  And now a majestic grizzly bear loomed on its hind legs before me. Its head nearly brushed the light fixture overhead.

  No, not it—him. Even as my pulse skittered, I knew it was Nate. He lowered himself onto his front legs so that we were at eye level. His deep brown gaze felt just the same as when it had looked at me from his rugged human face. Warm. Protective. The sense of recognition in my gut tugged me toward him. I raised my hand, my fingers curled and then extending.

  The bear took a careful step toward me, dipping his head so I could touch the fur between his rounded ears. It was coarse but pleasantly thick to the touch. I had the sudden urge to bury my face in his neck, to drink in the sensation and the musky, peppery smell of him. To feel his protective warmth all around me.

  He was a massive predator, but he would never hurt me. He would never let anyone else hurt me either. I knew that, as surely as I’d known the asshole in the bar last night was sore about his ex.

  “There,” West said. “You’ve gotten your demonstration.”

  “This is—” Kylie giggled, a little hysterically. I’d never seen her at a loss for words before. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she managed to keep going. “Oh my God. It’s real. You really—” She laughed again.

  Why wasn’t I just as shocked? That first glimpse had startled me, but now all I felt was awe and that deep sense of familiarity.

  Maybe I’d known, deep down, that it was true, even when my mind had balked to accept it. I swallowed hard and looked up from Nate to the other guys.

  “Nate’s a bear. What are the rest of you?”

  “Jaguar,” Marco said. “Not quite as impressive as Nate in size, but I make up for it in other ways.” He smirked.

  “I’m an eagle shifter,” Aaron said. He glanced at West. When the grouchy guy stayed silent, Aaron added, “And West is actually a wolf. Most shifters belong to one of four kin-groups. Canine, feline, avian, and, well, everything else.” He gestured to West, Marco, himself, and Nate in turn, with a hint of a smile at the last. “We’re the leaders of each of those kin-groups. The alphas, by our usual terminology.”

  “This is seriously the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me,” Kylie said. “So when do we get to see the rest of you ‘shift’?”

  “I don’t perform on command,” West snapped. But seeing Nate had been enough. I was convinced. Of everything except the last, most important part. Nate nudged my arm with his muzzle, and I rubbed behind his ears automatically, searching for the courage to ask the question that I already knew would upend my life.

  Could it really ge
t that much more upended than it already was? I had to know.

  I dragged in a breath. “All right. So we know all about you now. Maybe you can tell me—what am I?”

  At the look Aaron and Marco exchanged, I braced myself. That didn’t seem like a good sign. Marco’s lips curved with his crooked grin.

  “You, my Princess of Flames, put the rest of us to shame. You’re a dragon shifter.”

  Chapter 6

  West

  The girl stared at Marco as if she couldn’t wrap her head around a single word he’d said. Could she really be this ignorant? How could she have gone sixteen years without ever sensing the power inside her, even if her mother had meddled with her memories? I still found it hard to swallow.

  “A dragon?” she sputtered. Nate, still in his bear form, shuffled backward as she pushed herself to her feet. “Are you kidding me?”

  “As much as I enjoy joking around, at this particular moment I’m being totally serious,” Marco said.

  Ren—of all the things to be calling herself. It sounded like a fragile little bird—gestured vaguely with her hand. “At least bears and wolves and whatever are real animals. Dragons don’t even exist.”

  Her disbelief, acted or real, was damn irritating. I pushed myself off the doorframe and stalked a few paces toward her. “Look, you asked the question. You got the answer.” I let my gaze travel over her slim but toned figure. “Although I’ve got to agree, right now you look like you have about as much fire in you as a puff of sparks.”

  She turned to glower at me, and I saw a hint of the power in her then. A flicker behind her bright brown eyes. It lit up every inch of my skin as if I’d been hit by a whole shower of sparks.

  Damn it. The only thing more irritating than her bewildered human routine was how strongly my body responded to her no matter what I was thinking. I’d been waiting for her way too long.

  But this wasn’t how my mate was meant to be. She was meant to be powerful, stronger than any of us. Not the type to run away from danger and cower among humans for sixteen years. We hadn’t known if there were any dragon shifters left. We hadn’t known what might be keeping them away. From the sounds of things, it’d been nothing more than fear.

  What had her mother been thinking, throwing her back to us now with no understanding of who she was or the role she was meant to fill?

  Ren took a step closer to me, and her smell, sweet as strawberries and cream, wafted over me. Enough to make me half hard. Her expression was anything but sweet. She jabbed her finger at my chest, just shy of grazing the thin fabric of my henley.

  “I’m trying my best, okay, tough guy?” she said, her eyes all but blazing now. “Try having your world turned completely upside down in the space of an hour sometime, and see how you handle it.”

  Technically, my world had been turned upside down in the instant I’d felt that first tingle of dragon magic from afar. But I wasn’t going to admit that to her. Especially not while her lips were curling with a hint of a smirk.

  “And here’s your watch back,” she said. The thick metal band dangled from her fingers. What the hell? I glanced down at my wrist—which was in fact now bare. Had she just stolen that right off me?

  Marco’s melodic chuckle rang through the room, his dark blue eyes glinting. “Don’t you know better than to poke a dragon?”

  I grabbed the watch back from Ren, ignoring him. Feline-kin never knew how to mind their own business.

  “I didn’t even see her pull that off,” Aaron said with his scholarly awe. He was probably getting a hard-on just from the chance to talk to a dragon up close instead of relying on all those old records he liked to pour over.

  The theft had, maybe, been a tiny bit impressive. I re-fastened the watch around my wrist and eyed Ren. Now that she’d gathered a little more confidence, I could almost imagine a dragon’s vitality in her. Her eyes were still shining, the deep brown waves of her hair flowing past her shoulders as if recently whipped by the wind. What kind of a dragon would she make after all?

  The need to see it wrenched through me. I folded my arms over my chest. “All right, Sparks. You know a few tricks. You want to find out how real dragons are? Shift right now and you’ll know.”

  Ren

  West’s dark green eyes flashed in challenge. The bravado I’d managed to call up faltered. “I don’t know how. I have no idea about any of this. Haven’t you been listening?”

  I glanced toward Nate, the only person I’d ever seen “shift,” and found he’d transformed back into his human self. He was just pulling up his jeans, his sculpted chest still bare. A fresh wave of heat coursed through me at the sight. But—if that was how you shifted—

  My arms rose to hug myself, my fingers curling into the sides of my shirt.

  “You wouldn’t have to undress,” Aaron said gently. “You’re unlikely to make a full transition on your first try anyway. And if you’re able to”—he tipped his head Marco’s way—“I suspect our host has plenty of clothes around the house he could spare.”

  Marco shrugged. Under the jagged fringe of his black hair, his indigo eyes looked suddenly hungry. They gleamed more deeply than the sapphire stud in his ear. “My kin come and go from here. I keep the rooms well-stocked.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “But what do I do?”

  “Well, first, just in case,” Marco said, “I think we should take this little party outside, dragons being the size they tend to be. I’d rather not turn this room into a pile of rubble.”

  “Fine.” I wasn’t sure what his neighbors would make of it if I did suddenly turn into a gigantic mythical creature, but I was still finding that possibility hard to believe in the first place.

  Kylie sprang to her feet. “I’m not missing this!”

  Marco swept through the room. We all tramped out back after him.

  The second I stepped into the yard, I understood why he wasn’t worried about privacy. The small grassy lawn was framed on all sides by tall pines.

  I walked a little farther into the middle of the clearing. The guys spread out in a row to watch, Kylie bobbing on her feet beside them.

  “Close your eyes,” Aaron said. “Reach inside yourself. Try to feel the essence running through you. The core of your nature. Then grasp hold of it and pull it free. It’ll want to come. It’ll help you.”

  West had snorted in the middle of that set of instructions, but as mumbo-jumbo-y as they’d sounded, I thought I knew what Aaron meant. I had felt the essence running through me before—the flexing of those internal claws.

  Like some kind of beast waiting to get out. But a dragon? Really?

  I guessed I was going to find out. I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes like he’d said. There it was, waiting for me. That sharp tingle scraping over my ribs. It did want out. I focused my attention on the sensation. Tell me what to do. Tell me what you need.

  A quiver tickled through my muscles. They flexed as if trying to open themselves up. My skin felt suddenly tight. The tingling inside swelled, as if to burst free—

  And contracted, away from my encouragement. I frowned, squeezing my eyes tighter shut. Come on. I know you want this.

  A full-out tremor rippled down my spine. I tried to grasp onto that stirring in my core the way Aaron had suggested, but it slipped right through my fingers.

  My shoulders sagged. I wavered on my feet, exhaustion rolling over me. I rubbed my eyes before I opened them. How long had I worked at that for? It hadn’t seemed like more than a few minutes, but I felt as if I’d just run a marathon.

  The guys were still studying me, West with his usual cynical expression, Aaron looking puzzled, Marco considering, Nate concerned. “Are you all right, Ren?” the bear shifter said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.” But my legs were shaky when I took a step back toward them. Kylie dashed to my side. “I don’t get it. I felt it, but it was like it didn’t want to come...”

  The furrow on Aaron’s brow deepened. “Your mother may have suppressed not jus
t your memories, but your powers as well. To make it less likely they’d emerge unexpectedly. But I can’t believe she’d have done anything permanent. She must have left you a way of accessing them again.”

  “You haven’t heard from her at all in those seven years?” West said. “Not even a message?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. I don’t even know where she was going. All she gave me was the locket.” I opened it up and looked at the flame-like symbol inside. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  I held out the locket to show them. The other three took a quick glance and then looked toward Aaron, who I guessed they deferred to on topics requiring much in the way of research. He peered at the etching, but confusion on his face didn’t lift.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “She wouldn’t have put that symbol in the necklace if it wasn’t important, would she?” Nate said. “It must be meant to tell us something.”

  “It could be something she’d hoped the last alphas would have told us.” Marco’s smile was more like a grimace this time.

  “Maybe that’s something I can help with,” Kylie piped up. “I could take a picture and show it around. Out of all the people I know, there might be someone who recognizes it.”

  All of the guys looked skeptical at that suggestion, but they didn’t know Kylie yet. “Sure,” I said. “We might as well try.”

  I tilted the locket’s interior to catch the sunlight so she could snap a picture with her phone. She tucked the phone back in her pocket and raked her fingers into her rumpled neon pink hair. “If I’m going to make the rounds, that means I have to go. Do you want to come with? You know you don’t have to stay here with these guys if you’re not sure about all this yet.”

  I wasn’t sure about much, but the one thing I did know was that none of these four guys—shifters—however I was supposed to think about them—wanted to hurt me. And suddenly I wasn’t so sure about the world beyond this house.

  Why had Mom been so afraid? What had she been hiding us from?