On Wings: A Reverse Harem Dragon Shifter Romance (Her Secret Menagerie Book 2)

by Katelyn Beckett

  Because I'd been the only one willing to leave her at the jail.

  Apparently, my wingmates had decided she was the best thing since sliced bread. After all, she was going to help us hatch the nest; somehow. But she'd failed when she'd had her chance and, as far as I was concerned, one chance was enough. Sour, but managing to hide it well, I landed on the road just outside of the bed and breakfast she was staying at.

  Without waiting for me to lower a wing to help her down, she jumped off my back and nearly flew inside.

  The game was up. I eyed a car as it brushed past me, tempted to fry it for running over my tail. But the people inside were already screaming, flooring the little Volkswagen. It revved with everything it had in it and hurtled down the road toward oncoming traffic. A last second twist of the steering wheel saved the humans within from certain death, but four more cars shot past me and stared.

  One slowed to a halt just before it went past me. I looked down at it and frowned as best as a dragon's muzzle can do so. The windows rolled down and out came the cell phones, the flash of their camera sharp in my sight. I flinched, turning my head away, and put my chin on the sidewalk. If they wanted to send pictures to their friends over social media, I didn't care anymore.

  Eskal had been the one bound by the pact, not the rest of us. We'd followed along to try to make his life easier and to, most likely, make our own lives a bit safter. Yet, after all that caution, that wasn't what had happened. Part of our flight, and Olivia, had been arrested for taking back our eggs.

  The idea still threw me for a loop. I knew the humans didn't understand and I wasn't, I supposed, surprised by the fact that they had arrested them, but it went against any natural convention I could think of.

  And I had to admit, getting back to nature as we were likely to have to do, seemed like a wonderful vacation. I enjoyed turning wrenches and working on the machines that kept running over my fucking tail at the moment, but it wasn't what we were made for. We were predators of the skies, no one's pet or mechanic, and we needed to roam.

  We needed to live.

  Iyadre, Eskal, and Nariti's real estate office would probably end up investigated and, eventually, cleared of all potential charges. With their business mindset and their talent for creating money from nothing, we would come back to society when it was safe. But I longed for a mountain retreat where we could live as we were, not as we happened to be sometimes, and take to the air when we pleased.

  Something pecked my left flank. It came again, accompanied by the pat pat pat of an annoying little handgun. I scowled back at the human who stood with a poor stance, the gun too close to their face, intent on ruining the scales on my leg. It was irritating, but it was something I could handle.

  In the distance, I saw something I couldn't.

  A tank rolled across town, probably still half a mile away. People scattered before it, as scared of it as they were of me. It was a show of force by the local police or, perhaps, the military. Though I doubted that the city could have requested assistance from the military so fast, humans sometimes did things quicker than I assumed they could.

  The military meant trouble and I had no way of calling Eskal or Nariti to warn them.

  I shoved the human with the pea shooter away from my leg and looked back toward the bed and breakfast. There was no sign of Olivia. My paws tightened on the asphalt, ripping chunks from it as easily as if it were sand. Where was she? Didn't she realize that there was trouble coming? We had to go.

  Though I was certain she couldn't speak draconic, I stuck my nose just inside the door; as far as it would go, and hissed for her.

  "I'm almost done. I'm sorry. I'm working as quick as I can. What was all that noise out there?"

  I pulled my head back out, retrieved the gun that had been dropped when I'd shoved the human, and tossed it inside. Her head poked out of the room and went white as a sheet when she saw it. She dove back into her room to gather whatever the fuck was still so important that I was waiting on her.

  Mostly I was thankful that I'd left the whelp at home. I doubted that any of my wingmates would be happy about it, but I'd put him down on the table before I'd taken off again. He didn't need to be exposed to this sort of nonsense. We'd all seen too much as youngsters. It had affected my wingmates deeply, myself a little less but enough that I couldn't really trust humans.

  The tank drew ever closer and I growled, impatient. If she wasn't out in the next minute or two, I was going to leave her to the justice of the human authorities, the rest of my flight be damned. Shells could kill me if they hit me in the right place, and she'd be dead when they leveled the building, anyway.

  She ran out just as the thought left my mind. All she carried was a doctor's bag stuffed to bursting, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Was she cold in the sky? The idea hadn't occurred to me when we'd flown back, but she didn't have a heater living in her stomach, either. Poor little warm-blooded witch. My heart bled for her.

  Olivia hauled herself onto my back and I took two steps before I saw the barrel of another tank come around the corner just ahead. I backed up, and heard the crunch of the tank behind me as it drew within range. Looking between the two, I moved toward the side street just ahead of me and heard one of the speaker systems crackle to life.

  "We don't know what you want with us, but if you don't stand down and make your pet drop you, we're opening fire."

  What. The. Fuck.

  Did they think she was some sort of alien? Olivia Monx, warrior princess, riding her fleet of dragons into eternal battle. Come on! I hissed at them, showing all of my teeth, which was probably a bad idea. But what were they thinking?

  "He's not my pet. He's my friend," Olivia called, tightening her hold on my wing joint. "And if you open fire on him, you'll be killing an innocent citizen. He's a person under those scales and he's completely unarmed."

  Unarmed, unhanded; whatever she wanted to call it. My paws were better at gripping her stupid little bag than she was, anyway.

  There was a long pause before the foremost tank lowered its barrel to my face. This was how it had happened years ago, with Mother. This was how it was going to happen to us. Even if I moved quickly, if I threw the first tank, the second one would kill me; or injure me badly enough that I wished to be dead. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I waited for the shot.

  And it came.

  ...But nothing hurt.

  The shell stood in front of me, a sparkle of bright pink magic holding it away from my face. A second shell waited behind me, stuck in the same shield. I looked back at Olivia, who poured sweat as she maintained the spell. She panted down at me. "Would you get going? Please?"

  My mind ran through what I could do. Both of her arms were extended, meaning she had no real purchase on my back. I snapped my jaws through the handle of her bag and knocked her off. Before she hit the ground, I caught her with a paw and jumped into the air. The first few wing beats were rough, choppy ones, but we got through the clouds and beyond the visibility of the tanks.

  Back into the place where I belonged.

  "Thank you," she said, hanging in my clenched paw.

  I lowered my head to look down at her. "You just saved my life and you're thanking me?"

  "You saved me as much as I saved you," she said, patting my paw. "And you grabbed my bag. Can I have that?"

  She took the bag from my clenched teeth and held it aloft as we flew back toward the house. Though I worried that, perhaps, we would be too late. If there were tanks headed to a bed and breakfast, would they be so quick to come after Eskal's house? There were four different places we could be, but Eskal had been taken in by the authorities. Surely, they would look at his and Nariti's places, first?

  "What are we likely to do now?" she asked. "We have to get the eggs somewhere safe, but after that? What do you guys do when everything's fucked to pieces? Because this has to have happened at some point to all of you."

  I felt a flutter of pride drift through me. "It hap
pens now and again. We can't always control our shifting. Iyadre brought down an entire restaurant a few decades ago when he was a professional chef. He couldn't handle one more bad review and raged into dragon form. We moved from California because of that one."

  "Have you guys spent your whole lives running from who you are?"

  The question was an innocent one but it ripped me in half. I'd never heard a human hit the nail on the head so cleanly. It took me a moment to respond, but when I did it was in a growl. "Isn't that what the majority of humanity wants? Flush out what's different, attack it, get rid of it. Force it to be like the rest or dispose of it. There is an incredibly long history of such things happening with your species, Olivia. And throughout the entire world, at that. As humanity grew, our world shrank. Now we're left with the vast reaches of what's left, and not even that sometimes."

  "Do you even have anywhere that's safe to do this?"

  There was a hint of sadness in her voice. Did she really care? "The mountains, a few hours away. We have a den up there, beyond where it's safe for the humans to trek. Though we haven't been that way for a couple of years. It's possible that the landslides have made it easy enough to climb, but we can fix that when we get there."

  "So, you have to go live on a mountain, hide from everything and everyone you know, just because you're you."

  "Yes. And we do it frequently enough that we have an arrangement with one another. Enough so that we have a safehouse, of sorts, in every location we've ever lived. It still wasn't enough to save Mother."

  She fell silent as we flew. As we approached Eskal's place once more, she piped up. "I'm sorry that we've done this to all of you."

  I didn't respond. There was a distinct lack of aggression at Eskal's home, for which I was relieved. I landed as gently as I could, careful not to smash her into the ground, though landing on three paws was an awkward thing to do for an animal that was capable of crushing walls. I didn't bother to shift back. We would have to hurry and I was getting tired. Another shapeshift just meant more energy spent.

  My head came to rest on the sidewalk once again and I yawned. Inside, I could hear Eskal shouting as he hurried my wingmates along. If there was time for a nap, I wanted it. My eyes slid shut and Olivia ran a hand over my belly.

  A shimmering, pure sensation pulled at my senses. I blinked back at her as my skin rippled. She must not have seen my look, because she only patted me once more and hurried off inside to help.

  What had that been?

  I shivered again and laid back down. Was it terrible that I was looking forward to our departure? I wasn't certain how we were going to manage the eggs on such a long trip, but we'd had little issue getting them back from the museum. Would we simply wrap Olivia around them to keep them safe? Eskal was a bit larger than I was and she seemed to have a better foothold on him than she did me.

  Perhaps it would be better if she rode him, after all.

  It still raked me, but it was more like a scratch than a deep, tearing hurt that had me wanting to rip the road apart. I fought with myself over it. Pro; she was a decent human. Con? She was still a human and not to be trusted.

  Yet hadn't I spent most of my life over the past century with the human community? Certainly, more than my wingmates had. I sighed as my feelings got the better of me. If I'd been an alpha, I would have been pleased to have such a sweet little morsel wandering in our midst.

  As the only beta among so many alphas, I felt like I was being replaced. And none of them had so much as kissed her.

  But I was positive I knew where it was going. They would kiss, they would mate, and I would be left in a cold pile of leaves with no one to talk to.

  When we'd been more of a community than a scattered people, I'd been teased for my alignment. All betas were; we came to get used to it or the teasing got worse. Alphas poked fun at you, the omegas wouldn't give you the time of day, and the other betas were rough on you, too.

  What if Eskal decided to turn her into one of us? He knew the spells to do it, though it had been forbidden for the past several centuries; a human had infiltrated a flight's ranks only to sell them over to a king. It had led to the extinction of a proud, ancient line of drakes because of it. And ever since, most dragons had considered it wrong to turn the humans to our side.

  I couldn't imagine he'd do it. Shifting in front of the humans was causing us enough trouble. Actually making one of them part of our community? I growled under my breath and raked up his driveway a little.

  Not that I thought Olivia would agree to something like that. At least, not right away. That gave me time to slow everything down, maybe find something that could be said that would send her back to humanity when it was safe.

  I needed to talk to Eskal about this, but where was the time? With the need to flee, he wouldn't be settling down for days to come. Even when he did, he'd be twitchy and upset. Of all of us, he was the worst when we had to run. For good reason.

  He'd been there when it had happened; when Mother and the rest of our community had been killed. We had been out wind surfing, enjoying the high breezes beneath our wings and hurtling toward the ground at horrifying speeds; only to soar up at the last moment. It was sort of the dragon version of playing Chicken, but with a mountain instead of cars rushing at each other.

  And what if he didn't like what I had to say? Olivia was a decent sort. She was okay.

  But I didn't want to be replaced.

  I rubbed my face in the rubble to scrub the thoughts away but they wouldn't go. A man ran past my head, taking pictures with a camera that was bigger than his torso. I snorted at him and let him flee. There was no reason to hurt the curious.

  Did that include her?

  Hadn't she come to us denying who she was, what she could do for our eggs, and the rest of dragonkind? Why should I give her enough rope to hang herself when she could, potentially, take everything that was mine?

  I kicked the damn door and shattered it. Whoops.

  Nariti came out, carrying a pack in his arms. "We're almost ready. Is there anything you want?"

  I mean, I could have lived with taking the video game systems with us, but there was nowhere to plug them in when you were surrounded by granite. I gave him a flat look and snorted. He rubbed my cheek in a friendly way and kissed the side of my snout. Then he dropped the pack and shifted in a flurry of motion that made most humans dizzy to watch.

  Eskal, Olivia, and Iyadre followed soon after. I watched as my wingmates transformed and Olivia climbed aboard Eskal. I rolled to my feet and shook off the dust, and heard the shot from the tank before I saw the tank itself.

  It missed. And we flew.

  Chapter 16

  Olivia

  The hills turned into mountains and rose to kiss Eskal's belly as we soared past them, the clouds darkening once more. I sat huddled in my blanket; the eggs wrapped up with me. Though I doubted the cold would do much to them, who knew how long they'd been underground, it felt right to hold them and let them know someone was watching over them.

  "We really have to find a name for you," I told the whelp as he slept across my leg. "Maybe something that's red, like you. Crimson? Berry?"

  He turned away from me, ignoring my attempt to give him some sort of identity. I tucked him close to my body heat and tightened my hold on the blanket. Though it left me unable to cling to Eskal, he'd taken to carefully gliding around clouds to try to keep me drier and warmer. He was also trying to keep from tilting in one direction or the other suddenly, or making it any riskier for me than it had to be.

  "Did I mention that I want a saddle the next time we do this?" I asked him.

  I felt him laugh more than I heard it. "Three or four times. We shall see what we can create in the mountains. Hold tightly. I intend to land in the next moment or so."

  The warning was greatly appreciated. I wrapped my arms around the eggs and let my legs slide apart on him, riding him as much as I could like someone would a horse, but it didn't work when the horse was t
oo damn broad to hold on to like that.

  Down we went, bit by bit, the rest of the flight behind us. We landed in the soft soil, all flint and loam, outside of the mouth of a cave that could fit fifty of the dragon I sat upon. He didn't bother to let me off before he headed into it, breathing flames on a pile of logs as we went past it. I bit down a scream, not having expected the wood to explode as it had.

  "Could you warn me the next time you do that?"

  He blinked back at me. "You truly expected a dragon to not breathe fire? After calling me a fire-breathing freak?"

  "It's the first time you've done it!"

  "It is the first time it has been relevant and necessary to do so. We do not find comfort in the cold, nor will you. And we will need those flames to again attempt the ritual, if you are still interested."