“You never did!” Avery exclaimed. “You cheated—I’m sure of it!”
“Boys…boys…” Megan remonstrated with them as she shot me a wink and followed the still-arguing Griffin and Avery into one of the spare dorm rooms which we had set up as a game room, since we didn’t have anywhere near the number of students down in the Dungeon that the Norm Dorm was built for.
When they were gone, I expected Ari to sit by me on the couch. Instead, he sank to his knee in front of me and took my hands in his.
“Kaitlyn,” he murmured, looking into my eyes.
“Ari,” I whispered. “Did…did you come to say goodbye?”
“No.” He shook his head and a fierce light came into his eyes. “I came to beg you to come with me—come with me to the Sky Lands.”
“What?” I pulled my hands out of his. “But…but Ari, the Headmistress will expel us both! And your parents will hate me!”
“Let them,” he said evenly. “I and my Drake will love and protect and nourish you, Kaitlyn. You don’t need to fear—I swear it.”
I bit my lip.
“But I do fear, Ari,” I admitted softly. “I fear a lot.”
“What?” he asked. “You fear the threat of expulsion? The Headmistress? Meeting my Sire and Mother?”
I feared all of that, but I had a much more immediate danger on my mind.
Over and over, Ari had talked about his Drake choosing me—but choosing me for what? I still didn’t know what he wanted—didn’t understand his intentions in the least.
After all, what could a ten-ton fire-breathing beast want with a girl my size?
I had a sudden, awful thought—a thought about all the old stories about dragons and how it was always the innocent maiden who got sacrificed to appease the beast’s hunger…
“What are you thinking?” Ari demanded, frowning at me. “I cannot see as much of your lovely face as I would like but I can tell when you are unhappy or afraid. Tell me your thoughts, Kaitlyn.”
“I…I was wondering…” I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “In lots of old myths and legends when they have a…a dragon rampaging around and burning up the countryside the people always get together and…”
“And what? Go on.” He made an impatient gesture with one hand.
“And sacrifice a maiden,” I whispered at last. “So I thought maybe your Drake…”
Ari’s eyes grew wide with horror.
“You think that my Drake wants to eat you?” he asked, as though he couldn’t even believe I would think such a thing.
“Well, you said the Guardian wanted to eat me,” I pointed out. “And isn’t he a kind of Drake? I mean, it just stands to reason that if I’m, uh, ‘tasty’ to one kind of Drake I might be to another one too, right?”
“Kaitlyn, please—you can’t really believe that.” Ari’s face was pale. “My Drake would rather shred his own wings to tatters than so much as scratch you! He loved you even before I did—my heart followed his, as so often happens—but he saw you first.”
“But what does he see in me? Why does he care for me?” I demanded, mystified. “I don’t understand why I caught his attention in the first place.”
“Because you’re special.” Ari’s hands squeezed mine and he looked into my eyes earnestly. “I don’t know what it is about you, Kaitlyn—I honestly don’t. But there is something extraordinary about you that drew first my Drake, and then me. And we, neither of us, can bear to abandon you, L’lorna. Please…” He leaned closer. “Please, come with me now to the Sky Lands. I cannot leave without you and neither can my Drake.”
“I don’t know…”
I could feel my cheeks heating with his compliments and his certainty that I was different, special somehow, though it seemed like foolishness to me. I was just an ordinary girl who’d had some extraordinary—and very unfortunate—things happen to me.
“How would we even get there?” I asked at last, looking into his pleading eyes. “I mean, how would we get to the Sky Lands?”
Ari took a deep breath.
“We would fly,” he said, as though anticipating that this would be a sticking point for me. “And…you would need to ride on my Drake’s back.”
“What?” I frowned and half-drew my hands out of his. “Ari, you want me to be alone with him? Up in the air?”
“Dios…” He blew out a breath of pure frustration and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he admitted at last. “But, Kaitlyn, this is not unusual. None of the females of our kind have a Drake within them—only the males. So the females ride on the Drakes’ backs in order to enter the human world all the time.”
I still didn’t like the idea. Didn’t like the idea of being alone with a being that could bite me in half if he wanted to—or roast me to a crisp.
Ari was studying my face as I thought this and he seemed to understand my fears.
“Is it his fire that bothers you?” he asked earnestly. “Because my Drake is not always aflame. He only breathes fire when it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Like when you have to get the attention of an unruly mob in the Dining Hall?” I asked dryly.
Ari flushed.
“I couldn’t think of any other way to keep them off you,” he said in a low voice. “Believe me, Kaitlyn, if there had been a way to stop them without making you fear me and my Drake even more, I would have done it.”
The hurt in his clear amber eyes made me feel ashamed of myself for my cowardice.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry I’m so afraid. It’s just, my parents, well…I lost them in a house fire. And that’s how I got all these ugly scars…” I lifted my hands, indicating my face and the rest of my body. The experience gave me a terrible fear of fire—any fire. And also, your Drake is so big…”
“He is big,” Ari acknowledged. “But he can be gentle, Kaitlyn—that I swear. Will you please just agree to meet him before you decide if you’ll come with me or not?”
“Meet him?” I frowned. “Where? Here?”
Ari looked around the common area of the Norm Dorm with apparent amusement.
“Certainly not—he would never fit,” he remarked. “I think…” He frowned thoughtfully. “I think out on the athletic field would be the best place. There I can shift in peace, away from any prying eyes.” He got off his knees and stood before the couch, holding out his hand to me. “Will you come with me and meet him?” he asked.
I bit my lip once more. Should I do this? Should I go with him and meet his Drake?
Face your fears, Kaitlyn, whispered a little voice inside me. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry!
“All right,” I said at last. “But…can I bring the rest of my Coven with me?”
“Of course.” Ari nodded with dignity. “A shift to one’s beast form is usually a private affair. But if it will make you feel better, please, invite your Coven to join us.”
I went and knocked on the door of the game room, to let Megan and Griffin and Avery know what was going on. I only wished that Emma was there too—it didn’t feel right to take this momentous step without a full Coven and all my friends around me.
Just as I was thinking that, there was a clattering on the stairs. I looked up and saw Emma standing there, breathless.
“Hi, Kaitlyn—hi, guys,” she said, looking down from the spiral staircase.
Avery frowned. “What are you doing back here, Emma? I thought you had a five-hour shift tonight?”
“I did but, well…” She shrugged. “Something told me I needed to be back here instead. So I called Sadie Jennings and gave her my shift so I could get back here.” She looked at us expectantly. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Griffin said dryly. “You’re just in time for all the fun. Come on.”
And we all left the Norm Dorm and headed for the field.
61
Ari
As we walked, I instructed my Drake on what he was to do and say and how to act when he finally came out and met Kai
tlyn face-to-face.
“You mustn’t frighten her in any way,” I told him sternly. “You mustn’t spread your wings or flap them—you could blow her over. And don’t bare your teeth—keep your mouth closed as much as possible. Also, see if you can make yourself seem smaller, though I know that is hard. And whatever you do, under no circumstances must you breathe flame. Not even a puff of smoke must leave your mouth—do you understand?”
My Drake took my lecture with surprising composure. He let me talk until I finished and then gave me the equivalent of a mental shrug.
“You are too frightened—too worried,” he said, his mental voice free of stress. “When I meet our fated-mate face-to-face, all will be well. She will understand me as I understand her and her fear will be gone.”
“What? How do you know that?” I demanded. “How can you possibly be sure of that?”
Another mental shrug.
“She is our L’lorna,” my Drake informed me, as though that answered everything. “She is meant to be with us. When she meets me, this will be clear to her.”
At that point, I gave up lecturing my stupid beast. I wished I could have his confidence that everything would magically turn out all right the minute he and Kaitlyn came face-to-face, but I didn’t. I thought it was more likely that the very sight of him would make her so frightened she would refuse to come with me to the Sky Lands.
And while I had been able to delay my trip back home for a little while, I could not defy the will of my Sire forever. His Drake’s wings flew higher even than my own—I was subject to him in most things. Though I had sworn to myself not to give Kaitlyn up under any circumstances, I was under no illusion about how he and my mother would feel about having her as the future Queen. It would be much easier to hold onto our love and refuse to let her go if she was with me in the first place, so I could protect her in my Drake form.
That is, if my Drake didn’t scare her to death the first time he met her.
“Oh please,” I prayed, though I wasn’t quite certain who I was praying to—perhaps the Goddess who made us all? “Please, don’t let him frighten her. Please let me keep her with me, keep her safe. Please don’t let me lose her tonight.”
There was no answer to my prayer and I knew I would simply have to wait and see how Kaitlyn reacted to my Drake.
62
Kaitlyn
We went stealthily down the long stone hallways towards the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms, which was the only way out onto the athletic field behind the castle.
We kept it quiet and held the talking to a minimum, aware that we were close to the Healer’s office. She might be gone for the weekend…or she might not. There was no way of knowing and none of us wanted to risk getting caught and have to think of an explanation for wanting to be out on the field this time of night.
Somehow I didn’t think anyone would believe that we were itching for a game of flag football at midnight.
The boys’ locker room was locked but the girls’ was open, so we all slipped in that way. It was dark, but there was a dim greenish light high up in the corner that barely illuminated the changing room with its rows of lockers and benches.
I hadn’t been in here since Griffin had gotten Ms. Vasquez, the gym teacher, to let me out of PE permanently, but I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d been in this part of the castle. The bad memory was burned into my memory too deeply to ever forget it.
I remembered being forced to dress out—that is, wear the t-shirt and shorts which was the Nocturne Academy girl’s PE uniform and which showed my scars. To make matters even worse, Ms. Vasquez had made me put my hair back, showing the scarred left side of my face as well. Then she had paraded Megan and me down the field for the whole rest of the PE class to see.
The shame of that moment was permanently burned into my brain—a scar that didn’t show but ached and throbbed just as much as the more visible ones on my skin. I remembered how Pedro Sanchez had called me a freak and hit me in the face with a football on purpose—then laughed about it when I started to cry out of pain and shame.
That had been when Ari first stepped in, I thought, watching his broad back as we made our way through the locker room. He had punched Pedro Sanchez and put him in his place—first defending me and then helping Megan to get me to the Healer’s office. He had wrapped me in his own shirt to help me hide my scars and had stood guard outside my door, refusing to let anyone hurt me.
Was that when his Drake first took notice of me? I wondered as we passed through the door that led out into the broad expanse of green lawn that was the athletic field. It was silvery in the light of the full moon overhead. Was that when he first started to want me?
But want me for what? If he didn’t want to eat me, what use could a huge dragon possibly have for me? Did he think of me as some kind of a pet that he’d picked out and saved from torture or death, the same way a human might pick out the ugliest dog at the pound because it was slated to be put down? Was that how Ari’s Drake saw me?
I supposed I would find out.
The field was dominated by a huge, oval track with a smaller green oval of grass in its center. It was here that Pedro Sanchez had hit me in the face with a football and Ari had punched him. And this was also the place where we came to a halt.
Ari turned to face us and no doubt saw a lot of curious faces. Drakes normally didn’t change in public and I doubted any of our Coven had ever seen what we were about to witness. Of course, he had changed before when he saved me from the Guardian, but at that time, I had been preoccupied with not getting eaten and hadn’t seen anything but the giant reptilian head rising up before me with its long, sharp curving teeth…oh dear.
Don’t think like that—don’t think of it! I ordered myself fiercely. I couldn’t judge Ari’s Drake by my one bad experience with the Guardian and I couldn’t allow my fear of fire to color our first meeting either. This was really important—more important, potentially, that meeting his family.
Because if his mother and father didn’t like me…well, who was I kidding? They most definitely were not going to like me. But the point was, if they didn’t like me, I could live with it. But if Ari’s Drake and I didn’t get along, well—it was like not getting along with Ari himself. They were two halves of the same whole and if I couldn’t get along with one of them, we were going to have trouble.
“I will shift here,” Ari said.
And without ceremony, he started stripping.
We all just stood there, watching as he took off his Nocturne Academy blazer and tie as well as his white cotton shirt, baring his muscular chest. But when he started taking off his trousers, Avery cleared his throat.
“Look, it’s not like you’re not fulfilling a personal fantasy to see a muscular Drake in his skivvies, Ari,” he remarked. “But there are ladies present. Just exactly how much are you going to take off?”
“I will leave my underthings on,” Avery remarked, nodding down at the black boxer-briefs he was still wearing. He had taken off everything else, including his shoes and socks, and folded it all into a neat pile which he set to one side.
“Every time I shift, my much larger Drake form destroys any smaller, human clothing I might be wearing,” he explained. “And since I may need to shift back and speak to Kaitlyn after she meets my Drake, it’s better to keep what I’m wearing intact.”
“Makes sense,” Griffin remarked and we all nodded, though I couldn’t help feeling intimidated by the sight of Ari’s bronze body gilded by the silver moonlight. He looked like a perfect specimen of a man to me—like a statue of a Greek God. I wondered all over again, how someone who looked like him could possibly want someone who looked like me.
And yet, here we were, getting ready to watch him shift because he hoped he could convince me to come with him so I could meet his parents.
It was unreal.
“You had better all stand back a bit,” Ari remarked, looking at us with a frown. “My Drake has considerably more mass
and takes up much more space than I do.”
We all took several hasty steps back and I felt Megan reaching for my hand on one side while Avery did the same on the other.
I grasped my Coven-mates’ hands, grateful for their support. We were all holding hands now and standing in a line as we watched Ari in the moonlight. I wondered what we were about to see and couldn’t help thinking of the hideous way Pedro Sanchez’s face and mouth had distorted when he had done what Ari called “a partial shift” right here on the athletic field. He had looked like he was mutating—like he was turning into a monster.
Was that what I was about to see happening to Ari?
I couldn’t help shivering as I tried to steel myself for such an awful sight.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t like that with Ari at all. In fact, it was completely different.
As I watched Ari, I first saw a shimmering in the air around him. I saw a look of intense concentration coming over his face. And then…then he simply wasn’t there anymore.
In his place was a dragon as big as a barn with eyes as wide and golden as the moon itself.
63
Kaitlyn
I stared at the huge Drake in surprise. Either Ari changed in a different way than I had previously seen with Sanchez, or he had changed so fast that my eyes hadn’t been able to see the shift at all.
It didn’t matter which had happened, the result was the same—a giant creature bigger than an elephant, no, bigger than three elephants put together—was now standing in front of me.
But, no—not standing, I saw as I looked at it with my heart pounding. The Drake was sitting in front of us—sitting very much like a cat with its haunches drawn up to its sides, its front paws tucked under it, and its long tail curled around its legs. Its sail-like wings were furled tight against its massive sides, making it look surprisingly compact.
Fang and Claw: Nocturne Academy, Book 2 Page 24