by Ann Gimpel
Welcome your bondmate.
“How?” she stared up at him.
“Can you hear me?” he tried telepathy. She didn’t respond, so he scraped a hind foot over his first message and wrote:
TALK OUT LOUD. ASK HER TO BECOME ONE WITH YOU.
Erin nodded and stood tall, opening her arms to the sides. “Konstantin says you are close. I want to become like him, a dragon shifter. I have a lot to learn, but I am willing.”
Konstantin waited. Her entreaty had sounded genuine to him, but nothing happened. He projected his mind voice to the dragon. “I wish to meet you. Show yourself and bond with her.”
“No. What she said isn’t good enough. She views this as a chore. Something necessary, but not wanted.”
He wrested the upper hand from his dragon and forced a shift. He needed his vocal chords, not writing in the dirt. Shifting fast took a toll, and he was panting by the time he stood next to her.
“Am I doing something wrong?” she asked.
He nodded, working to catch his breath. “The dragon is here, but she senses your ambivalence. Remember when I told you that you had to want this with every fiber of your being? No doubts? No looking back?”
“Yes, I remember, but how can I do that?” She sounded forlorn. “I’m foreswearing everything that ever meant everything to me. It’s not easy.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever is.” He did a quick and dirty sorting within himself and opted for honesty. “I’ve been selfish. I want you to become like me because I want you as my mate. I pushed that reason to the top of my agenda, but it has no place there. Every dragon is needed to fight sea-serpents. That is what should be primary. I care about Earth, but nothing like you do. My motivation is to annihilate the serpents.”
“I understand. You and Katya were planning to leave Earth, anyway.”
“Yes, we were. Back to my soul-baring, we can cavort in bed all we want with you humans, but you can never stand by my side through eternity unless you’re a dragon shifter and we’re mated. A forever proposition.”
Her eyes widened. Through teeth that were starting to chatter, she said, “Mate, as in be married? When you said it before, I assumed you just meant make love.”
“Yes. Mate as in married.”
Erin surged forward and he held her. She needed warmth and comfort and reassurance. “I—I’m honored, I think, but we barely know one another,” she murmured.
“That, my dear, is a purely human convention. Magical beings know when their mates appear. You’re mine.”
“I’d love to swallow that one whole, but I need to think about it.”
He stroked her hair, grateful she wasn’t shivering as hard. “Of course, you do. Besides, that’s not why we’re here.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed and stepped out of his arms. “I don’t suppose mating with you is sufficient reason for the dragon either, is it? I have to want her for herself, not for what she’ll buy for me.”
He nodded. “Exactly. This is one of many reasons I’m so taken with you. You’re quick-witted and insightful.”
She offered a lopsided smile. “Idle flattery, but keep it coming. Let me try again. Not because of the prospect of becoming your mate but because magic is starting to grow on me. The more I see of it, the more I want to be able to do it myself.”
“Good reason.” He gripped her hand. “You must be sure about me. If you mate with me, we shall be bound inextricably.”
She drew back, freeing her hand. “No divorce?”
He shook his head. “No. We mate for life, which turns out to be forever.”
“Which is why I need time to think about it. Making a mistake would be awful—for both of us.”
Konstantin nailed her with his gaze. “It’s precisely why your dragon is holding back. That bond is permanent as well, and she needs you to be certain of your choice.”
Erin turned away and knelt, hands clasped in supplication. When she spoke, her voice was clear and strong. “I agree I wasn’t fully on board a little while ago. I’ve done the best I can to clear my doubts. It will take time for us to get to know one another, and I’m hoping you’ll teach me how to be a good bondmate to you. I’m a decent doctor, but I studied years to become one. It will take a long time before I’m a partner you can be proud of, but I’m not a quitter. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this work. I want to become a dragon shifter. Please. Bond with me.”
Konstantin waited. She’d meant every word, and if they weren’t enough, he had no idea what would be. He should have told her how important it was not to allow the dragon to gain the upper hand, but it could wait until after she was bonded. If the dragon believed it could run the show, it might be more willing to establish a bond.
As he’d already told Erin, precisely like mating, dragon shifter bonds were eternal.
He cleared his mind and prayed to Y Ddraigh Goch, asking the god to encourage the dragon to take a chance on Erin. The permanency of the arrangement made dragons skittish.
The air turned a brilliant red around where Erin knelt, glowing hotly. At first, she smiled and reached both arms upward, but then she began to scream. Horrible, tortured cries rang from her.
He sprang forward, intent on placing his body between her and whatever was causing her to shriek as if her body were being stretched across a rack. Before he took two steps, his dragon forced a shift, fire shooting from his mouth in a cascade of heat and smoke and ash.
“Remain where you stand.” Y Ddraigh Goch’s deep voice was unmistakable. “You wanted this. You prayed to me for it, and now you must allow it to run its course.”
Another gut-wrenching groan burbled from Erin. Blood shot from her mouth, staining her chin and dripping down her naked chest. She clawed at her hair, tearing out clumps of it. Her body twisted at unnatural angles, the snap of bones painfully clear as the dragon attempted to launch its much larger form, borrowing from Erin’s along the way.
“Will she survive?” Konstantin asked, aghast at the spectacle unwinding in front of him.
“I do not know,” the god replied.
“Has any human come through this transformation?”
Y Ddraigh Goch didn’t reply.
His dragon rampaged, wanting freedom from his will. Maybe it could see the other dragon and aimed to take it on in combat. But his god had ordered him not to intervene. Heart breaking within his scaled chest, Konstantin offered what support he could, which wasn’t a whole hell of a lot from several meters away.
If he’d known…
If I’d known, then what? he asked himself bitterly, but no answers came beyond harsh knowledge he’d been a fool to break one of dragonkind’s cardinal rules: Never intervene in human affairs.
He had, and the shattered heap of bones barely clinging to life was the result. If she died, forfeited on the altar of his hubris, it would be a grim lesson. One that would mark him for the rest of his days.
Chapter 14
At first, I was certain my last gambit worked. I felt dragon energy closing from all sides. Different from Konstantin’s or Katya’s, yet now that I knew what it felt like, it was definitely another dragon. I opened myself as much as I could, heart, mind, and soul, and thought only of the dragon.
I’d been blown away, flustered and pleased and scared to death by Konstantin’s assertion about wanting me for his wife. Or mate. Or however dragons described such things. On the one hand, it was heady and alluring. On the other, it was one more nail in the “I’ll never be human again” coffin.
But I wouldn’t, or I wouldn’t be here on my knees in the freezing cold subjugating myself and doing my damnedest to be worthy of the dragon I had yet to lay eyes on. What color would she be? How big? Were all of them old? How about the ones born bonded? Did they grow up right along with their human sides?
I swept all of it aside. If this was successful, I’d have several lifetimes to find answers for all my questions. Something about that last mind-clearing seemed to do the trick. The dragon energy I’d fel
t pulsing closer and closer, ripe with the smells of hearth fires and sunbaked herbs, dropped around me like a shroud.
I couldn’t breathe, but I told myself I was imagining it.
Until whatever swathed me pressed closer and closer. No longer soft and yielding, it was as hard as sheets of steel. And it kept right on tightening, choking the life out of me.
I screamed while I still had breath as a cry for help, but the next yowls were spontaneous. I hurt. Everywhere. My body was being torn into a million pieces, tied to four horses and drawn and quartered. Keelhauled off an ancient schooner. The latter was accurate since breathing was such a battle my vision, what was left of it, grayed at the edges, hazing over.
From a long way off, I heard the distinctive sound of bones snapping, and then I realized they were mine. Pain is a funny thing. The mind can only experience so much of it. Ramping up the sensations doesn’t make you hurt any more. By now, I’d heard both thigh bones snap, a few ribs, and maybe two of my neck vertebrae.
Agony shot through me again and again. All the times I’d casually asked patients to rate their pain on a scale of one to ten were a fucking, bloody ass joke. Mine was at a million, and it just kept on rolling. Red-hot pokers jabbed me from all sides. I tasted blood. Had I spit it up from damaged lungs? Or had I bitten through my cheek or my lip?
Did it even matter?
“Kill me,” I moaned. I’d moved past shrieking. It took energy I no longer had. “Just kill me and get it over with. I’m dead, anyway.”
“You selfish bitch,” reverberated through my head. “I did not go to all this trouble to have you give up and die on me. Fight through this. I’m waiting at the other end.”
Great. I was hallucinating.
“Go away. Let me die,” I mumbled.
“Be very sure, human, before you send me away.”
I blinked through a mosaic of red. Must be petechial hemorrhages in my retinas. Useless knowledge, but stubborn as hell. It wouldn’t go away. My inner doctor voice kept right on cataloguing every malfunction even as my body edged toward death.
It was not why I’d gone to medical school.
Something formed across my visual field. Random neurons firing from my dying brain. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the thing grew clearer. Dragonesque. Brilliant red, shining from an unidentifiable light source.
“I am here.” Fire flowed from the dragon’s mouth like a lazy lava flow. “Reach for me. I cannot do this for you.”
The last of the bonds tethering me to my body dissolved. The pain, constant, grinding, gnashing, scraping may have ebbed the tiniest bit. Understanding whipped me across my abraded face and kept right on flogging my broken body. I was right about the Grim Reaper, sickle and all, standing by. This was a fight to the death, but I had a choice.
My dragon was here. She was waiting. Not nicely or patiently, but she hadn’t left.
Not yet.
The only way I’d survive was if I dropped every barrier, including the ones I’d erected against pain, and invited her into my body so I could become her. The process or transition or whatever it was had progressed to the point where if I couldn’t complete it, I would die.
No, I am dying, I corrected myself. No one lost as much blood as I had or broke as many bones and survived. How that would bode for what was left of Erin Ryan remained to be seen.
But I couldn’t worry about her.
I had one task, and it was to complete my transformation, turn into the red dragon. I couldn’t do it by rational means. I threw everything wide open, ignoring pain spikes that threatened to rob me of consciousness.
“I want this,” I cried. “Make it happen.”
Being bathed in fire couldn’t have felt worse. Every undamaged neuron screeched in protest. A few more bones shattered, but dragon energy moved from around me to inside. What was left of my shattered body swelled, took on new form. The pain, so intense it was unbearable, ended abruptly, leaving me opening and closing my mouth like a landed fish.
Except it wasn’t my mouth. Not anymore. Rows of teeth clanged together. I peeled my eyes open to a very different vista than what I’d seen before. For one thing, I was at least two feet taller, perhaps as much as three. My vision held a layered aspect, nothing like the view through my human eyes. A quick glance revealed red scales. When I twisted my head atop its long, sinuous neck, I spied wings neatly folded across my back.
When I opened my mouth, fire spewed forth, and I hastily averted my head to avoid hitting a wonderful old tree.
Konstantin lumbered into view, or maybe he’d been right next to me all along. Fire streamed from his mouth too, and he angled his head until his cheek brushed mine, the scales clanking and catching. “Damn it, Erin. You’re all right. I was frightened for you and guilty because all this was my fault.”
Within me, I became aware of a second consciousness—the dragon’s. She wasn’t pleased. Three bugles, rife with rebuke shot from my mouth. I wanted to talk, but I had no idea how to manage it. I tried thinking, “My dragon says you should have had more faith in her.”
And waited.
“Not quite,” Konstantin said. “I know you’re trying to talk, but it didn’t come through. First, hold me in your thoughts. Next, think your words slowly. Try it.”
I followed his instructions and repeated the same sentence.
This time, he nodded. “She is absolutely correct.”
I took a few tentative steps, first to one side and then to the other. I unfurled my wings. Running my gaze over them, I did a few hasty physics equations and decided they’d be inadequate to move my current bulk off the ground.
My dragon didn’t care for my line of reasoning. I felt a heavy urge to fly, but I wasn’t ready. Not ten minutes ago, I’d been certain I was dead.
“You must learn to trust me.” My dragon’s voice, now that I could listen to her without a mist of pain altering everything, was deep and rich, a pleasant contralto.
“What if we fall out of the sky?” I countered.
“Pfft.” More fire blasted skyward. “It wasn’t looking promising a little bit ago, but you’re a dragon shifter now. I am your dragon. We are bonded. It cannot be undone. Do not make me sorry I took a chance on you.”
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Yes, but you couldn’t pronounce it, and it isn’t important. We are going to fly. This is what we were born for, and you will love it. Our dragon body is ungainly on land, but ideally suited for flight.”
“I was listening in,” Konstantin said. “Apologies to both of you for taking that liberty. Flying is an excellent idea, but not for very long this first time.”
A critical roar rang from me. Apparently my dragon didn’t like it when Konstantin told it what to do.
Still riddled with ambivalence, I considered flying. Even if I’d suddenly joined the ranks of the immortal, it would still hurt like hell to hit the ground from a hundred feet up. My pain quotient was overfull for today.
“This is one time when you can allow your dragon to take the lead,” Konstantin told me. “You may as well. She won’t back down on this. Flight is your birthright.”
Smoke puffed from my open jaws. I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my new alter ego back until I withdrew my mental control over us both. Much like an observer in the back seat of a car, I watched while we trudged to a clearer spot. Konstantin took to the skies first, black wings beating the air to gain altitude.
Next it was my turn. Damn, but it was hard not to batten down the hatches again. To exert what felt like fragile restraint over the two of us. I reminded myself how much I’d always loved flying. My dragon must have been privy to all my thoughts, which was odd since I had no idea what she was thinking. Regardless, once she soaked in that I enjoyed the sensation of flight, our wings shot out to the sides, flapped a few times, and we took off.
Unlike my expectation we’d lumber down the corridor between old gnarled trees like a plane that hadn’t bothered to check weight and balance figh
ting a stiff crosswind, we soared smoothly into the air with nary a hiccup.
The dragon swooped and banked and flew figure-eights. After the first few minutes, I stopped being afraid we’d succumb to gravity and end up squashed like bugs, and started enjoying the sensation of air flowing beneath my—our?—wings.
“Well?” The question came from my dragon.
“This is wonderful. I love it, but I’m tired.”
“That’s because we’re hungry,” she told me.
Konstantin had been flying next to us, mirroring our aerial ballet. “Food will be just the thing,” he agreed.
My dragon trumpeted and swooped so low one of our wings clipped an overgrown clump of bushes. We landed abruptly next to a lake that showed up out of nowhere. Next thing I knew, we’d lumbered into it until the water came halfway up our chest.
“Listen through my ears,” she told me.
I quieted the riot in my head and focused my hearing. Swooshing sounds came from beneath the dark water. Before I could comment, the dragon dipped slightly and came up with a fat, wriggling fish in one taloned foreleg. She popped it into our mouth and taste exploded on our tongue. Scales and salty blood and delicate tender meat.
We ate three more before Konstantin bugled from the bank.
My dragon was busy chewing and swallowing, so I experimented with re-establishing control over our shared body. It wasn’t too hard, so I turned and bugled back. He’d located something rather like a beaver or marmot or other mid-sized rodent, and it hung half in and half out of his mouth.
“Long enough for your first time,” he told me.
“It is not,” my dragon lodged a protest and did its damnedest to turn our body back around.
Damn. She was really strong, but I had a feeling if I let her win I’d regret it, so I pushed through the water, intent on reaching the shore. The muddy bottom sucked at my huge hind feet, but I plodded along. After the first half dozen steps, it grew easier.
Almost as if the dragon didn’t want to engage in a pitched battle over something that wasn’t very important.