by Ashlee Sinn
I would tell Zane everything when the time was right. Hopefully that would be soon because the guilt was tearing me up from the inside. But as I listened to him singing to himself while the elk sausage sizzled on the griddle, I decided that I would take it one step at a time and let the right moment reveal itself.
My dragon would guide me through this. I knew she would. I just hoped Zane could accept that she usually worked on her own schedule.
God dammit if I couldn’t stop smiling. Being with Danika in this little private oasis was better than I could have ever imagined. Not only had she submitted to me, claiming me as she said, but she was happy and free and not uptight anymore. We’d had a wonderful evening eating most of the food and fucking in every room of the cabin. And it was a rather large cabin.
My bear rumbled with content. Sure, we’d had our share of human groupies along the way, but this was something different. This was something real. I’d never felt so connected and close to another living thing.
I wanted to protect Danika from all horrors in this world.
Which is why I’d snuck out of bed on our second evening here to call on my grizzly.
For weeks, he’d been under my skin but subdued. He didn’t like it any more than I did. Being able to show himself with one body part at time was not only disgraceful but also painful for us both. Something had to give and I was determined that tonight was going to be the night.
Danika and I had noticed several lights across the lake earlier, indicating there were humans nearby. So, I ran for thirty minutes into the nearby forest hoping I’d be free from prying eyes and ears.
It had been one hour now. One hour since I’d stripped out of my clothes and sat on the ground waiting for something to happen. The moon shone brightly against the dark night sky but not a hint of my animal rose to the surface. Until something skittered in the valley below. A herd of elk, stepping quietly through the brown grass had no idea a predator sat above them waiting for his chance. Or at least that’s what I was encouraging my bear to do.
Hunt them! I screamed inside. You are an animal!
Nothing.
Fine! You want to play, we’ll play.
I hunched forward and squeezed my eyes shut. I could force a change if I had to, I knew I could. And since my asshole bear wouldn’t come forward to protect the woman I loved, I would rip him to the surface one hair at a time if I had to.
The scent of elk wafted past my nose, a growl rumbling inside. Ah, there he was. Now, I just needed him to—
“Ah!” I screamed in pain when my wrist popped and cracked and started to widen. “No! All of you! I want all of you!”
Through gritted teeth I fought against my animal. I knew he was still in there, whole and eager, but dammit if those stupid injections hadn’t interrupted all that was natural. I watched in horror as my entire left arm started to change. First the bones snapped and then my muscles twitched. Hair sprouted in thick clumps of reddish-brown fur, the rest of the skin bare like I’d been burned.
“No!” I shouted at my uncooperative appendage. “You will not change this way!”
More pain ripped through my body as other individual pieces of me let the bear come through. But I fought them. I fought them hard. If it wasn’t my whole animal, then I didn’t want him.
The snap of my femur dropped me to my hands and knees. “Fu-u-u-ck!” Tears stung at my eyes, the pain unbearable as it raced through my blood like poison. “No! No! No!” The shouting wasn’t my own—my voice had turned into something stuck in between the human and the bear. I was a freak, and I had a sickening fear that I would always be a freak and never be fully healed again.
“Zane?”
I whipped my head around to see Danika stepping out from behind the tree line. She moved slowly, tentatively, fearful of approaching me too quickly. Good, she should stay away. I was a monstrous freak who didn’t deserve something as amazing as her.
“Go away,” I groaned. My leg popped again and I crushed my face into the ground to prevent from screaming out. Digging my fingers and partial claws into the dirt, I let the tiny pieces of stone cut into my flesh in an attempt distract me from the pain. Danika’s hand on my back made me flinch, but I didn’t lift my head.
“Zane, what’s happening?” Her voice was laced in fear and worry, yet something about it helped pull me from the pit of despair.
“I can’t find him. I can’t find my full animal.” Now it was my back that popped and snapped. I knew my muscles would have been convulsing like the ebb and flow of the tides. But when Danika touched me again, it seemed to settle for a moment. I looked up into her red eyes and slit pupils in awe. “What did you just do?”
She bit her lip, as though she didn’t want to answer. “Do you want to get your bear back?”
“Of course.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
She gave me a small smile and helped me off the ground. As her warmth extended from her grasp, my body parts slowly and carefully slipped back into their human form. Amazed and wondering if this was really happening, I asked, “Danika, what are you doing?”
Sucking in a deep breath, she looked up at the stars while guiding me down the hill that led to another smaller lake. “Do you know anything about dragon legends?”
That caught me off guard and I tripped on a small rock when I stared at her. “Um, they protect castles, breath fire, and hoard treasure.”
She let out a small laugh. “Yes, that sums up the legends. But do you know anything about dragon shifters?”
“Babe, I didn’t even know they existed until a month ago.”
“Fair enough. Well, dragons are born with an affinity to an element.”
“Like gold or silver?”
She smiled up at me and I loved the way her dragon eyes no longer frightened me. “No, like the original elements—water, air, fire, earth. They give us a sort of…power.” Shaking her head, she helped me down the rocky bank of the small mountain lake. I stumbled over a few boulders before finding my footing again. “My element is water.”
“So you like to swim?”
With a chuckle, she stepped into the water’s edge. “No, well, I mean yes. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Come on.” She waved me into the water with her.
Trusting her completely, I followed and clasped her outstretched hand. The ice-cold temperature should have elicited a small scream, but I stayed quiet and focused on Danika.
“I can use water to…I don’t know how to explain it exactly. To amplify my dragon magic.”
“You have dragon magic?” I teased. “Like Kenzie or Marcus?”
“No, it’s not a true power like the witches and warlocks. But it allows me to have better control over nature. Including animals.”
It took me a while to understand what she was hinting at. “Wait, are you saying you can control my bear?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that right now. It would be great if she could help me, but I had an uneasy feeling about the fact that the dragons had never exposed this little secret before.
“Relax, Zane,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s not what you think.” She started to walk deeper into the lake. “Please, come with me.”
“Danika, I don’t know and this water is freezing.”
“Don’t be a baby.” She was now standing waist deep in the lake, fully clothed and seemingly oblivious to the temperature. Waving her hands out to the side, she let them sway back and forth across the surface. “It’s so quiet here,” she whispered.
Swallowing down my fear of…well, whatever was about to happen, I joined her side. And when I did, she grabbed my arm and pulled me closer. Her heat immediately warmed me up and as I looked into her glowing red eyes, I found myself mesmerized once again.
“I want you to call to him, Zane.”
“My bear?”
“Yes. Call him forward.”
I ground my teeth together, trying not to get angry at her. “That’s what I’ve been doing all n
ight.”
“Shh,” she said, rubbing my arm. “Don’t get anxious. Just ask him nicely to join us.”
Ask him nicely? I had to stop my impending eye roll. Okay, I would ask him nicely. I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath, trying to calm my anxiety. I felt him twinge underneath all the pressure, but he was in there and he was just as curious as me.
Danika touched my arms and I flinched again. “Keep your eyes closed, Zane. And slow your breathing. This will work better if you can let the human side go.”
How was I supposed to do that? I felt my heart rate increase as I stressed about letting the human disappear. But I tried. I tried really hard to let Danika’s words sink into my bones and coax the grizzly forward.
“Good, now let him have your skin, Zane.” Danika rubbed her hands from my shoulders to my wrists. Over and over she touched me, soothing me and my breath at the same time. “Let him have your skin,” she cooed.
I focused on her hands caressing me and pushed down the last of the anxiety. And the moment I did, my grizzly raced to the surface, begging to be set free. I stumbled backward, falling into the water as I tried to move away from Danika. I didn’t want to hurt her. “Go away!” I shouted at her.
“Zane, don’t fight him.” Her voice had changed to something deep and powerful, but she didn’t understand what I was saying.
“No, you! Get out of the way—ah!” My scream shifted into a roar when my bear came forward. And it wasn’t just my hand, or arm, or leg. No, my full and beautiful animal that I’d had in me since birth, rushed to the surface and landed in the water with a splash. He roared into the night air, celebrating a victory and finally owning his skin.
Danika smiled at me but kept her distance. The tears in her eyes shimmered under the moonlight as she dropped her arms and dipped below the surface. I raced after her, wondering if she was hurt. Did magic make her tired like it did to Kenzie? Had she used too much of it to try and save me? What if she was sick?
I stuck my head beneath the surface looking for her but finding nothing but darkness. When I took a breath of air, I roared again, calling to my mate. Danika’s head full of dark hair emerged, blowing away the water as though a dolphin in her own surface. She smiled, white teeth evidence of her happiness, until she saw my face. “Zane?”
I shook my head and huffed. I’m fine, I told her. Just don’t disappear again.
As though understanding my thoughts, she waded through the water toward me until standing in front of my face. She grabbed the fur on sides of my cheeks and pressed her nose against my snout. “I was just using the water to reenergize,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
I blew out a small puff of air into her face and before she could pull away, I licked her cheek. She fell back into the water and giggled, splashing me several times. “That’s gross,” she shouted.
I jumped up and down on my front legs, creating a ruckus of small waves and splashes that reached Danika. She laughed as I circled her, teasing her like a boy who liked a girl. And I certainly did like this girl She’d freed my bear. Freed me. And I never wanted to feel so trapped ever again.
My bear made me run. He had to run after being stuck for so long. Grizzlies weren’t meant to be caged, and as soon as my giant feet hit the shoreline, we took off at a sprint. Over and under the branches we dodged until whipping around to the left and running through the vast valley. The elk fled. The racoons and other nocturnal creatures scattered. But whether that was from me or from the massive dragon flying overhead, I didn’t know.
Danika’s wings brushed close to my back—close enough that the wind trailing out behind them knocked me off balance. I swear I heard her rumble a laugh as she grazed my back with her hind legs and I barked up into the air. My red grizzly was fast, faster than most of the others in the clan, but Danika had me beat by half a mile. When she settled onto the grassland, her wings made a snapping sound as she tucked them behind her back. And then she turned and waited for me to join her.
Dwarfing me, her dark blue scales glistened under the stars, her head resting higher than the tops of the trees. We grizzlies were in charge out here in Alaska, but now that Danika Drakov, the last female dragon, had joined our group, we had nothing to brag about anymore.
I shifted back into my human form, desperate to see her through those eyes. She watched and waited as I walked around her. And when I lifted my hand to gesture for her head, she complied and crouched down to the ground. Small horns protruded from the top of her skull all the way down her back. Her large nostrils puffed lightly while I rubbed the snake-like skin under her eyes. “You’re beautiful,” I said. “I had no idea…” My voice trailed off when she rested her head on her front feet like a dog. I wrapped my hands around her neck, not even coming close to touching the whole thing, and kissed a scale. Then an idea rushed to my brain.
“Hold on!” I shouted, already running back into the trees. I emerged a few minutes later carrying some fallen branches and throwing them into a pile. Danika watched while I snapped them into pieces, thankful I had my strength back. In fact, I felt better than ever—as though the bear had restored all of those last human parts of me that refused to heal.
I owed everything to the stunning dragon sitting behind me now.
When I finished building us a bonfire, I pointed at it and said, “Okay, you’re turn.” Danika raised a brow, or the muscle in her face above her eye, if that was even called a brow on a dragon. Either way, it was a sign that she didn’t understand. “Light my fire, baby!” I sang, pointing to the brush. “Come on baby, light my fire.”
Danika groaned, obviously not appreciating my shout-out to The Doors. But she pushed to her feet, nudged me to the side, and drew in a deep breath. A second later flames shot from her open mouth and instantly started the fire that would keep us warm for a while.
Once the fire burned bright and I added a few more thick branches, Danika shifted back to her human form. I immediately rushed to her side, craving those plush lips and needing to feel them against me.
She muffled a laugh as I attacked her and then tucked her head against my chest. “He came back,” she whispered, referring to my bear.
“He did, thanks to you.”
I kissed the top of her hair and let the fire warm us both. I had the most feared shifter in the world by my side. My bear had returned. And I had a mate.
I didn’t care what was waiting for us at home because I knew that the two of us together would survive anything.
I should tell him. As the fire started to dwindle and Zane rushed into the forest for another hunk of wood, the guilt started churning in my gut. Now that his bear was back, I should tell him.
“Tell me what?” Zane asked as he hefted a log, or really, half a tree, into the flames and sat back down by my side. I’d retrieved our clothes thanks to my flight skills and we’d made a blanket out of them.
“Huh?” I said, turning my head to study him.
“You said that you should tell me.”
“I said that out loud?”
Zane chuckled and pulled me close. “Um, yeah. Are you losing your mind?” He was teasing, but I couldn’t play along. He immediately sensed it and looked at my eyes. “Wait. What’s going on?”
I jumped to my feet, needing to move as I told him the news about my father. He watched me closely, eyes focusing on mine and then on the dragon tattoo that always seemed to have a life of its own when I was upset. “I need to tell you something. About my father.”
“Okay…” he drawled.
“Promise to let me finish before asking anything, all right?”
He nodded and that was my cue.
“My father owns New Life Scientists laboratories,” I rushed out in one breath. “I just found out two days ago when he took me from your house. And I’ve been sick with guilt over not telling you sooner. But I didn’t know how to tell you if your bear would never come back and I just…I just…” I couldn’t finish. The sobs caught in my throat broke
free and I fell into Zane’s outstretched arms. “I am so sorry, Zane. So sorry.”
He rubbed my back and stroked my hair until I could breathe again. Showing a strength I didn’t realize he had, I let him hold me in silence as he thought through his next words.
“Why?” he finally asked. “Why is he torturing shifters?”
I pulled away again, ashamed even though it wasn’t my fault. “He’s doing it for me.”
“I don’t understand.” The timber in his voice deepened, the bear closer to the surface than just a moment ago.
“He wants to give me, the Drakovs, a dragon child.”
Zane sucked in a breath. “How?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know exactly, but I think he’s trying to figure out how to genetically manipulate a human to almost be a shifter so that he can use them to give me a dragon.”
“Oh, my god,” Zane whispered. “That’s insane.”
“It is. He is.”
“Danika, we have to stop him. He can’t keep experimenting on shifters and then expect you to be ready for his science project at his beck and call. No! We have to stop him!”
I felt Zane’s animal just underneath the surface of his skin. But I didn’t want him to change. No, I needed him in human form so I could tell him my solution. I dropped to my knees in front of him and squeezed his face tightly between my hands. “Shh, Zane, it’s okay. I have a plan.”
“You do?” His eyes glowed a golden yellow-green in the night, but he fought to keep his bear under control.
“My father wants to put a dragon baby inside of me. But it won’t work. Not when there isn’t another dragon male and not if I’m already carrying.” I held my breath…waiting for a response.
Zane shook his head and sat back away from me. “Wait, what?”