by Meg Ripley
6
Garrison laughed a little at the astonished yet irritated look on Maren’s face. “You look like you’re going to punch me.”
“I might,” she said with a small nod as she looked down at the snowy ground that swiftly passed beneath them. “Especially if we’re spotted.”
He ignored her comment for the moment, more interested in focusing on something positive and intriguing, like a flight with the only other dragon in the world. “Think about it. For most people, this is as close as they come to ever feeling like they’re truly flying. They have to rely on engineering and gadgetry to get a feeling like this. We can have it anytime we want to. Within reason, of course.”
Her bright blue eyes snapped at his, and Garrison bit his lip when she turned away again. She was a firecracker, quick to anger and determined to have her own way. When she wasn’t fired up about something, though, she showed him a vulnerable side that he wanted so badly to protect. His shoulder blades itched as he imagined wrapping his wings around her to keep her safe.
“I think it’s at least worth a try,” he offered, not wanting her to be angry with him. Garrison didn’t usually mind if someone didn’t like his ideas or didn’t want to do the same things he did, but it was all the more important that he not piss off Maren. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
She twisted her lips as she gazed at the snowy treetops that passed below them. “Everyone realizes that Tahoe Tessie isn’t confined to the lake and they issue an all-out war on us.”
“Everyone?” he questioned. “I bet there’s hardly anyone looking upwards. Humans are always looking down these days. They don’t even watch where they’re going because they’re too busy looking at their cell phones, and I’d be willing to bet there’s not a single person who notices us or makes some sort of report. And even if they do, no one will believe them.”
“Or you’ll just become part of the myth, too.” The light was fading, but he could see a spark of mischief in her eyes. “They’ll bring in all sorts of news crews, scientists, writers, and hunters, and everyone will start believing in dragons again. They’ll be selling your picture in all the gift shops.”
“Right next to yours?” They were so close to each other, and somehow that closeness had eased the burden his body felt when he was anywhere near her. He hardly knew this woman, yet it felt that he’d had some sort of connection to her his entire life. She was beautiful, there was no denying that. She was strong and sassy one moment and yet completely vulnerable the next. His eyes brushed down toward her lips, and he quickly yanked them back up again.
“Quite possibly.”
The lift reached its apex, making them pull their attention away from each other as they hopped off. The last few skiers exited as well, swooping off down the mountain. Garrison thought about how carefree their lives were, at least in that moment as they thought only of getting to the bottom of the hill. This wasn’t even one of the harder slopes, where they’d at least have to worry about breaking an ankle. No, they were completely free to just glide along like nothing else mattered. He could be jealous of them if he wanted to spend the time doing so.
But his attention quickly diverted back to Maren. He was still holding her hand, and the realization of that connection hit him like a bullet. “This way.” He led her away from the ski slopes proper and off across the top of the mountain, working their way upward a little further than the lift had been able to bring them. Garrison was operating on pure instinct now. During the time he’d spent skiing there, he’d just gone along with all the other tourists, riding the chair to the top and then sliding to the bottom, repeating the loop over and over again. His feet knew the way even if his mind wasn’t completely aware. They moved further from the lights and the groomed mountainsides, slipped around a bright orange barrier meant to keep humans from killing themselves, and onto the wilderness that was the mountaintop.
“It’s beautiful up here,” Maren breathed, pausing to look out over the lake.
The last rays of light cast along the water in an inky blue-black, the deep silhouettes of the mountains and trees surrounding it limned in the last bits of the orange hue from the sinking sun. “It’s not much compared to you.”
She turned away, but not before he saw that flush of color in her cheeks.
“I’m not trying to embarrass you.” He hadn’t even meant to say it out loud. It’d just come out, which seemed to be the way things were around her now. “I can’t seem to help what I say when I’m around you. You have a powerful effect on me that I don’t quite understand.”
Maren flicked her gaze at him for just a moment before she turned and continued on their path. “I know the feeling.”
That simple sentence filled Garrison with a sense of relief. He’d known from the moment he’d seen her in the water what he was feeling toward her, even if it wasn’t something he could bring himself to say out loud. But if she was experiencing the same thing he was, then maybe he wasn’t crazy. Perhaps he wasn’t overly excited at the prospect of meeting another dragon, and this woman truly was his mate. If she wasn’t, then he didn’t know what he’d do with himself.
“I think this is just as good of a place as any.” Garrison stopped, knowing they were now out of sight. The two of them could’ve been alone on top of the world, savoring the last evening that would ever be in existence, and he didn’t care as long as he was with her. “Shall we?”
The tip of her tongue flicked out between her lips as she studied the chasm that loomed before them made by the gradient of the mountains down toward the water. “I don’t know. It’s been so long.”
“That’s all right. I’ll be right there with you.” He let go of her hand, as much as it pained him, and took a couple of steps back to give himself the room. Garrison didn’t make a habit of shifting unless it was necessary, and when he did, he tried not to do it in front of anyone else. But he had to find some way of showing her that he could be trusted, that he was truly there for her own good. He pulled in a slow, deep breath and let it out as a sharp puff of air as his skin separated and twisted into thousands of green scales. His wings burst from his back with such force, he wished he could have been undergoing this transformation underwater as he had the last time. As his face stretched and molded to accommodate his reptilian form, he caught a glimpse of the stars overhead that were just beginning their show for the evening. How many other dragons had come before him? Where had they all gone?
A few moments later, he stood before her on the mountaintop. He’d never been particularly ashamed of this form, but he suddenly felt as though he was waiting for her approval. Garrison needed to know that she accepted him this way. He wouldn’t have thought it would matter so much in front of another dragon, but he found that it very much did. Maren was the one person on this planet he knew who had a right to judge him, and he wanted to be deemed worthy.
She stood still for an eternal moment as she studied him, slightly tipping her head to one side. Then she took a step back, and he thought she might leave him standing there on top of that mountain. But instead, Maren shifted. She turned shyly away from him as her body lengthened and strengthened, the fine proportions of her female form turning to the long and sinuous dimensions of a gorgeous female dragoness. Just as they had been in the water, her scales were of the deepest black, matching the sable of the dark wings that unfolded near her shoulders and flapped impatiently in the cool air. Her tail trailed in the snow as her claws dug into it.
Garrison couldn’t even breathe. He wanted to tell her so many things, and once again that ancient urge to speak to her in a language that wasn’t his own took over. He couldn’t make his tongue work with any words, though, and even if he could, he knew there were none to describe her. It wasn’t just her physical beauty, though he certainly appreciated the aesthetic of her current form. It was her existence, down to the blood in her veins, the breath in her lungs, and the very fire that he knew burned inside her.
She saved him from havin
g to say anything by turning toward the water and leaping off the snowy rocks. Her wings snapped out to catch the updraft, and she was airborne.
Garrison took three running steps and then was in the air after her, flying fast and hard to keep up. “I thought you said you were out of practice,” he teased when he was next to her again and the effort of the flight had brought him out of his stupor. “Looks like you’re doing just fine to me.”
“It’s not so different, really.” Her body undulated in the air as they circled out over the water, and she tipped her wings gently to guide her direction.
He’d never seen a dragon in flight from this perspective. Garrison only knew what it felt like to fly, but it was completely different to see it from the outside. He could understand why thousands of generations of humans had been both terrified and fascinated by them. He felt the same way himself, and he couldn’t believe he had the honor of floating there through the air next to her.
“There’s nothing like this where I live,” he said, having to speak up over the noise of the wind. “There are a lot of people in D.C., but it’s so obvious. They’ve put their mark on the land and it’s impossible to miss. But here, it still looks so wild.”
She nodded, a bob of her head that looked like it could be little more than the influence of the wind as they forced their way through it. “It looks that way, but it’s really not. You see some of the lights here and there, but what you don’t see is just how many people are moving around down there. They’re everywhere. They come out here to get away from it all, thinking they want to be alone and one with nature, but they don’t even realize just how many others there are here like them. I guess I envy them in a way. They can’t be alone even when they try.”
Garrison felt a pang in his heart that he knew reflected the one in her own. He could offer her all sorts of platitudes about how sometimes it was good to be alone, or that neither one of them were truly alone now. But that last part would be making a promise to her that Garrison wasn’t sure she’d even want. There was definitely that connection between them, but they had hurdles to get past before they could think about it too much. “And I guess it wasn’t always like that.”
“Not at all.” She wheeled, moving toward the shore. “Right down there, where you see all those stores and restaurants and bonfires on the beach? I used to sit right down there with my grandparents when I was young. At that time, almost no one was here at all. The natives in the area who had spotted us always kept a respectful distance. I don’t know if they understood who or what we were, especially considering that even most people now still don’t understand. We didn’t have to worry about much.”
“Did they ever say anything to you about where the rest of our kind had gone?” It was something Garrison had contemplated over and over again in his lifetime.
Maren didn’t reply at first. “Not really. Grandma just said that we were creatures of an old time, and that the world was changing without us.”
That resonated with what Garrison had known. “I guess I’ve always looked for some definitive answer as to why there are so few of us, especially considering how many other shifters there are. But it’s not like some scientist is going to come along and say exactly why this happened. It’s like we just weren’t made for the world the way it is.” He glanced down at the land below them, wondering how many lives had been lived and lost on that same soil over the millennia.
She let out a sigh. “I shouldn’t think about it so much. In fact, I’d managed not to think about it this much until you came along. You’ve made all those old thoughts resurface.”
“I’d apologize, but I’m not really sorry. Over the years, I’ve started to believe that people come in and out of your life for a purpose, to change the way you’re thinking. I mean, if it hadn’t been for the Force, I might not think about my life as a shifter as anything other than a private secret I can’t tell anyone about. But they’ve really brought it to the forefront of who I am.”
He was no longer touching her, but he could feel some of the tension reignite in her body at the mention of the Force. “And these are also the people who sent you out here to find the vicious murderer and get rid of her?”
“It’s not like that,” he replied quickly. “It’s not like that at all. Yes, that’s who sent me here. But they’re also the people who understand what it means to be someone who doesn’t fit in with the societal norms that have been set down by humans. They know that there aren’t necessarily going to be simple and quick solutions. I don’t think I’ve really told them before how grateful I am to have them. I guess now I’ll have to.”
“And would they agree that I should go with you to talk to the Alphas?” Maren asked quietly.
Garrison had known that eventually they’d need to come back around to that subject. In a way, he had been avoiding it just as much as she had. It was much more entertaining to think about other things, like finding each other. “Yeah, they would. They’d know that even though sometimes a situation takes a lot of firepower and aggression, there are other times when it’s best to just talk it all out. I think they’d support this. In fact, if I thought we needed the backup, they’d come sit down with us.”
For a moment, he thought Maren might ask him to call them and request just that. Instead, she gave that flowing nod again. “All right. I’ll go. You just tell me when.”
They flew together in silence for a long time as darkness enveloped the lake completely. Garrison knew they would only have so much time to do this and pretend to be carefree. He wanted to pull her back down to the ground with him and stare into her eyes, to ask her if she was truly thinking the same things he was, to crush her body close to his and keep it there.
Eventually, when the night sky had turned to the same deep black as Maren’s scales, they turned back for the resort where they’d taken off from. The slopes were completely empty now, the lights were turned off, and the employees had gone home to rest up before doing it all over again the next day. Garrison skidded to a stop on the packed snow, digging his claws in for traction. He pulled in his wings and instinctively folded them away, shrinking his tail with a thought and retracting those useful claws. He caught only a glimpse of Maren in her mixed form, when scales still armored the sides of her cheeks and her neck.
They still didn’t speak as they walked down the hill toward the lodge and cabins. It would’ve been easier to have flown all the way down there, but that was one of the many burdens of being a dragon. The parts of you that were the most convenient were the ones you couldn’t let anybody see.
Garrison was content not to talk as long as he was next to her. He didn’t need to see her as a dragon or feel the flap of her wings in the air. He didn’t need to watch the way her body expertly moved under the water. He just wanted to be close, but he could feel that time coming to an end.
They reached the door of his cabin, but Garrison refused to step up onto the small porch. “Where do you live?” he asked into the silence.
She glanced at the cabin next door. Most of them had their porch lights on, but the guests were either bundled up in front of their fireplaces or still off at one of the tourist traps in town. No one was out there listening to them. “A little further that way, as far out in the middle of nowhere as I can get. My place isn’t much different from yours, really.”
“Sounds like a long walk from here.”
She pressed her lips together. “Some of that depends on how I choose to get there.”
“You could come inside,” he suggested quietly, his muscles tightening as he expected her immediate rejection. “Warm up a little. Talk, or not. Have some hot chocolate. Or whatever you might like.” He was suddenly very concerned about the state he’d left the place in. Had he thrown yesterday’s shirt over the chair instead of putting it in the hamper in the bathroom? Did he even have hot chocolate to offer?
Maren glanced down the hill, her throat bobbing as she swallowed. When she turned back to him, her eyes were sharp. “The
re’s something I’d like to find out first.” Before he could ask what she meant, Maren was in his arms. Her mouth found his in the semi-darkness created by the surrounding porch lights, and his hands cupped the gentle curves of her waist.
Garrison felt his inner dragon reawaken, shaking and demanding to know what he was doing in his human form. It surged through him and shot electricity through the back of his tongue as Maren’s body pressed against his. His eyes closed as he focused on the way she felt, the smell of her skin, the brush of her hair against his cheek.
Her lips parted against his, and his tongue took the chance of darting between those fleshy gates to see what lay on the other side. They twined and twisted together as they explored each other’s mouths, and the rest of the world was gone.
Gently, she pulled back. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her lips still only a fraction of an inch from his own. “I just had to see if…”
“There’s no need to explain,” he assured her, pressing his forehead against hers. Garrison had been with other women before. He’d been turned on and excited before. This was nothing like that. This was so much more than a chemical reaction. Garrison felt her living and breathing inside him, and if she left now, he’d never be the same again. “Come inside.”
She knew, as he did, that this wasn’t just an invitation for drinks. Maren nodded and followed him through the door.
As soon as Garrison shut it behind her, he sprang into action. He turned on a few soft lights, lit the fire and set out mugs. He invited her to take off her shoes and make herself comfortable, and then he offered her the soft throw blanket from the back of the couch in case she’d caught a chill. He’d been through overseas invasions and military coups, but it was now, when he had a beautiful woman sitting in his cabin, that he felt such a deep sense of panic.