by Eva Chase
I nodded. All thoughts of bedroom-type activities faded into the back of my mind behind a jittering of anticipation. I didn’t know what was waiting for us in the mountains, but based on the way Mom had talked in the vision she’d left for me, I was sure this was the end of the path. I’d have my answers soon.
Aaron turned the car toward the mountain with the dual peaks, the one that matched the carving on the obelisk. The carving had shown a flame between those peaks as well. I guessed that was how the sun must look as it rose and flared between them. And maybe the image hinted at the power Mom had said was hidden there.
“You’ve done all that reading into shifter history,” I said to Aaron. “Do you have any idea what kind of ‘power’ my mother could have been talking about?”
He shook his head. “The dragon shifters have always kept some things to themselves. It’s such a close bond, from mother to daughters over the centuries, just that one line that all of shifter-kind revolves around. It makes sense that they’d have their secrets.”
Such a close bond. Mom and I had always been close, for sure. We’d only had each other the nine years we’d lived in hiding together in New York City.
But we hadn’t bonded over our dragon shifter natures. She’d locked all my memories of that part of our lives away, along with my powers. They were only just starting to trickle back in. I had to assume she’d only been trying to protect me, but now that I needed my powers, I couldn’t help wishing she’d found another way.
A nagging sensation crept over my skin as the road rose to follow the slope of the mountain. It was more than anticipation now. A faint pull tugged me toward the slope, urging me upward. As if I were being called by someone who knew me and wanted to welcome me back.
“Dragon shifters do seem to have excellent taste in dramatic scenery,” Marco remarked behind me. The high mountain range that surrounded Sunridge spilled out all around us, starkly majestic.
The road wove back and forth as it climbed the mountain, and then veered sharply to the left. We’d only driven a few seconds longer when the faint pull I’d felt turned into a pinching tug.
“Stop,” I said. Aaron glanced over at me and hit the brake.
“Did you see something?” he said
“Not yet, but there’s something here. I can feel it.”
He pulled onto the shoulder a short distance along the road, where a low fence surrounded an overlook. I hopped out of the SUV the second it had stopped moving. My sneakers thudded against the pavement as I hurried across the road. I followed the steep rock face on the other side back to the sharp left we’d taken.
Here. The pull urged me upward. I gripped the uneven surface of the rock and hauled myself up the steep slope. I might not have full command of my shifting abilities yet, but I’d had a shifter’s strength and agility with me my entire life.
After what would be a quick scramble up the rock face, the slope evened out. A shallow hollow ran through the stone, slanting slightly upward. The second my gaze rested on that hollow, the nagging sensation crept deeper, into my lungs.
That was our path. I knew it down to my bones.
My alphas had gathered at the edge of the road beneath me. I jumped back down. The exhilaration of the leap wasn’t quite as thrilling now that I’d experienced actual flight. Damn, I couldn’t wait to get back into dragon form. It was too bad I’d only been able to hold it for a few minutes that first time. I’d have to work on my endurance.
“We need to go that way,” I said, pointing. “Farther up the mountain.”
West eyed the slope and grimaced. “Good thing we’re only bringing the one tent.”
Marco gave him a light punch to the shoulder. “Quit grumbling and help me pack up, wolf boy.”
My heart sank a bit as they sauntered back to the SUV. All four of them were following this path for me, because I said it was important. But I really didn’t have a clue what was waiting for us up there.
“I don’t know how far we’ll have to go,” I said. “It could be a long trek.”
“We’re prepared for that,” Aaron said with a reassuring smile. “Your mother led us here for a reason.”
Nate squeezed my shoulder. “We all believe in you, Ren. Even West, no matter how grouchy he’s being about it. Your instincts won’t lead us wrong.”
I turned toward the tallest of my alphas, drawn to the solid heat of his body. Nate seemed to know exactly what I needed. He wrapped his brawny arms around me in a hug, ducking his head next to mine.
The brush of his cheek against my temple set a flare of a completely different kind of need through me. I eased back just enough to raise my head and bring my lips to his.
Nate leaned into the kiss, returning it firmly but tenderly. The heat of him washed right through my entire body. Oh, yes, a very large part of me was looking forward to getting completely acquainted with all of my guys.
But now was obviously not the time for that. I kissed him one more time, hard enough that he rumbled with pleasure deep in his chest, and then I made myself step back. My cheeks were flushed, but I suddenly felt twice as steady.
“Let’s get our gear and get going.”
CHAPTER 2
Ren
SEVERAL HOURS UP THE TRAIL, I was starting to wonder if we’d really needed to bring quite so much stuff. I could survive without a sleeping bag, right? Who needed changes of clothes? What good was food? I knew the guys had given me the lightest pack, and it still felt like there was a ton of bricks weighing on my shoulders.
Apparently I needed to work on that endurance thing in more than just the shifting department. I hadn’t had the opportunity to get a whole lot of practice mountain-trekking in NYC.
I didn’t want to look like a wimp when my alphas were striding along like the effort was nothing, so I gritted my teeth and kept walking. But I couldn’t say I was upset when Aaron paused and touched one of the walls of rock that had gradually been rising on either side of us. They loomed over the path now, not so high they blocked out the sinking sun, but enough that there was no hope of taking a shortcut out.
“There’ve been fae up here,” Aaron said.
“What?” West pushed past Nate to stride over. Aaron pointed to a mark in the smooth rock—a couple of intersecting lines with a glow so faint I wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t drawn my attention. West’s shoulders tensed. The rest of us drew closer.
“It looks old,” Marco said. “They haven’t charged that any time recently.”
“Charged?” I repeated.
“With magic.” He waved his hand toward the lines. “The fae are big fans of making things shiny.”
“So by fae, we’re talking... fairies, right?” I guessed if shifters and vampires were real, there was no reason Tinkerbell shouldn’t be too.
West cut his gaze toward me. “Just like we’re a far cry from werewolves, the fae aren’t anything like your fairy tales. They’re nothing you want to mess with.”
“They’ve had kind of a chip on their shoulder since human beings started taking over so much of their territory,” Marco elaborated. “They do love their privacy.”
“But mountains aren’t exactly their usual type of wilderness. They usually prefer places where things grow.” Aaron studied the path ahead with a thoughtful expression.
Nate set his hands on my shoulders. “We’ve got to keep going either way. The sooner we find what we’re looking for, the sooner we can leave and not have to worry about dealing with the fae at all.”
No one could argue with that. We started tramping along again, but we were all eyeing the stone walls a lot more carefully now. The path was maybe seven feet wide, not a whole lot of room to maneuver if we had to fight. Which West, at least, seemed to think was a possibility. But Marco had said it was humans the fae took issue with.
“How do the fae feel about shifters?” I asked.
West made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a wordless muttering, as if he thought the question was ridiculous. A
aron ignored him. “We used to have decent relations with them,” he said. “Our interests and needs are pretty different, but we share an appreciation for wild, open spaces and privacy from humans. Unfortunately we’ve had some... clashes in the last several decades.”
“As humans expand their cities and towns, we end up having to move around too,” Nate put in. “And the fae are getting more protective of their territory. I’ve heard they used to be okay with us sharing ground when we needed to shift and let off some steam.”
“And now they’re as likely to try to barbeque us,” Marco said. “But those tensions might get better once you’re established in your role, princess. It’s harder to maintain good relations when we’re a little fractured even amongst ourselves.”
Had Mom ever talked about that, when I’d been little? I reached back into my fragmented memories, the ones she’d buried with her magic after we’d fled. They hadn’t come back easy, and it was still hard to piece anything very coherent together. I slipped my hand into my pocket at the same time, closing my fingers around the locket she’d given me before she left that last time. The one that had drawn my alphas to me. I’d had to stop wearing it around my neck to make sure the chain didn’t snap during an unexpected shift.
I could feel a hint of the magic in the warm metal now, whispering against my palm. It helped center my mind on those distant memories.
An image swam up of Mom standing at the edge of a forest, talking with a tall, slender man whose skin was so pale it looked almost blue. He had a faint sheen to him too, that lit up where the sun touched him. I was crouched in the grass, watching, my heart hammering. Both nervous and excited.
“Who was that?” I’d asked Mom later.
“One of the fae,” she’d said. “I need to negotiate with them from time to time, on behalf of our community. You won’t see them very often, though.” She’d paused, her expression going distant. “I suppose it’s a little sad, how little we interact and how formally. My grandmother told me that long ago the fae and the dragon shifters shared a special connection. But that’s faded now.”
Then she’d kissed my forehead and ushered me to the dining room for our dinner.
A lump rose in my throat. I hadn’t known her properly in the last sixteen years, because she hadn’t let me know her. And now that I knew who we were, I might never see her again in anything but a memory or a vision.
A warmth brushed my skin, like the feeling of her presence when we’d sat shoulder to shoulder on our couch. At first I thought it was just because of my reminiscing. Then my gaze fell on a small swath of parallel scratches dug into the rock wall just ahead.
My pulse stuttered. I stopped as I reached them, running my fingers over the narrow crevices. A stronger sense of my mother’s presence rippled over me. I could almost smell her, like lilies and honey.
“My mother was definitely here,” I said when I could manage to speak. “She must have shifted—she made these marks. I can feel her in them.”
“That’s pretty dainty work for dragon talons,” Marco remarked.
“She probably meant for you to see them,” Nate said. “To know that she’s with you here, one way or another.”
Right. And there was a chance whatever lay ahead would lead me the rest of the way to her. I squared my shoulders under the straps of my pack and strode on.
Aaron made a humming noise. “That doesn’t look good.”
My head jerked up. “What?”
The question had hardly fallen from my mouth when I saw it. Down the path, a jumble of boulders had tumbled down to fill the gap between the walls. There must have been a rockslide. Just what we needed—more climbing.
But as we hurried closer, I realized our situation was more complicated than that. The highest boulders had fallen at an angle, jutting out over the lower ones. There was no way to climb that heap unless we could turn off gravity. Which as far as I knew was not a skill any shifter was gifted with.
We stopped at the edge of the landslide’s shadow and peered up at it. Aaron rubbed his square jaw. Marco stalked from one side of the path to the other, looking very much the jaguar in that moment. Nate moved to test one of the boulders within reach, as if he thought he could dig his way through, and West made a warning noise.
“Don’t bring the whole damn pile down on our heads.”
“We’ve got to get past it somehow,” Nate said.
“I can fly,” Aaron said. “But I wouldn’t be able to carry more than my pack in eagle form.”
He wasn’t the only one who could fly. “I can carry a lot more than that,” I said. “Hell, in dragon form I could blast that pile right down so we don’t have to deal with it on the way back.” The sun was waning, and we hadn’t seen another person since we’d left the road. I didn’t think any humans would spot my dragon form all the way up here.
Nate frowned. “You only shifted for the first time this morning. You might not have recovered enough energy yet.”
I shrugged off my pack and reached for the hem of my shirt. Shifting and clothes didn’t get along so well, especially when you shifted into as large a creature as I did. “Can’t hurt to try, can it?”
Marco leaned against the rock wall with an amused smile. “I, for one, am going to enjoy watching that.”
“Here,” Aaron said. He found the padded jacket I’d bought and brought it over as I tugged off my shirt and bra. “You won’t be able to concentrate on shifting if you’re freezing. Just keep it on your shoulders so it’ll fall off when you make the transformation.”
“Thanks.” I tugged the jacket over me like a cape, thankful for both the warmth and the little bit of modesty. These guys had been stripping down whenever they needed to shift, regardless of who was around, all their lives. It was going to take a little while for me to get used to the casual nudity side of shifter-dom.
I kicked off my pants and undies and knelt down so the jacket hung around most of my body. I’d barely noticed the cooling mountain air on our hike up. It’d been warm when we’d started, and then I’d been warm from the hiking. Now the chilly air seeped over my bare skin.
I wouldn’t mind it so much when I had scales. How could I bring them out? I’d shifted in the heat of battle before, desperate to protect my alphas before they died protecting me. We didn’t face a threat anywhere near that urgent right now. How much could I even control that power?
The doubts wriggled through my mind. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to will them away. I knew the dragon inside me now. I knew what it felt like to expand into that body, to spread those wings. All I had to do was get back there.
I thought back to the sensation of stretching muscles, of scales forming over my softer skin. But the memory didn’t come alone. The crack of the gunshots echoed through my mind. Cries of pain. All the awful sounds of the rogue’s ambush. My back went rigid.
No, that was no good. I had to let go of that stuff. I was a dragon. I had to just be one.
“If you can’t manage it, we’ll find another way,” Nate said. “Don’t push yourself too hard.”
A spark of annoyance lit in my chest. Why shouldn’t I push myself? Weren’t all of them pushing themselves on my behalf all the time? I wasn’t some weakling who needed to be coddled. I was a fucking dragon.
That flare of determination shot through my body. Yes, that was what I needed. I held onto it and dove headfirst into the searing sensation racing over my skin. Into it and through and out and up, limbs expanding, neck extending, every part of me stretching free. My head lengthened into jaws lined with sharp teeth, a smoky flavor trickling on my tongue. Fire danced in my lungs.
I launched myself up toward the sky, giddy. The shift pinched at my joints, but I didn’t mind that little bit of strain. I’d done it. This was who I was.
The wind buffeted me as I swooped around. I drank in the pleasure of flight for a moment, and then I dipped back down. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to hold this form. I couldn’t forget the whole rea
son I’d taken it on right now.
The heap of boulders looked like pebbles to my dragon self. I dropped down over the highest one and grasped it between my hind feet. My talons closed around it and wrenched it off the pile. With a few flaps of my wings, I deposited it away from the path on the mountainside.
One down, a dozen or so more to go.
I tossed another boulder aside, and another, and another. The pinching I’d noticed earlier started to creep through my wings and chest. I’d already held the shift longer than last time. My body was getting worn out. Damn it, I wasn’t done yet.
But I’d handled the worst of it. I eyeballed the remaining pile, only half as high as when I’d started. My alphas had backed up to give me room. If I just took a good running start at it...
I flew down the path the way we’d come. As I swung around, a flicker of movement caught my eye. I hesitated, peering down, but I couldn’t see anything except shadows in the path below me. It’d probably been the motion of my own shadow I’d seen.
Gathering my strength, I raced toward the heap as fast as my wings could flap. The air whistled past me. My expanded heart thudded with glee. My dragon lips parted in what must have been a dragon-ish grin.
At the last second, I heaved my hind legs down and forward. I crashed into the pile feet first. The impact radiated through my body, but I hopped upright before I could fall on my back. The remaining boulders tumbled down the path with a rattling thunder, spreading out so we’d be able to walk between them.
Not a second too soon. That bone-deep exhaustion was rolling over me again. I sank down on the ground, hunching my back, shrinking into myself. The scales contracted back into my skin. In a moment, all that remained of my dragon form was the taste of smoke in the back of my mouth.
My human body felt tired too, but not enough to dampen my sense of victory. “I did it!” I said, springing up. “There you go, path cleared, dragon shifter at your service.” I gave a little bow.
“Nicely done,” Aaron said with a chuckle. Marco grinned and clapped his hands in a round of applause. Nate smiled proudly. And West—