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My Dragon’s done waiting.

I throw open the door, the storm instantly soaking me to the bone, and I turn toward Max.

“I can’t wait for traffic. He’s moving too fast.”

Max meets my gaze and nods once as another truck pulls up behind us with the rest of the Crew.

“Do what you have to do. We’ll follow,” he says.

I nod right before I change. My beast rips out of me faster than I can blink.

I cloak my form before the full shift takes hold.

It’s an enchantment older than time itself, woven into my bloodline and passed down from the first fire-breathing beasts to ever grace the sky.

Dragons are different.

Older. Wilder. Made of storm and stone and the raw bones of the earth.

We don’t just shift.

We become.

In a burst of searing light and curling smoke, my body surges upward and outward, bones stretching, skin splitting open in a blaze of golden fire as I give in to the ancient magic that lives beneath my skin.

My roar echoes like a god’s war cry through the thunder-laced sky.

Then I stand—on all fours now—massive and mythic.

My Dragon body hums with power, every scale gleaming like forged metal in hues of deep eggplant and lavender, iridescent in the storm light.

Jagged golden spines erupt from my spine, glowing faintly like molten ore. My claws are long and curved, made for rending flesh and slicing through steel.

Wings stretch high above me, spanning thirty feet easy, the membranes glittering with arcane runes that shift and shimmer with living magic—protection, power, purpose.

They were branded into my kind at the dawn of existence.

They cannot be seen unless you are meant to see them.

And right now? The sky sees everything.

The storm bends around me. The wind sings my name.

Lightning flares and the earth itself responds, as if every animal and blade of grass is momentarily aware of the ancient being taking flight above it.

Because Dragons aren’t just predators.

We are nature’s last defense.

The sentinels of balance.

The keepers of forgotten oaths.

And right now, I’m compelled to honor the strongest vow my kind can ever make.

To protect my mate.

There is a reason that every age of humankind, every civilization that’s walked this earth, has feared Dragons.