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“This is Kirsten,” Nathan said, standing. “Queen of Alfheim. We aren’t expecting to be around anyone who lives here today, but if we are, you’ll need to address her as Your Majesty.”

“Totally unnecessary when it’s just us,” Kirsten said. “It’s fine to eat and drink while you’re here. This isn’t the case in all the realms, but feel free to feast.” She motioned to a long table along the side of the tent with food that smelled wonderful, but I had questions. So many questions, so I started with the most recent.

“Realm?”

“Another world,” Aaron said. “You’re from Midgard, and you can guess what Helheim is like. Vanaheim is what you’d think of as Faerie, Svartalfheim is where the dwarves live. Jotenheimhas giants. There are more, but we don’t want to overwhelm you with information because a whole lot more is coming.”

“Basically,” Kirsten said, “it’s against supernatural law in the human world, on Midgard, to tell humans about supernaturals, but everyone knows about them here. So, we aren’t breaking any laws by telling you all kinds of secrets while you’re here.”

“We’re still going to follow the Midgard rules and oath you to the secrets,” the man introduced to us as Josef said. “But that will come later.”

“It’s the reason Josef and Venom are here,” Aaron said, “Because they’ll handle the oaths. Okay, first things first, let’s walk outside.”

Kirsten had said this was aboutsupernaturals. What the fuck did that mean? Again, I decided not to demand answers just yet, since they’d just told us they intended to explain.

The tent was the kind people erect for outdoor weddings when the weather isn’t cooperating, circus tent sized, but all white.

I walked outside holding Micca’s hand. She was between me and Davy, holding both our hands. It felt like I should be in the middle so I could make sure Davy was okay, but I trusted Micca would stop the proceedings and help him if he wasn’t.

We walked into a large field, or perhaps meadow was more accurate, and I immediately saw a huge castle high on a hill a few miles away. It’s hard to gauge size when you aren’t sure of the distance, especially at night, but it looked like a city-sized castle. Huge. Not exactly like the medieval castles from our world, but some of the same elements. Impressive, though.

The whole thing was surreal, and I was tempted to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“Mythology tells us of werewolves, vampires, and dragons, yes?” Aaron asked, and I looked from the faraway castle glowing in the moonlight — or I assumed it was a moon — to Aaron.

I let go of Micca’s hand and stepped to the other side of Davy. I wrapped my arm around him and tucked him into my side. I needed to be sure he was okay. I knew Micca was fine but I worried about our boy. We’d just seen someone teleport, and then we’d been teleported to what they told us was another realm — and now they were talking about werewolves, vampires, and dragons?

“No one here will hurt you in any of our forms, and I’m going to give you the first demonstration.” Aaron stepped about twenty yards away from us and began removing his clothes.

“You’ll understand in a few minutes,” Micca said. “I didn’t want to do it this way, and they surprised me with this trip, but I believe I understand the strategy.”

Aaron was nude now, standing twenty yards from us, and then there was suddenly a dragon where he’d been. The dragon was huge. Beyond huge. House sized. Well, not my house, but a normal-sized house. And, for that matter, about ten or twelve times as big as the cabin I’d grown up in.

The dragon’s head was where Aaron had been and the tail was way out in the meadow. And then the beast kicked off the land, his huge wings beat, and the creature was grace personified as it flew around the sky above us, occasionally shooting fire at nothing in particular. After a few moments, the dragon landed and stepped closer to us. “I’m still me,” the dragon told us in a voice so deep I wondered that we could understand it.

“You can touch me, if you wish. Walk closer and feel my scales. I won’t harm you.”

Davy stepped out of my arm, reached for my hand, and led the way to the dragon, which surprised the hell out of me, but he said, “If I miss out on the opportunity to touch a dragon, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, Master.”

I caught up with him and walked beside him, so the two of us reached the dragon at the same time.

Davy reached out with caution and touched the dragon’s cheek, under his eyeball, which was beyond creepy. It was bigger than most of the windows in my house.

“Kirsten, why don’t you help Davy climb up, so I can give him a quick ride?” the dragon said, and Kirsten stepped forward to show Davy some handholds and toeholds. Or maybe footholds? Not quite steps.

Nathan touched my shoulder, and the first thing I thought of was how warm his hand was. Just like Micca always seems to be really warm.

“It’s quite safe,” Nathan assured me. “And I’ll answer a few questions down here while Aaron answers them in the air. Aaron was hatched from an egg rather than being born, and he’s been a dragon shifter his entire life.”

He moved his hand and stepped in front of me. “He isn’t two-natured, as most shifters are. He’s always the dragon, it’s just that sometimes he’s human shaped and sometimes he’s dragon shaped. It isn’t possible for most of the creatures hatched from an egg to bite someone and turn them. Mammals, on the other hand, can usually do so. So, with wolves and other mammals, they were either born that way or turned by being bitten.” He tilted his head. “Or in the case of the largest mammals, sometimes we extract saliva and blood and inject it into the human to turn them — much less painful than being bitten by a bear, you understand. Also, some mammals, like bears, don’t have the same kind of survival rate as, say, the wolves. Doing it with modern tools gives them a better chance of surviving thechange.”

I wanted to rant and rave, challenge what he was saying, but I just watched a man I knew and respected turn into a fucking dragon and fly away with my boy.

They weren’t telling me what I really wanted to know, so I turned to face Micca and asked, “What are you?”

She shook her head. “This isn’t the way I wanted to do this. I was about to die, and the only way to save me was to turn me into a—”

“Stop.” Nathan said with enough emphasis I jumped a little, and Micca shut up.