Page 42

CHAPTER 41

Dragon Rider

ALIA

W hen I woke, I was still cradled in Shen’s arms, but something large was blocking out the sun. I squinted up to see a white wing lined with gently rippling feathers and followed it down to white scales on a long, muscular body.

I noticed each scale shimmered like opal gemstones. Her body was lithe and feminine. She had two wings and four legs, and her long tail was curled up around me and Shen like our own personal wall of protection. I followed her neck up to her face to see her gentle brown eyes staring at me. It was still odd to see them in this form. She was so different, and yet the mischief mixed with love in her eyes was the exact same.

“I’m still gonna miss the unicorn form,” I said with a tiny smile.

She huffed out a breath that was her form of a laugh, and smoke curled from her nostrils. I will not miss the cloven hooves and wingless body, thanks, she said, moving her front legs and staring down at the individual claws that were quite similar to a person’s hand, just much larger and with sharp white tips instead of fingernails. Her foot—paw?—was as large as my head thrice over.

“Why… how…”

I was cursed by a witch to wear a wingless form until I learned the true meaning of love. I was forbidden to speak of it and spent many a long year in the woods until those pricks caught me. And then you came along.

I smiled up at her as she brought her nose before me, smelling of roasted pine needles. I raised a hand and set it on her cheek, kissing her nose just as I had when she was a unicorn. “And then I set you free from those who’d caught you. But you didn’t have to bond me then.”

She breathed out. No. But it was the best thing I ever did.

I smiled and laid my head on her nose. Then I was hoisted upright by two powerful arms. I squeaked like a frog losing air. Shen set me on Ran’s back.

“Every dragon-bonded must learn to fly,” Shen said, gently patting Ran’s neck.

She turned and hissed at him. He patted her nose and she blinked, as if unsure how to take his blasé reaction to her threat. “Fly, Little Red, and don’t come back until you have left all your troubles in the sky.”

Ran turned to look at me, and I leaned against her warm neck, hooking my feet beneath her wings. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes as I smelled her. Her scent of freedom and wild abandon mixed with pine. I squeezed my arms around her neck. She felt like chain mail armor but was as soft and malleable as sheepskin leather.

“Let’s fly,” I said. This time, I wouldn’t be dangled beneath her like some prized catch. Excitement and anxiety bubbled in my stomach.

She released a loud bellow, which was a mix between an eagle’s screech and a lion’s roar. Her muscles bunched beneath me and her wings beat against the air, sending a gust of wind out which sent Shen rolling. Ran laughed in my mind. She leapt. The force nearly sent me tumbling from her back, but I stuck it only because it suspiciously resembled when she used to race through the woods and then come to a screeching halt before a cold body of water.

I held tight with my legs and arms as she rose to the sky with a second cry that sounded more eagle than lion.

You ’ ve…

Yes, Two-Legs. I ’ ve hoped for this for so very long. From the beginning.

From the minute you insulted me and called me an 'insolent two-legged creature who stinks of rotten venison and refuse'?

Ran snorted, billowing smoke into the skies. Maybe it was a bit after that, she admitted.

A laugh bubbled from my lips. Tears fell and washed off her scales, falling far below as I thought of all I could have lost. Gratitude didn’t begin to describe the depth of the joy bursting in my chest.

Ran straightened out from our steep climb and her wings leveled as she rode a draft of wind. It was quiet up here in the oddest ways that I hadn’t taken the time to admire last time. There was sound—the rushing of wind and the gentle brush of air against feather, but no animals squawking, no werewolves howling, no people talking.

Rise, my rider, and see, Ran whispered in my mind, her voice soft with nostalgia and a passion so deep she wanted to share it with anyone she loved.

I slowly uncoiled my arms from around her neck and sat up. It took another few seconds to convince my eyes to open.

The sun blinded me. I blinked quickly and then I nearly fell off my dragon.

What I saw… what I was experiencing… it was indescribable. It was the first breath of air a babe sucks into parched lungs. It was the first sip of water after a drought. It was the heartbeat of all living things.

There was nothing up here. Yet everything could be seen.

Forests teeming with life, animals bounding within the shimmering boughs and birds rustling from branch to branch. Grasslands weaving as if the wind were taking her gentle fingers and rolling it over the grassy plains. Blue and brown rivers bubbling with white foam streamed over cliffs to land in deep pools far below. Snaking waterways, all leading to the massive ocean. The ocean looked as if someone had set a mirror beneath the sky so vast that it stretched as far as the eye could see.

Then there were the cities. So tiny they looked like the little dollhouses my father built for the children. Tiny people leading horses and carts to and fro. Werewolves frolicking along the streets, playing capture the stick. Mages within their schools practicing magic behind their walls, growing plants and levitating items. Elves growing their houses right outside the city gates in their own mini city because they preferred being closer to nature.

It was different from up here. It put life into perspective.

All those people, all with their own hopes and dreams and desires. All living their lives as best they knew how.

We weren’t so different.

Sometimes it just took a different perspective to see everything in a new light.

I brushed my hand down Ran’s glorious, scaled neck. “Thank you, my sister,” I whispered.

She turned so one eye was toward me and winked.

When we landed, Shen was waiting with a massive bucket of water for Ran and food for me. It was my mom’s shepherd’s pie and freshly picked blueberries.

I dove into the pie and stuck a few blueberries in my mouth, relishing the pop of sweet and tangy fruit mixed with the buttery flavor of the pie.

I settled back on my log and grabbed another bite. We hadn’t yet talked. Not about my grandpa and that night. We needed to. “Do you mind a prying question?” I asked, my voice hesitant. We were having a good time. I didn’t want to break the peaceful day Shen had given me, but I needed to. I wouldn’t run from hard things.

He nodded, a hint of a smile gracing his face. He was standing so still I could’ve mistaken him for a statue. I took a deep breath and quickly said, “I haven’t heard of Alpha Command in a long time. The lore around it is spotty at best. Do you mind me asking why your mother had that power over you?”

Shen glanced away, rubbing his thumb on a blade poking from his belt. “There are two ways an Alpha may use Command. A true Alpha of the royal bloodline may use it, but each time takes energy from their werewolf. How often they may use it depends on their own power.”

“And the other way?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes, his gaze set far into the distance. “An Alpha may use it when a shifter has sold their wolf or done something so despicable they would have went rogue except for the Alpha containing the wolf to remain within the human.” He gritted his teeth, his jaw nearly cracking from the strain. “Mine was the latter. It was my first target. An innocent man. I killed him before his granddaughter. Lycus was nearly torn from me, but Mother stopped him. He stayed for the sake of the pack, not me. Over the years, I have tried to protect him, to earn back his trust…”

Unconsciously, I leaned away from him. He looked up, pain stark in his eyes. “I am the one who killed your grandfather, Alia. And I was not under Alpha Command when I did so.”

My heart froze in my chest. I lost moments, minutes. I didn’t know how long. I just knew I suddenly came to being wrapped in Ran’s warmth and pine scent, my eyes so dry they ached and my mind replaying the scene from so long ago.

I saw my grandpa’s throat ripped out. Over and over again, it played in my mind. I saw the werewolf who did it, a flash of a white heart on his flank so incongruous with the gory scene. His eyes were alight with fear and pain, his mouth painted red. His need pounded against me, part of it for freedom, but most for his father. A need that I often felt right after a loved one had passed.

I collapsed into Ran’s neck, my body too weak to hold me upright. She wrapped me in her wings, touched me to her chest, and let me hear the gentle shush of her massive heart.

“I thought he was under Command,” I cried. Why could he not have been under Command? I knew he’d killed my grandpa, but I’d so foolishly believed that he hadn’t done it of his own free will.

I felt him. His need for his mate. He was still there, watching over me from the woods.

“Go away. I don’t want to see you— ever. ” My voice choked off on a broken sob.

His need disappeared beneath his walls. But not before it swelled and jabbed into my chest.

Tears wouldn’t come. How I wished for that release. The only one who had been able to release me to cry thus far had killed my grandpa of his own will.

My chest tightened and my vision dimmed. I allowed the darkness to pull me into its soothing, peaceful embrace.