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A odh gestured for her to move toward the bed.

She was sure he didn’t intend to pounce on her right then, but she made a beeline toward a chair sitting in the corner by the window.

The chair, like everything else in the room, was oversized.

She balanced on the edge and was thankful the cushion was firm.

When she was in school, she had listened to her teacher read an old fantasy book about a boy who tried to care for himself and his mother by climbing up a stalk and ending up in the land of giants above the clouds. It was how she felt, exactly.

She glanced over her shoulder and looked outside.

The landing beyond the window kept her from seeing anything on the ground.

The sky was a weird lilac blue over the treetops, signaling the sun would rise soon.

How many hours had she been with Aodh? She lost all track of time while trying to get care for her sister.

“Kai.” Aodh’s voice drew her.

She shifted to look at him. He claimed a seat at the side of the bed closest to her.

He was so big that their knees practically touched across the space.

That same heat she always felt when Aodh was near was affecting her.

She knew if she were standing, her knees would have gone weak with the rush of desire that crawled up her thighs and centered low in her belly.

Getting her bearings, she took a deep breath through her mouth.

She was not risking inhaling his sweet, roasted-cinnamon scent on her frayed senses.

“You wanted to talk,” she reminded him as she tried not to get lost in the bizarre colors of his turquoise-opal eyes.

He leaned on his forearms, but thankfully, he gazed at the smooth, stone floor between his feet, his broad shoulders hunched as if a weight pressed on them.

She breathed easier.

“What do you understand about my thunder...people?” He glanced up at her.

Her chest tightened, and her heart pounded. She took another mouth breath. “Well. I’ve only seen two of you so far, but they’re massive unless you and your brother are exceptions. Maybe seven feet, if not taller.”

“And?” His body was still as he watched her.

She thought about the things she’d seen since meeting this man. “You move fast, way too silent for your bulk and size. You should be lumbering instead of the smooth, powerful gait you have.”

What she didn’t say was that the way the man’s back seemed to roll at the lower part of his spine, causing his shoulders to tip in a fluid motion, was both mesmerizing and nipple tightening.

Aodh’s gaze flashed sapphire rather than red.

But she didn’t think he could somehow read her thoughts. She rushed on, “Your people must be illusionists or magicians—David Blaine scholars—the way you made smoke appear in the room and started the fire.”

A dark, sable brow arched high, getting lost in the thick hair that fell over her forehead. Aodh’s hair was tapered in the back and longer in the front, semi-conservative, compared to his brother’s shoulder length.

“Anything else?”

She glanced around the wide-open space. “You all require a hell of a lot of space. You are big guys, but if the Olympics ever returned, they could run a four-hundred-meter race from the front door to the bedroom.” Tipping her head up, she pointed to the ceiling.

“I wonder if they used to store planes here before the Great Catastrophe.”

“We never needed planes. This expanse belongs to my people. My thunder built this and more while your people lived underground.”

“What? How? That’s not possible,” she shook her head. “The air wasn’t breathable until a few years back.

“For humans, that’s true. Our kind was not affected in that way.”

Humans? “Why do you keep referring to me as ‘human’ or ‘my kind?’” She slowly slid her gaze down and up his body. The man appeared to be the same as her and all those on the other side of the wall.

“We are not the same, Kai.” He leaned, closing more space between them, as he seemed to watch her.

Why, she didn’t know.

“In what way? Besides the fact that you can all supposedly train dragons. Maybe Daenerys Targaryen wasn’t simply a character in George R.

R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. ” She’d read the digital series in the archive cellar more than once.

In the Dispatch, they were only allowed eight years of schooling before they were required to work, so it had become essential for her to continue her education through books.

Before her parent’s death, she’d spent her time off lost in old stories.

No one wrote new books since the catastrophe, as if creativity got destroyed along with the Earth, at least in the Dispatch.

They only learned writing, reading, math, and history in school.

Leaders in the Consumer district had sent messages that it was more important for everyone to study history to prevent repeated mistakes.

It was rumored that the Consumer children went to school longer and learned science and technology—the devices in the care plaza proved it.

The Dispatch was a place for laborers. So, it was common for people to read books and find some relief in their imagination.

“I’m unfamiliar with that person.” He linked his hands together between his knees. “However, in my knowledge of humans, they often altered reality into fiction before the world changed to make it more palatable for the masses. Shifters and other preternatural believe in truth.”

“Shifters? Preter—what?” Her temples were beginning to thump with a budding headache as she tried to understand the insane pattern of this man’s words.

Aodh exhaled. “There is too much for me to get into now. But I will say that our kind has been here since the beginning. Something your human leaders have been aware of for centuries. We have lived and worked among you. Never hiding ourselves, but our traits and abilities we agreed to keep private.”

“Abilities?” Her mind was spinning, and she hesitated in her next question, a part of her screaming she wanted to know the answer. “What do you mean?”

Aodh didn’t move. His turquoise-opal gaze shadowed as if he was considering what to say.

Is he worried he’ll freak me out? If so, he could let that go because she was already getting spooked. The hairs on her arms were starting to rise like when someone was telling a ghost story, and you knew the climax was coming, and you’d scream.

“The things you have witnessed are some of our abilities. Magic doesn’t allow me to blow smoke or cast fire.” He slid his hand forward and stretched his arm toward her. “What do you see?”

She looked at his thick, corded arm, hovering over her thigh but not touching her.

The colored lines of the design that ran from his wrist and up to his shoulders and beyond seemed to shift from one shade to another.

Staring closely at the tones, she noticed they replicated the shades in his eyes.

The color looked more like jewels instead of the painted ink of those she’d seen displayed on people in the Dispatch.

She wanted to lift her hand and trace the lines starting with his arm and seeing where they led.

His face was clear of them, but did he have them everywhere else ?

Now that she was allowed to study them up close, the pattern reminded her of scales on a reptile. However, she’d learned Aodh was touchy about those kinds of words. “Your tattoo changes colors. I’ve never seen that before.”

“Not ink. No tattooer placed them on my skin. They are there because of the beast within me.”

She could feel the tightening of her brow as it puckered between her eyes. Before she could question Aodh, he went on.

“Dragons are not fake. They are very much real and here.” His words rumbled; they were almost inarticulate.

She shot a glance over his girth to the massive space behind Aodh, then to the window.

Edging back in the chair, she was apprehensive that one would appear at any moment.

Kai gripped the arms of the chair and shifted back in her seat.

“Are they coming? I don’t really need you to demonstrate it by calling one here. ”

“We are not tamers. My beast is here.” He pounded his hand on his chest. “You are not ready to meet him yet.”

Yet? How about never?

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. She wished she could have conjured up more strength in her voice, but she felt too out of sorts.

“My people have two forms we live in. What you see now is a man. I am a dragon-shifter.”

I am a dragon-shifter. I am a dragon-shifter .

Aodh’s declaration continued to repeat itself in her mind.

At first, when she’d put the two words together earlier, she used it as a facetious moniker or perhaps their occupation.

Her mind didn’t fathom the full implications.

But now. This man. This smoke-churning, fire breather could turn into a dragon.

Often in the Dispatch, when someone stated something outlandish, the natural response was to say, ‘prove it.’ But she choked down those words. She didn’t want Aodh to show her some gigantic beast before her eyes.

She didn’t think about running. When they walked, Aodh moved swiftly, and she doubted she could make it to the door before he grabbed her.

She also had nothing to defend herself against an attack.

And like the front door, the swords mounted on the wall were too far away to reach.

Perhaps she could get out the big window and leap to her death. It’s better than being devoured .

Pushing further back into the chair, she pressed her knees to her chest and tightly wrapped her arms around them. “Are you going to eat me and my sister? Is that why you brought us here?”

His gaze went from turquoise-opal to black as his nostrils flared. A short puff of smoke came out of them.

“Aaah—” Kai slapped a hand over her mouth to try and stifle the scream ripping through her throat.