Page 26 of A Shifter Disaster Thanksgiving

The rest of her sentence froze in her throat. Sylvester had begun divesting himself of all his clothing. Diane watched, eyes widening, as he kicked off his shoes and eased his trousers down his legs, standing completely nude in the evening cold. She let her gaze drop, and thought her eyes would pop completely out of their sockets.

Boy, was he packing.

Before she had time to savor the marvelous sight he had just revealed to her, he dropped into a crouch in the snow.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

He spared her a glance. “You and I are going up.”

It took her a couple of seconds to realize what he meant by that. “Wait, what? I… I don’t like flying.”

“It’s okay,” Sylvester assured her calmly. “You’re safe with me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The warmth of his words enveloped her, but only for a moment. She fixed him with a skeptical stare. “And I’m supposed to, what, hold on to you, or something? What if I fall?”

“That’s not going to happen.” He cocked a grin, barely visible as the sky darkened. “And even if it does, you’ll be okay.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I caught you before, didn’t I?”

It was hard to argue when he put it that way. She nodded and backed away, almost on instinct, watching to see what would happen next.

Suddenly, she clamped a hand over her mouth.

Sylvester’s body was growing at an alarming rate, doubling in size by the second. At the same time, a scaly blue pattern appeared on his skin, spreading all the way to his extremities. She heard the sound of bones crunching and she winced, still transfixed by the wonder unfolding before her eyes.

His head expanded so suddenly it might as well have exploded into being. Horns curved out from his forehead, strikingly similar to the one she’d seen on the roof of Gregory’s quarters. Before Diane could fully process what she was seeing, a pair of wings sprouted from his back, and a tail the length of two school buses stretched out onto the snow.

She held her breath, staring wordlessly at the dragon that had seconds before been Sylvester.

The dragon’s yellow eyes blinked back at her, gleaming in the semi-darkness. He spread his wings and tucked them again, repeating the action a couple of times. It wasn’t until he’d spread his wings the fourth time that Diane realized he was trying to communicate with her.

“You want me to… ride you?” She couldn’t help blushing as she said the words.

Sylvester gave a snort, which she took to mean yes.

Diane made a discreet sign of the cross. “Okay.”

She approached the dragon gingerly. His huge eyes followed her until she reached his head.

“I guess you want me to get on your back?” she muttered. And without waiting for a response, she sucked in a breath, wondering how she’d managed to get herself into a situation like this, and climbed atop the dragon’s back, holding on to his horns for dear life.

“If anything happens to me, I’m going to haunt you forever.” She said it as a joke, but the humor in her voice was missing. “Ready when you are.”

For a moment, Sylvester did nothing, and she wondered if he had heard her. Then the dragon spread his wings. The next thing she knew, they were rocketing off the ground so fast Diane thought she’d lose her lunch.

“Oh, my—” The rest of her words were drowned out by the wind rushing in her ears. She kept a tight grip on Sylvester’s horns, determined not to let go, unsure how she’d let him talk her into doing this in the first place. Her hair fluttered around her head, and it took every last shred of willpower to keep from looking down.

Before long, the howling in her ears died down to a gentle whistle. Between that and the steady beat of Sylvester’s wings, there wasn’t much else to hear. When she finally gave in to the crippling temptation, directing her gaze to the mountain below, she nearly let go of the horns in shock.

They had to be at least three hundred feet or more in the air. From her vantage point, the landscape looked like a painting—except for the fact that it stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see. Frost Mountain wasn’t just massive, it was all there was to this place.

“Whoa,” she breathed.

A part of her struggled to connect the experience to the rest of what she was still accepting as her reality. Flying above a mountain that shouldn’t exist on the back of… well, adragon… that was supposed to be impossible. It was colder up here, she realized, a shiver racing through her body. Her knuckles were freezing, but she was determined not to let go of Sylvester’s horns.

Somewhere on this mountain were the remains of the plane that had breached the portal and dumped her here. Somewhere, hopefully, there were other survivors besides herself and Tom. Flying this high made her recall what it felt like to plummet to earth. Sylvester was the only reason she’d survived. Diane felt a rush of gratitude as she held him.

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