Page 41 of So I Dared a Dragon

“Someone’s in there.” Magnus stepped closer to the monitor as the bright yellow spot faded away, showing the steep red rocks and vegetation that covered the surface of the area.

“Let’s hope they’re friendly,” Bjorn said before he turned for the door.

I held my hand up. “Bibi told us about shifters being brought back from the dead. Any chance the operation you encountered was just a small part of a larger group?”

Hugo hesitated. “I certainly hope not. But we wouldn’t be able to rule anything out until we access that mountain.”

“What are we waiting for?” Magnus said. “If our kin are there, there’s no telling how long they’ve been without sunlight. How long it’s been since they’ve been able to stretch their wings and take flight.”

“It’s not accessible by car. We’d need to reach it by helicopter, which we wouldn’t—”

“Or by dragon,” I pointed out. “We can get you there.”

Hugo and Bjorn looked at one another.

Bjorn swallowed hard. “You want us to ride you?”

“We could carry you with our talons, but you’d be more comfortable on our backs.” I grinned. “Magnus is right. Now that we know someone’s down there, we have a responsibility to make sure they want to be.”

“They might not be friendly,” Hugo warned. “We’re skilled fighters, but it looks like we’d be outnumbered.”

“We’ll be more outnumbered if we go without you,” Magnus warned.

The blond bear shifter turned to us. “What do you need from us?”

“Space.” And a lot of it. “Get us away from anything you don’t want to burn.”

“Around the bend.” Hugo waved his hand. “There’s just brush and rocks out there.”

I nodded to Magnus and Luca and the air thickened with smoke as our body temperatures spiked in preparation for the shift.

I stripped out of the clothes as I walked. We’d have to recover these, since the wardrobe department worked hard on customizing them for us, and this town wasn’t accustomed to naked dragons.

These shifters had followed rules for far too long…

Sparks flew from my skin, illuminating the night. The air warmed to my right as the flames engulfed Magnus. My human bones melted away, never quite right in this form, and reality blurred, obscured, but only for a few moments, and then everything was right.

It felt so good to be a dragon. Free. After being stuck in my human form for centuries, I associated it with being bound. Confined. Restricted. How did we resign ourselves to being small again?

Your mate,my dragon reminded me as the rest of my scales blossomed over my skin.

Of course. If only she could join me in this form. Calista was meant to breathe fire.

Magnus and Luca were mid-shift, and when the flames subsided, there were three dragons and two shellshocked shifters in their human forms.

I lowered my wings. “Climb on.”

Bjorn straddled Magnus’s back, and Hugo climbed onto mine.

“Hang onto my scales. My wings will act as a barrier. You won’t fall.” I waited until I felt his firm grip. “Ready?”

“Let’s do this,” he said.

With a flap of my wings, we were airborne, rising quickly. The altitude was much higher here than in the Smoky Mountains, and we could fly much faster. I had to keep that in mind now that I had a passenger.

“Do you need me to give you directions?” Hugo yelled.

“I can sense the vibration, that’s what I’ll use as my guide.” I’d felt it, a faint thump I couldn’t identify but I knew was familiar, as long as we’d been in Sunset Springs. All I’d needed was confirmation.

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