Page 11 of Surge of Storms

She looks relieved. “Honestly, I’ve already had enough of all this dragon nonsense.” She glances at Granger. “Right? We humans have to stick together.”

He winces and rubs the back of his head, which is cute as hell. Granger hates disappointing people, but he has to know it’s better for her to find out now rather than later.

I laugh, already preparing myself for her reaction. “Or something like that. Can you keep a secret?”

She perks up. “Absolutely.”

I look at Granger, making sure he’s okay with me telling her. He nods.

Focusing my attention back on her, I grin. “You sure?”

She starts to bounce on her heels. “Yes! Come on, what’s going on?”

I can’t help myself, I decide to torture her just a little. “Because you’ll be the first to know–”

“Just tell me already, you’re driving me nuts!” she says, throwing her hands up like she’s in agony.

I smile, take a deep breath, and just go for it. “We found the epic storm dragon.”

She frowns, looking confused. “Where? Why isn’t he here? Isn’t this massively important?”

My smile widens. “It is important. Really important. The thing is, the storm dragonishere.”

She glances around like I’m nuts. “Do you… do you see him right now?”

This should be good.

I gesture at Granger. “Ta Da!”

She blinks slowly. “I don’t get it.”

I sigh. “Grangeristhe storm dragon.”

Her face goes blank. “Is this a joke?”

Slipping my hand into his, I look at Dahlia, my heart swelling. “It’s no joke. He’s the storm dragon.”

It takes her a second before she says, “Well, that’s awesome.”

“Awesome?” Granger asks, not looking convinced.

“Yeah, I mean, we already know you. We like you. You’re not as much of a neanderthal as the others. And Sam was already weirdly possessive of you, so it makes a lot of sense.”

He looks at me, and I think it might be a moment where he’s realizing his feelings weren’t so one-sided. “Oh?”

She smacks her hands together. “This is excellent news.”

And then I remember something. “But you have to keep it to yourself. Zane, Aydan, and Evander don’t even know yet.”

She whistles low. “How do you think they’ll handle that?”

“I don’t care,” I say, squeezing his hand. “Now, how are things going for you?”

Her dark eyes flash with happiness. “I’m loving the lab here, and researching dragons is awesome.Muchbetter than dealing with dragons. They’re working on creating a pheromone, which would allow you, and the other female dragons, to be concealed from male dragons. They’re also designing a system to ‘tag,’ for lack of a better word, the dragons, so we don’t have to rely on satellites to track their progress. But the most fascinating thing is that we’re diving into finding ways to determine dragons in human form before they ever go dragon.”

“Whoa. All of those things would be incredibly useful.”

She’s back to bouncing on her heels. “Right?” Then she glances at the elevator. “Which reminds me, if you guys don’t need anything else, we’re on the edge of some major breakthroughs.”

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