My middle grew warm and then throbbed as I felt Nyfain’s dragon shove him away and rise. They were shifting with us. Nyfain and I both sank, it felt like, deep into the darkness, holding each other as we did so.
My dragon’s body grew through the clearing, up and up, until Ami and Claudile were peering at me with widened eyes. Hannon stood off in the trees, watching us with a small smile on his face.
“Fuck, we’re huge—” Only, I wasn’t in control of our mouth. Or our large maw with long, sharp teeth that felt weird touching with our large, long tongue.
Our mate is much bigger. He will still dominate us, my dragon thought with a purr.
I was glad I got that last eye-roll in.
She ruffled our wings as she looked down at our body. I sucked in a startled breath.
This is much better than shit brown, she thought, and then she pumped our wings and lifted into the air.
TWENTY-SEVEN
FINLEY
Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!
Three days of attempted flying later, I squeezed my eyes shut, but of course I wasn’t in control of the huge dragon body that was currently beating its wings frantically to stay in the air.
I’ve got this, my dragon thought, following another huge dragon body glittering azure blue.
The mountain face rushed toward us. The dragon in front—Ami—banked and began pumping her wings before catching an updraft and soaring toward the mountain peak.
Do not try that, you shit-hamper, I thought-yelled at my dragon. Don’t try it! We’re not experienced enough. Remember last time? We fucking crashed last time. We’ve only been doing this for three da-ays—
My stupid dragon never listened to me. She was getting back at me for all those times she wanted to go to Nyfain and I refused to let her. Except those instances hadn’t been life-threatening, and these—
She banked like the dragon in front, beat her wings…and caught the underside of the updraft. Rather than lifting us above the peak, it shoved us into the mountain.
I screamed inside her head as she swore and tried to shove my presence down. Our chest scraped against the rock, and our knees buckled with the onslaught. Gravity grabbed hold, and then we were falling, rolling down the hill and knocking our body and limbs as we did so.
Give me back control, I begged, wanting to teach her how to fall gracefully, if nothing else.
I’d begged to help off and on since we’d haphazardly risen into the sky that first time. Thank the goddess Claudile and Ami had quickly shifted and met us up there, or we would’ve downed at least three trees with a sudden crash landing.
This time, though, it seemed she was tired of my nagging.
You want control? Fine, have control.
Suddenly my presence embodied this new, enormous shape covered in glittering scales reflecting sun. Four legs rather than two, ending in claws instead of toes. A weight off our back in the form of a long, spiked tail. We fell fast toward the side of the mountain. If I didn’t find some kind of purchase, we were going to be dead as fuck.
I made a weird sort of maaarrr sound as I attempted to scream—first instinct—and then our ass hit the mountain. My legs—too many fucking legs!—scrabbled for purchase.
Just…need…the…first…couple… I worked my front legs, digging into the rocky dirt to slow the slide. Then, with effort, my back.
The mountain face slid loose beneath my claws, dumping me down the steep slide.
That wasn’t my fault, I thought, shoving off with both feet and twisting in the air.
What are you doing?
Flying!
You don’t know how to work the wings!
I’ve never really tried, have I?
I worked them like I might my arms, waving them in the air as gravity once again took hold. Except they didn’t work like arms. Not even close. The muscle at the top of the wing spiderwebbed through the rest of it, connecting with bones and sinew and veins and all this other shit that I didn’t know how to deal with. I probably looked like a kid jumping off a roof with a kite strapped to each arm. Eventually I’d hit the ground and break my leg. Or head.
Okay, okay, hurry! I relinquished control to her, getting the hell out of the way.
The dragon filled the space immediately, taking over our wings. They caught the air and worked frantically, trying to stop our downward plummet. The side of the mountain came to meet us, but there was no wind to shove us around, so she pushed off with our legs, and we were in the air again, flying out to meet Ami, Claudile, and their friend Gunduin, our flight instructors for the day.
Ami had been a merciless instructor. She’d started fast and challenged us immediately, even when there was a very real threat of crash-landing into trees…or the side of the mountain. She’d had incredibly high expectations and given us almost zero room for error.