They both share a look, and then my Bonded One stands up to stretch out. He holds out a hand to help me to my feet. I enjoy the sight of all of my hard work. The smooth skin of his face, healed again, is a glorious sight.
“Glorious, huh?” he says with a grin.
I agree, and then I remember, shoving at his chest a little bit and enjoying that I caught him by surprise, and he rocks on his heels. “Don't you ever ignore me again, Bonded. If I call for you, you will answer me.”
He smirks and does a full body check of his weapons. More than half of them are missing, and I can tell that he is disheartened by how little ammunition he has left.
The Damaged Dark One hands him a few clips that he secures to his chest immediately. “It’s hard to answer someone when you are unconscious, my Bonded, but I will take note and try to do better in the future.”
It sounds as though he's teasing, but I nod because whether he's joking or not, that is the correct answer.
Once we know that he is steady on his feet, we move together towards where we had left the rest of our Bonded Group. The terrain is the only thing that stops us from moving as efficiently as I would like to. The shadow creatures move around us, more thorough in their search of the bodies now that we're looking for some sign of the Trigger.
He's nowhere to be seen.
We find my Shifter Bonded first, standing with a gun in his hands at the edge of the explosion site, the last line of defense before the Resistance could come to find us.
He looks at my Bonded with such relief, clapping him on the back as he joins us. “North and Atlas have gone to escort the last of the TacTeam back to the Transporter zone. Kieran came back for us, but he’s been working overtime getting people out. He's the strongest transporter we have.”
He directs the last bit at me and I nod because this is information I already know.
We make it a few hundred feet before the next explosion hits.
It comes from further in the Wastelands, right where North and Atlas are escorting TacTeam personnel, and it’s clear to us all that they’ve come across the Trigger.
While I don't feel pain immediately from that, a minute later there's a searing heat in my stomach that says that North has been injured over there. This time, I cannot stop myself from going straight in that direction. My Shifter Bonded looks at me and nods, pulling his shirt over his head. “I’ll shift and get to them faster. They’ll need backup.”
His bones and skin morph and twist into a giant feline predator.
I shake my head at him. “Think bigger.”
My Bonded looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “He’s a leopard, the biggest Shifter I've ever seen. What could be bigger than that?”
I reach into his chest, bond to his bond, smaller and quieter than I am, but still there and alive and more than anyone else's outside of our Bonded Group. As I lean down and look into the perfect, honey-colored eyes of the leopard, I say, “Think. Bigger.”
His eyes shift to white as the change starts and then to a gold-amber that isn’t human at all, and my other Bonded both falter to a stop to watch as his body writhes and grows, bigger and bigger and bigger, the fur slowly slipping away to reveal shiny black scales. His limbs all distort and lengthen, his fingers and toes turning into talons and an extra set of limbs burst from his back, shifting and morphing until, slowly, he has a set of wings protruding from his shoulder blades. Bigger, bigger, bigger, until suddenly, we're staring at a monstrously large creature. One who has never walked the earth before now.
“What the actual fuck?” my Bonded sputters, and my Damage Bonded nods slowly.
“A fucking dragon.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gabe
A fucking dragon.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have the ability to shift into a fucking dragon. When I’d first realized I could shift into any living creature, hell, I thought I’d won the jackpot. The possibilities seemed endless, and I’d spent months researching different animals to figure out just which ones were the most useful to me. I loved the wolf and the panther the most, the predator nature of them both had called to me.
Wearing the skin of a dragon is different.
I can’t describe it any other way. When I shift into any other predator, it’s as though my own mind is blended with the beast. I still have control, but my own thoughts and cravings and impulses become wild.
The dragon is something else.
The dragon wants things for himself. The dragon doesn’t want to listen to my directions and impulses. The dragon wants to burn them all alive.