Chapter Thirteen
The breeze against my scales was the second-most glorious feeling in the world, next to discovering my mates.
Having rushed out of the clinic, there had been a split second where I wasn’t certain what to do.
I couldn’t go home, not to the space I shared with the mates who, as Damon had so charmingly vocalized, deserved better than me. Not when I agreed with him.
The urge to shift had hit me out of nowhere, and my knees had gone weak when I realized that I could actually do it. My dragon was back! With the intensity of my sudden heat and everything that had followed, I hadn’t had a chance to take to my scales, or to the sky.
But, having fled Brandt’s hospital room, I was only a short walk from the fields where the pack usually began their monthly runs, and I had no excuse not to try.
So I practically sprinted behind the clinic and out into the fields at the back of the property, shedding my clothes and welcoming my scales with a rush of euphoria and relief.
It had been over a hundred years, but shifting into my dragon form came to me as if I had never been out of practice.
Like riding a bicycle, but better. My body grew, bones thickening and lengthening, organs rearranging, muscles bulging.
I’d relished the stretch and pull of my shoulder blades forming wings, and of my tailbone sprouting a tail.
The trees and buildings got smaller as I got bigger, and when I launched into the air and flapped my wings, I could have wept.
Instead of weeping, or roaring, I flew.
Fields and forestry turned into green blurs beneath me as I sailed through the sky.
Currents of cool air passed over my aerodynamic shape, almost caressing me.
I couldn’t whoop for joy, but I performed aerial stunts among the moisture of white clouds, swooping and diving and doing somersaults…
essentially behaving like a dragonet on his first ever flight.
In some ways, I kind of was. This was my first time in scales in over a hundred years. The world beneath me had changed and so had I. We had both evolved, and everything felt shiny and new…and daunting.
They do deserve better than me. The melancholy thought cooled some of the joy as I settled into a slow glide above the farms dotting the rural landscape below. Both of them.
I’d been an arse for most of my life, but even I knew that my attitude had become damn near unbearable after I rejected Sage and lost my dragon.
He hadn’t deserved any of it, nor the fact that I hadn’t really explained or properly apologized for it yet.
And then there was Serge, our handsome unicorn alpha, who didn’t deserve an omega so unwilling to bear his children.
Yes, Sage was certainly willing where I was not, but why would fate give him an omega who didn’t want the same things he did?
One as brash and bratty as I was? He was a gentle, mellow soul and he deserved an equally gentle, mellow omega, didn’t he?
Ultimately, at the very least, both Sage and Serge merited a mate without a dickish reputation.
And yet they were saddled with me, and I was far too selfish to consider letting either one of them go now that we had discovered what we were to one another.
It didn’t prevent me from feeling guilty, though. Or from wishing I could be better.
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been trying. Yes, it had only been a few days, but my efforts to be more personable and open looked like they would be ridiculed rather than appreciated…and that stung.
Can you blame them?
Micah’s ‘Are you high?’ joke rankled, but considering the position I’d gleefully put him and Sergio in when we’d first brought our sexy shaman to the pack…
Yeah; I’d earned Micah’s scorn, and Brandt’s for the fact that Micah was his bonded mate.
Additionally, I had been quite happily riling Damon up for years, so of course he would think I had some ulterior motive to my sudden change in heart and demeanor.
Huffing, I understood that I had a way to go before the pack would believe that I really was attempting to turn over a new leaf. It had been far too easy to allow the optimism and joy from my weekend mating bubble to interfere with reality.
And now I was sulking in the sky instead of facing my issues head on.
So, I supposed, I had a fair way to go with truly changing my behavior as well.
The sound of beating wings —smaller and feathered in comparison to my leathery pair— caught my ear and I turned towards the sound, my heart squeezing when I recognized Sergio approaching.
His unicorn was even more magnificent in the bright sunshine, his coat appearing so shiny it almost seemed mirrored. I slowed my glide, turning in lazy arcs while he came closer. It was a joy to see him in flight again, but I thrilled to be able to join him in the sky.
All we needed for the moment to feel complete was Sage.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think that was going to happen. At least, not at that moment. But we would have plenty of opportunities to fly together. I just had to be patient.
If only patience was one of my strong suits.
Serge brayed at me when he neared, his sharp gaze assessing me. I wished we could communicate in our shifted forms, but until we bonded, all we could do was exchange our animalistic sounds and hope that our companions got the gist of what we were saying.
Case in point: I imagined Sergio was asking if I was alright. And I, chuffing out a blast of hot air from my nostrils as I nodded, hoped to impart that, yes, I was fine, and he worried too much.
He nickered and swooped forward, doing a slow barrel roll around me. I preened under his attention, understanding that he was taking his first look at my dragon form.
In this form, I was smaller than Sage, who also happened to be the smallest of his brothers.
Where Sage’s scales were a vibrant, nearly-orange shade of red, mine were a pale, eggshell blue.
On a very clear day, if I flew high enough, I could blend into the sky.
Sage had once described my dragon form as ‘pretty’.
For a dragon, I supposed I was, though my claws and teeth were just as sharp as any other dragon’s I had met, and I could breathe fire with the best of them.
Sergio leveled out with me, gliding at my side in companionable silence. It felt nice to fly with someone —with my alpha— without any kind of pressure. He didn’t expect conversation, and we didn’t have any time constraints. We were just enjoying one another’s presence. It was relaxing.
By the time we returned to the ground, landing in a spare patch of land not far from home, I felt much more settled. But as Sergio shifted back into his human form and reached for his discarded clothes, I released the dragon equivalent of a groan.
My clothes —which also held my wallet and phone— were in the field behind the clinic. I shifted into my human form with a disgruntled sigh.
“I need to take off again,” I told Serge, who seemed quite happy to drag his steely gaze from my toes to my forehead as I stood naked in front of him.
“I shifted at the clinic. I need to get my things.” I didn’t particularly want to risk facing Sage or any of his family right then, not with the way I had stormed away earlier, but needs must.
“Stay,” my alpha instructed gently, dropping the pants he had been readying to climb into. They landed on the grass with a crumpled thud. “I’ll get them.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Let me take care of you, dear-heart,” he practically purred, closing the space between us to cup my jaw. “I don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling right now, but Sage texted earlier to say you were upset when you left the clinic.”
“Of course he did.”
“He cares about you,” the admonishment was soft, but spoken with a firmness that brooked no argument, “and so do I. Let us help you, Dexter. Please.”
What was I supposed to do with that other than agree?