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“Okay, um. I guess I’m ready to go flying.” Her voice shook but that was natural. I’d already seen my mate was very brave.
Hold on, mate. That command came from my dragon.
“I can do this. Let’s go, drag—Gravor.”
I leaped from the ground, my wings snapping out to catch the air. With a few flaps, I rose above the treetops.
“Oh. My. God,” she hissed. “I’m freakin’ flying. Flying! Well, you’re flying, but I guess I am too. This is like something out of a movie or a video game. Ha ha. As long as enormous beetles don’t attack us, we should be all right. And as long as I don’t fall. Which I’m not going to think about.”
I’ll save you.
“I have a feeling you will. This is amazing, Gravor. Unbelievable.” The tension had left her voice, and the joy that replaced it made my heart pound at twice its normal speed. “This is wonderful!” She released my neck spikes and lifted her arms. “My son is never going to believe I’m riding a dragon, though I doubt I’ll be able to tell him.”
Son? Did a child wait for her at home?
She might already have a mate. Not a true mate like the bond we were forming, but she could be married to another.
My dragon snarled, but he’d have to back away if she was already taken.
Kidnap, he said in my mind.
We already did that, but we can’t take her from her home just because we want her.
Mate.
Yeah, she’s our mate. We’ll figure this out.
It didn’t take long to reach the edge of town, and even if she hadn’t returned her hands to my spike and told me it was time to land, I would’ve done so. Self-preservation told me to fly in the opposite direction, to return to my cave and hide.
But a bigger part of me told me to remain with Mazie.
I landed softly in a scraggly field abutting the woods, and she slid off my back, remaining near my shoulder with her hand resting on my side.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know you’re a sentient person, not a beast to take people for rides, but that was wonderful. I’m going to remember it forever.”
I turned to nuzzle her side, letting my dragon drink in her scent and her touch. Soon, I’d reclaim myself. I wasn’t sure when I’d need to take on my dragon form again.
She backed away from me, and I shifted more easily than I had before. Doing it often kept the memory locked in my bones and muscles.
“If you’re clothed when you shift into your dragon, do you have a choice about reappearing clothed when you change back?” she asked, studiously keeping her gaze on my face.
Did she find my scars repulsive? For a moment, I wanted to shift back and flee, hide in the cave again. But, no, this was my mate. She’d see past my outside to who I was on the inside.
She’d see me.
“If I’m clothed, the fabric splits and shreds. I always reappear naked.”
“Something you wouldn’t want to do in the middle of downtown Trickster Falls,” she said with a laugh, holding out her hand. “I’d offer you my shirt, but then my top would be naked. I, um, took my bra off when I got home from work.”
That, I’d like to see.
“Are you married?” I asked carefully.
Mine, my dragon snarled.
I snarled right back—in my mind. Back off and let me handle this.
He huffed but slid down deep where he could still watch.
