Welcome me in.
The words were slick, sliding against my mind like oil. My chest tightened. Fear scraped raw at my throat. I tried to stop walking—to freeze, to resist—but my feet kept moving. This was bad news, and everything in me told me to fight it, to stay away, far away. Yet my body kept moving, forward and onward, with slow, plodding steps through achingly cold, wet snow.
“I don’t want to,” I tried to say. My voice was a whimper, weak and swallowed by the darkness around me, like I was in the maw of a beast that swallowed me down with each step, with each word and sigh.
The whispers twined tighter, rising in pitch like a crescendo, eager, excited. A laugh rose among them, low and greedy. My skin crawled, and my eyes burned with tears I couldn’t blink away. They froze on my lashes, clinging there until my eyelids felt heavy with their weight. I was nothing, small and fragile in a vast, endless dark that wanted me.He abandoned you. No one wants you!those voices said, and I ached because it was true.
A roar ripped through the void, deep enough to shake the marrow in my bones. It wasn’t human, wasn’t earthly. This was a predator’s call: vast and terrible. It was the sound of a beast claiming the night. It shook the ground beneath me, vibrated through my bones, and made my teeth rattle. The frozen tears on my lashes shattered.
I should have been terrified; my knees should have given way, but the whispers broke apart like shattered glass. The darknesstore like a veil yanked from my eyes, as if that primal roar had driven it off, cleansed my dreams of any trace of it. Light bled in slowly on the heels of that sound. Then I stood in the woods again, but they weren’t the same as in my nightmare, I knew that, even though I hadn’t seen them.
The snow was untouched, smooth as silk, glowing faintly under a sky of silver stars. Trees stretched tall and glittering, every branch laced in frost that sparkled like jewels. The air was crisp and clean, filling me with a sense of safety with each breath I took. A hush fell after that thunderous force of nature, deep and serene, as though the forest was holding its breath in reverence.
I turned slowly, heart still hammering, but there was no voice, no darkness. Nothing was reaching for me now, I was alone. Relief poured through me in a rush; my legs loosened, my chest unlocked. The fear drained away until I could barely remember it. My eyelids sank, heavy as stone, and I let myself fold into the calm. I knew I was still dreaming, and yet it felt like I sank back into sleep, as if I’d been awake during that nightmare, like it was real. This time, when dreams claimed me, they were soft: drifting snow, laughter, warmth. I didn’t fight them.
When I woke, much later, pale morning light filtered through the carved stars of the canopy above the bed. My body felt rested, and my mind was clear, as though the night had washed me clean. Only scraps of memory clung to me: a sense of walking, the faintest whisper of cold and fear. It was vague, half-gone already—a nightmare, but still a dream—and those always eluded me when I rose in the morning.
I yawned, stretching beneath the quilt, and for a moment, I forgot entirely that I wasn’t at home. I was comfy, warm, andwell-rested. I could almost smell the scent of warm bread and coffee, hear the sounds of my mom puttering about in the kitchen downstairs. Then I realized my nose was cold—actually, my whole face was pretty cold—though the rest of me had stayed warm under the thick blankets.
Blankets that smelled like snow and pine, wood shavings, and something deeper but more elusive. It was a heady, seductive blend that, when I inhaled, tingled through my veins and warmed my belly. Him. I remembered now. The stranger without a name who’d let me into his house, his bed, so I could shelter from that storm. The stranger with the odd hair and even odder horns on his helmet. Would he be wearing that thing again today? I almost hoped he would.
I rose stiffly, sore from my hike uphill through the freezing snow. It wasn’t great, but my host had not shown me his bathroom yet, so I shrugged back into my jeans and sweater from yesterday. Maybe he’d let me wash up when I asked—I certainly hoped so—but I didn’t have a new change of clothes anyway. I eyed the beautiful wardrobe but definitely didn’t dare to open it and take one of his shirts, though the temptation was powerful. His bed smelled so good that I wanted to keep that scent wrapped around me a little longer.
Opening the bedroom door slowly, I peeked out and discovered the room was dark, empty, and growing rather nippy with cold. There was no sign of my host, and a closer look at the armchair made me think he hadn’t slept in it after all. So where had he gone? It felt rude to nose around his home, especially when I didn’t know where he was. I half expected him to swoop in from the rafters or emerge from some secret passage behind the packed-to-the-brim bookshelves against one wall.
He wasn’t in the kitchen, and when I dared to open the bathroom door, it wasn’t locked. He wasn’t there either. The facilities, at least, looked modern and clean—promising, if I could find him and convince him his charity extended to letting me have a hot shower. If he wasn’t anywhere in the limited rooms inside the cabin, he had to be outside. I checked a window, but it was darkened by shutters protectively shut from the outside. I’d have to go to the front door to have a look.
My coat had dried by the dying wood stove, so I pulled it on along with my boots. Instantly, I felt much warmer, and a mild shiver rolled down my spine, warning me that I’d been getting too cold already. That’s how cool it had gotten inside the cabin, now that the fire was out. I wondered if I should start it again, but I didn’t know where his matches or lighter were. There was no sign of them near the stove. I guessed I would check the outside first and hoped that the storm was over and my host was just doing hermit things—chopping wood or something.
The door opened easily, but a pile of snow collapsed into the doorway. It had blown in during the storm, under the porch roof, and collected against the door and walls. Now, most of it lay melting on my host’s doormat. Using my feet, I tried to shove most of it outside in a hurry; I didn’t want to make a mess. Mid-shove, my boot still in the air, awkwardly balanced on one leg, I caught sight of what was in the front yard.
“Holy Hannah,” I muttered, foot thumping down to the mat so I could stare some more. Snow had piled high here, lying in huge mounds and piles, far taller than any of the snowdrifts beneath the trees, against the cabin, or the shed. The shape of them… it was almost like a dragon in slumber. It was pretty, and a bit surreal.
Blue and silver ice glimmered beneath the snow, along thick shoulders and ridged spikes that climbed up a spine, all the way down a tail that curled partially around the shed and out of sight. A pair of wings lay cupped against the side of the beastly shape, their silvery sails glittering with snow and ice crystals. The head lay closest to the cabin, almost pressed against the bedroom window where I’d slept all night. That head was as big as a car—then the eyelid, perfectly delineated in the snow, lifted.
I screamed, staring into a pale blue orb the size of a dinner plate, with a black vertical slit for a pupil. The eyelid blinked down, then back up, and the pupil and striated iris shifted, tracking me. “Fuck!” I shouted. Snow dragon? A fanciful happenstance after a storm? No—this was real. And then I saw the horns: a pair of them, rising like pale spires from the huge forehead. They were exactly like the horns my host had stuck to his helmet costume.
Chapter 6
Ísarr
Storms always rocked me to sleep, and after mentally doing battle with something very bad, I’d needed the rest. It was hard to explain what had happened. Certainly, it was not an excuse. I’d messed up, badly. I should have woken at dawn, shifted, and gone back inside, ready for my guest. Ready to get her out of my life as quickly as possible. I hadn’t, though; I’d slept far longer than I normally did, cradled by snow and ice, proudly satisfied for chasing off that evil presence and protecting my mate.
Now we were here: Bianca standing on my porch—beautiful and pink-cheeked—staring straight into my eye. My dragon eye. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d looked, and now she knew it wasn’t just snow and ice lying in my yard. If I moved, I’d frighten her. If I shifted? I’d probably frighten her just the same. I didn’t know what to do, and for a moment, I was tempted to try to find a telepathic path to the only ally in the vicinity. Only one male around here knew exactly what it was like to be caught with your scales out: Chardum, the other dragon of Hillcrest Hollow, the capable one. Unlike me. The failure.
That burned, so I didn’t do anything but lie there. I was the one frozen, not her, as it turned out. She had stopped screaming and placed her hands on her hips to stare at me some more. She was muttering about being asleep, still dreaming. When she went as far as to theorize that she was having hallucinations and was really lying somewhere, freezing to death in the storm, I couldn’t take it anymore. She wasn’t running, that had to be good enough.
I shifted, my body folding in on itself in the strangest way. It was all light and air, flicking a switch and whoosh, gone dragon; hello, human body. Much smaller now, the snow and ice that had collected against my body began to collapse, though some of it remained upright like a strange igloo around where my front paws and chest had been.
Almost, I didn’t look at Bianca but walked off into the woods, out of her way. It was very tempting to do that, avoid the confrontation and just… disappear. She was still standing on my porch, though, hands on her hips, mouth open in shock, her ice-blue eyes locked on my face. Ah, right. I’d taken off the helmet last night, so she was now able to see the horns rising from my forehead.
Most shifters could completely transform themselves to hide their alter ego—especially dragons. My kind was supposed to be extremely good at concealing our true nature. Unfortunately, they’d passed me over when it came to that skill. Not only could I not control my ice powers—risking freezing people if they got too close—but I also couldn’t pull all of my more dragon-like traits beneath the surface. My skin stayed a bit too blue, my eyes a bit too reptilian, and my horns? They just shrank to fit my human head, but that was it.
She was bold enough to meet my gaze without flinching, without lobbing questions or saying stupid things. It felt like she was simply waiting for me to make the first move. I hated that, and it made me surly. All I did was hide, make my art and my furniture, and read my books. I knew absolutely nothing about conversation, let alone giving a human the “talk.”
So, of course, what came out of my mouth was the stupidest thing ever: “Are you hungry?” Like that was important at a time like this. Her stomach was the last thing she’d be thinking about. After facing a real dragon, she had probably lost all appetite. Actually, maybe she thought I wanted to eat her for breakfast now—which I did, just not in the way she was probably thinking. I was pretty certain that spreading her on my table and feasting between her thighs was out of the question, for now. Forever.
Her answer, when it came, was softly spoken. Like she wasn’t quite sure she was saying it out loud. The smile, though, was genuine, spreading like a sunrise over her face. “Breakfast with a dragon? I can do that.” Then, after a startled pause: “Tell me I’m not crazy? Tell me your name?”
