Page 7 of Feathers and Scales

“I need the closest Hunters to Acadia National Park. I also need a cleanup crew to make sure a victim returns to their family with no questions.”

Shielding his gaze from the overcast sunshine, Daxton assessed his company’s construction site as he rode the lift to the top of the unfinished building. Choppy wind pushed into him, bringing in moreclouds. In the background, men shouted directions as a crane moved a beam up to the fifth floor, where steelworkers bolted it together.

During the slow and steady rise, Daxton expected his usual impatience to rear its monstrous head. But even two days after that angelic woman morphed and entered his chest, his dragon slept inside him, when normally it would have been fighting for freedom. Its passiveness unnerved him but also freed him from his need to assert constant control.

Focusing inside himself, he nuzzled the sleeping orb of light. As if her healing had made her spirit energy stronger, his Insight picked up tendrils—clean-scented purity, acrid guilt, and metal—something he’d been unable to do before. It wasn’t the familiar neutral sweetness of a human.

He aimed his thoughts toward the creature. “You’re making me crazy. Wake up, please.”

No response. He hadn’t expected one.

His thoughts stopped when the elevator halted. Opening the latched bar, he took a deep breath. A gust blew over his sun-warmed skin, provoking a sense of belonging in him. It had been too long since he had shifted to his dragon side, flying above the clouds with the wind in his face, his wings beating powerfully. But after the incident where he nearly couldn’t shift back from his dragon side, he couldn’t risk it. Even if the woman inside him made his dragon docile.

He walked forward onto the metal platform. Pete, the site supervisor, headed toward him, clasping his hook on each safety line.

The progress on the floor satisfied Daxton. The few beams in place created an illusion of the rooms’ layouts.

“What a pleasant surprise, Mr. Dupont,” Pete said with a smile that emphasized his round face and wide deep-set brown eyes. The two feathers he wore as good luck charms at the end of his long black braid twirled in the wind. It was a tradition kept inhis family, something Daxton remembered Pete’s great-grandfather wearing when he’d worked beside him.

“Nice to see you too, Pete. Please call me Daxton.” Daxton wanted to curb the use of his alias last name, as his mind was too busy to remember it right away. He shook Pete’s offered hand with a grin. “Can you give me a rundown of the current status?”

Pete grabbed the safety rail to steady himself. “Follow me, and I’ll show you the hiccups.”

They walked across a few beams and stopped. Daxton leaned in close, so Pete didn’t have to yell over the howling wind.

“We had to wait for a new shipment of beams since a rookie damaged several with a crane.” Pete gestured to each area he spoke about.

A brawny man sitting ten feet away said to his coworker, “They let the shareholders do whatever they want now?”

The wind buffeted Daxton, but the comment still reached his sensitive ears. Daxton assumed Pete had warned the workers that the majority shareholder would visit.

“If he wants to get himself killed, let him,” a younger coworker said before positioning a beam with a spud wrench.

Many office personnel wouldn’t dare go up on the steel beams two hundred feet in the air. But Daxton wasn’t one of them. He’d been an ironworker long before these men were born, when they didn’t use safety cables or airlifts. He balanced on the flange, not even a foot wide, with the grace of a trapeze artist.

When railroad bridges upgraded from wood to metal, Daxton worked on the frontier, building the iron trusses. Being up high reminded him of being in his dragon form, flying through the clouds. From this height, the pickup truck he drove was nothing more than a toy car on the makeshift parking lot.

“We’ll be on track soon,” Pete said. “What really brings you up here, Daxton?”

Pete was blunt for the same reason he didn’t explain the safety procedures to Daxton. They’d worked together for years. Daxton wore the harness via protocol and attached the safety clip to the cables when needed. Forbidden from transforming in front of humans, a drop in the wrong direction could be fatal.

“I need a distraction,” Daxton said as he wobbled on the flange.Damnit. Keep it together.The female creature inside grew stronger while his body fatigued, as if she was draining him. But he’d sacrifice his energy if it meant his dragon stayed calm.

“Want to get your hands dirty, then?” Pete asked as a brisk wind breezed past them.

“I didn’t bring my tools for nothing.” Daxton patted the belt around his waist.

“We’ll see if you remember what you’re doing. You can pair up with me.”

The two-hour drive to his territory’s capital, Pentros, whittled Daxton’s distracted mind back to sour. The military base for his clan’s territory lay within the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. An Illusion cast by his kind hid their base from mortals. Secrecy kept them safe.

"The worst part about you, Miss Tagalong, is that I can’t tell anyone about you." His clanmates would question her affiliation with the Tattered Ones. The Centurion would want to interrogate her. And because Daxton couldn’t refuse his commander-in-chief, he would be helpless to defend her. His dragon sent a subtle heat through him as if reminding him to protect the light being. No clawing anger like he was accustomed to.

The large barracks of Dyamur Territory felt like a prison to his troubled mind. Bad-tempered and strung tight, his dominance suppressed the surrounding air. Everyone who greeted him scurried away. When he reached the mess hall, the aroma of roasted chicken filled his nostrils. He marched past long, occupied tables intending to grab food before slinking to his room, but a tall dark-skinned male blocked his path from reaching the lunch line.

“Chief Dyamur,” Jamal said. “We still haven’t found any signs of a Tattered One near Acadia.”

Shit. I need to protect her, but I can’t do that if I can’t find the Tattered One that hurt her.“Thank you for the update.”