Page 12 of Shifter’s Thunder

At the last second, Wolcz turned to the room. “We will make sure every dragon knows this for the trap it is.” The double doors slammed shut behind them. To Avelunne’s immense relief, not a single other person in the packed auditorium moved to follow them.

Guivre cleared her throat. “Thank you, Avelunne. We accept your offer.” She turned her attention to Tanner. “A word in private, please?”

Tanner nodded, but his gaze lingered on the doors the dragons had exited through, his jaw set. He turned to the young cougar shifter standing nearby. “Deputy Osborne, please escort Avelunne back to the Transition Center.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Stick to her like a burr in your fur.”

His gold eyes caught hers, his expression unreadable, but his shoulders not quite so tense. “I’ll join you there as soon as I can.” With that, he strode purposefully to catch up with Guivre.

The warmth of the Transition Center’s open and airy common room helped her relax, or at least as much as she could. At one of the trestle tables, Avelunne sat on a bench and hunched over her spiral-bound sketchbook, guiding her mechanical pencil in careful lines. In her mind, she could see interlocking geometric shapes that could be folded from the stiff metallic cardstock she’d seen in the Center’s art bins to make three-dimensional ornaments.

Getting her vision on paper was the only thing keeping her anxiety at bay. She had just volunteered to lead a rescue mission to the place that haunted her nightmares and made certain sounds and smells in the real world cause her heart to race like a hummingbird’s wings. The old Avelunne, the flighty butterfly who flitted away when life became difficult, was screaming at her to run. But the remembered faces of her captive friends and the unexpected support of a certain sheriff kept her anchored to the chair.

A shadow fell across her page. She looked up to find Tanner standing there, his presence solid but not looming.

He tilted his head toward the Center’s wide glass doors. “Care to take a stroll in the courtyard?”

Given that the wind was back with a vengeance and whipping by with anything it could catch, she assumed he wanted a private conversation, not a breath of fresh air. Closing her pad and hooking the pencil on its cover, she hugged it to her chest, then grabbed her nearby pink coat and stood up. “As you wish.”

He led her to the dormant fountain in the center of the courtyard before turning to speak. She zippered her coat over her pad, then had to step close to hear him over the gusts of wind. The proximity did terrible, wonderful things to her pulse.

Tanner frowned. “You’re shivering. Is it too cold for you?”

“I’m good.” She liked the simple brevity of that modern phrase. “Moonwings once claimed the frozen fjords of the north. I was raised there.” She shoved her hands in her pockets, less for warmth than to keep her hands from reaching out to touch him. Magnetic males were dangerous temptations.

He nodded. “Okay. At Guivre’s request, I’ve put together an insertion team. You’ll paint the target, I’ll pry the portal open for the specialist, and the incursion team sorties inside to make the extraction.”

Avelunne blinked at the unfamiliar jumble of words. “We will do what?”

Tanner’s small smile warmed her. “We are the keys, not the hammers.” His expression turned serious. “You show me the way in, I infiltrate the demesne so our portal specialist can hold it. The rest of team gets your friends and we all get out. I’m not running the whole operation, just breaching the doorway. But to do that, we need to know if we can fly together without a mid-air collision. I’m free now, if you are.”

“Ah. You mean a rehearsal.” She looked up at the cloudless sky lit by the winter afternoon sun. “I feel I must point out that I am twelve years out of practice being a dragon. I’m not sure I can even call the magic to hide my form. Moonwings are natural night hunters, but since I couldn’t eat meat, my only skill is in catching fish. It’s not usually a challenge to chase down wily cabbages.” She sighed, wishing she were everything she was not. She waved a hand to encompass the sky. “I’ve only flown once since my escape. As your sad vehicle can attest, that flight didn’t end well.”

Tanner’s chuckle seemed to insulate them from the biting wind. “The SUV was insured. I think you underestimate yourself, but let’s find out tonight. Meet me here at nine.” He pointed toward the Transition Center’s central hub, built to look grander than it was. “Or we can use the roof of the fake watchtower if you need the height for a launch.”

“Here is fine. I can take off from anywhere if I have wing space.” A skill that had saved her precious pointed tail more than once.

“Good to know. I’ll arrange for you to get a phone. You’ll need it for messages.” His gaze dropped to her wrist, where the magical peace bond bracelet still shimmered faintly against her skin. “I can take those off now. You’re part of the team. You shouldn’t be leashed.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I will keep them on until we launch. If Wolcz or Trolhorne sees me walking around unbound, they will claim I have ensorcelled the Sheriff or broken my parole. I will not give my enemies the chance to stop this mission before it begins.” She stepped back to look him in the eye. “Northern dragon politics make the Italian ruling families look like bumbling puppies.”

“So I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

The night air rushed over Avelunne’s scales, cool and crisp and deliciously thin. Jupiter and Saturn hung like bright jewels in the starry black. She’d forgotten how much she missed them.

Around her left foreleg, she wore the small, charmed chain that expanded when she’d shifted. It allowed her unhindered passage through the town’s formidable shield without triggering the alarm that had greeted her crash landing. So far, she’d managed to avoid answering pointed questions about how she’d breached the shield in that unfortunate incident.

Avelunne thanked the moon gods that her draconic muscles remembered the rhythms of flight. The moment her talons left the ground, the wind welcomed her back like a long-lost sister. Now she banked left, her wings catching an updraft, and leveled out, her dragon magic feeling the glorious, potent stretch of her horizons.

Movement to her right caught her eye. In his human form, he was handsome enough to make her pulse skip, but his thunderbird was magnificent. A creature of myth made real, a raptor the size of a wide oak, with feathers the dark, mottled grey of a coming storm. His beak was a wicked, black scythe, and his eyes burned with the intensity of hammered gold. He owned the sky, moving with a predator’s efficiency and a hawk’s nimble grace. Even from a distance, Avelunne could feel the subsonic rumble of his magic like a vibration in her breastbone. He glided faster than the air currents. Perhaps like dragons, magic gave him preternatural speed.

Tanner’s brief screech told her it was time to start their test. Explaining her moonwing magic was one thing; showing him was quite another. To her relief, it responded to her will as if she’d used it nightly. Her scales lit up and rippled with raw electricity. She shaped and pushed the energy outward, a jagged arc of lightning that snapped into the empty space ahead of them. Instantly, Tanner banked sharply. Somehow, he caught the bolt, then redirected it toward the heavens as a tighter beam. His shriek of triumph turned into a roll of thunder that surely woke every sleeping thing for two hundred miles.

Tanner dipped a wing, circling back toward her. Words pushed into her thoughts. Avelunne? … lower... to try something.

Her tail twitched in surprise. Mind speech. She wasn’t the only one with unexpected magic.

His thoughts were hard to catch, like hearing words through the wind. She’d spent most of her life shielding her mind and pretending to have no such skill, so her attempt at a reply took a couple of tries to tell him to lead the way.

His goal was a pair of jagged mountain peaks, scoured clean of snow by the wind.