Page 53 of Red Dragon’s Flame

Michelangela’s face lit up. “You think so? I did it myself. Designed it and put it on, both. That’s why it’s on my ankle. It’s one of the few places I can actually tattoo myself.”

She stuck her foot out, and Devon ran her fingers over the tattoo, feeling them tingle. She looked up in surprise. “Is it magical?”

Michelangela grimaced. “Um. Yeah? I thought it would be cool to try to make something that looked like it was moving. But now I’m thinking I might get in trouble for using magic.”

That was Mikey all over. Act first, think afterwards. “I won’t tell,” she said. “But it’s not exactly inconspicuous. Your family’s bound to notice before long.”

“I know. It’s only that my dad just started speaking to me again without yelling.”

“I’d like to get a tattoo,” Devon said. “I mean, a normal one. Mikah has that wing on his one pec, and I’d love to get something like it. Would that be too weird and couple-y?”

“Are you kidding?” Michelangela said. “Mikah’s a dragon. Anything you did that would make it seem like you belong to him, he’d love it. I could design something for you. A non-magical tat. Here. I’ll show you my design book.”

She reached down to grab her backpack, but it was too far away. Suddenly the backpack got up and floated across the room, into her hand.

Devon stared, mouth open. “How much magic can you do?”

Mikey’s face went beet red. “That wasn’t me,” she said. “It was Ziggy.”

“Please don’t tell me you have an invisible friend.”

“I do, though,” she said. “It’s called a zefir.”

“A what?”

“They’re these disembodied creatures that sometimes serve dragons. Air elementals, Tyr told me once. Nobody knows where they came from—but if they like a dragon, they just show up and start doing their housework and cooking and stuff, like invisible house elves.”

“Sweet,” Devon said. “How come we don’t have any here?”

“I asked Mikah that, the night we found you,” Michelangela said. “We were at Thorne’s, and they have them all over the place there. I said I wished I was a dragon, so one might follow me home.”

“And one did?” Devon asked. “Why you?”

“I have no clue,” Michelangela said. “I should be the last person it would care about serving. But all of the sudden it was there, fetching and carrying. So I named him Ziggy. I tried to tell him to stay on the down low, but he forgets.”

Devon shook her head. “You really don’t follow any rules.”

Michelangela gave her mischievous grin. “I try not to.”

Mikah was happy that Devon seemed to be settling in at the castle. It was getting hard for him to remember what life was like without her to fill it—except that it was much bleaker and more lonely.

Although it did worry him a bit that she still didn’t want to be with anyone but him—and Michelangela.

his dragon said.

She’s human, Mikah said. She needs a community. Just like we need a clan.

He talked it over with Gerard and Tristan, who’d come back from their mission with ten more wolves that they’d liberated from a compound deep in the Albanian mountains.

“Give her time,” Gerard said. “She’s a lot like these ones we just brought back.”

The three of them were sitting on the patio of the halfway house in the village, where recently liberated shifters lived when they were in the adjustment phase. Gerard had brought out his best scotch.

“Devon hasn’t been abused,” Mikah said doubtfully.

“But she’s been in captivity,” Tristan pointed out. “I mean, she’s lucky she had someone who loved her, but she was still cut off from the world. No friends, no social interaction, no practice at being part of a community.”

“Most of them are like that, at first,” Gerard said, jerking his head slightly at a little boy they’d just brought back. He was about six or seven, and was huddled under a bush with his knees up to his chest, watching the village children playing from a safe distance. “He’s too scared to come out. Crowds overwhelm him. Being touched by strangers overwhelms him. It’s too much.”