AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At the look Aaron and Marco exchanged, I braced myself. That didn’t seem like a good sign. Marco’s lips curved with his crookedgrin.
“You, my Princess of Flames, put the rest of us to shame. You’re a dragonshifter.”
Chapter 6
West
The girl staredat Marco as if she couldn’t wrap her head around a single word he’d said. Could she really be this ignorant? How could she have gone sixteen years without ever sensing the power inside her, even if her mother had meddled with her memories? I still found it hard toswallow.
“Adragon?” she sputtered. Nate, still in his bear form, shuffled backward as she pushed herself to her feet. “Are you kiddingme?”
“As much as I enjoy joking around, at this particular moment I’m being totally serious,” Marcosaid.
Ren—of all the things to be calling herself. It sounded like a fragile little bird—gestured vaguely with her hand. “At least bears and wolves and whatever arerealanimals. Dragons don’t evenexist.”
Her disbelief, acted or real, was damn irritating. I pushed myself off the doorframe and stalked a few paces toward her. “Look, you asked the question. You got the answer.” I let my gaze travel over her slim but toned figure. “Although I’ve got to agree, right now you look like you have about as much fire in you as a puff ofsparks.”
She turned to glower at me, and I saw a hint of the power in her then. A flicker behind her bright brown eyes. It lit up every inch of my skin as if I’d been hit by a whole shower ofsparks.
Damn it. The only thing more irritating than her bewildered human routine was how strongly my body responded to her no matter what I was thinking. I’d been waiting for her way toolong.
But this wasn’t how my mate was meant to be. Shewasmeant to be powerful, stronger than any of us. Not the type to run away from danger and cower among humans for sixteen years. We hadn’t known if there were any dragon shifters left. We hadn’t known what might be keeping them away. From the sounds of things, it’d been nothing more thanfear.
What had her mother been thinking, throwing her back to us now with no understanding of who she was or the role she was meant tofill?
Ren took a step closer to me, and her smell, sweet as strawberries and cream, wafted over me. Enough to make me half hard. Her expression was anything but sweet. She jabbed her finger at my chest, just shy of grazing the thin fabric of myhenley.
“I’m trying my best, okay, tough guy?” she said, her eyes all but blazing now. “Try having your world turned completely upside down in the space of an hour sometime, and see how you handleit.”
Technically, my world had been turned upside down in the instant I’d felt that first tingle of dragon magic from afar. But I wasn’t going to admit that to her. Especially not while her lips were curling with a hint of asmirk.
“And here’s your watch back,” she said. The thick metal band dangled from her fingers. What the hell? I glanced down at my wrist—which was in fact now bare. Had she juststolenthat right offme?
Marco’s melodic chuckle rang through the room, his dark blue eyes glinting. “Don’t you know better than to poke adragon?”
I grabbed the watch back from Ren, ignoring him. Feline-kin never knew how to mind their ownbusiness.
“Ididn’t even see her pull that off,” Aaron said with his scholarly awe. He was probably getting a hard-on just from the chance to talk to a dragon up close instead of relying on all those old records he liked to pourover.
The theft had, maybe, been a tiny bit impressive. I re-fastened the watch around my wrist and eyed Ren. Now that she’d gathered a little more confidence, I could almost imagine a dragon’s vitality in her. Her eyes were still shining, the deep brown waves of her hair flowing past her shoulders as if recently whipped by the wind. What kind of a dragon would she make afterall?
The need to see it wrenched through me. I folded my arms over my chest. “All right, Sparks. You know a few tricks. You want to find out how real dragons are? Shift right now and you’llknow.”
* * *
Ren
West’sdark green eyes flashed in challenge. The bravado I’d managed to call up faltered. “I don’t know how. I have no idea about any of this. Haven’t you beenlistening?”
I glanced toward Nate, the only person I’d ever seen “shift,” and found he’d transformed back into his human self. He was just pulling up his jeans, his sculpted chest still bare. A fresh wave of heat coursed through me at the sight. But—if that was how youshifted—
My arms rose to hug myself, my fingers curling into the sides of myshirt.
“You wouldn’t have to undress,” Aaron said gently. “You’re unlikely to make a full transition on your first try anyway. And if you’re able to”—he tipped his head Marco’s way—“I suspect our host has plenty of clothes around the house he couldspare.”
Marco shrugged. Under the jagged fringe of his black hair, his indigo eyes looked suddenly hungry. They gleamed more deeply than the sapphire stud in his ear. “My kin come and go from here. I keep the rooms well-stocked.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “But what do Ido?”
