Ancient Enemy - Katie Reus Page 0,4
her pet dragon Willow—who was roughly the size of a rhinoceros. Her big gray wings were just a little too big for her growing body so she swooped and wobbled when she flew. She was so dang cute, it made Dallas’s heart happy to watch her randomly spray water from her mouth all over one side of the garden. “I didn’t teach her to do this. She watched the sprinkler for days and then decided she could do a better job.”
Hazel’s pretty blue eyes widened. She was a shifter of some kind, though Dallas wasn’t sure what exactly. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. Willow has a mind of her own.” Which was why the big baby slept with her head through Dallas’s bedroom window most nights because she couldn’t stand to be separated.
Willow flew off again and then gathered water from the nearby pond before she wobbled back and sprayed it all over Dallas’s rows of tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers. Next her dragon would water the growing flowers and herbs.
“For the record, this is a weird conversation to be having,” Hazel said through laughter, her dark curls bouncing.
“Trust me, I know.” Roughly two months ago the world had basically imploded and now shifters were out to the world. Well, shifters and other supernatural creatures.
Dallas was a witch, and her kind had always been pariahs in the supernatural world, so she kept her distance from most supernaturals. Not all, however, because people like Hazel, who were part of their farmers co-op for all shifters, had not only been accepting of Dallas, they’d simply made her feel welcome. Like family. And they hadn’t made her feel like they were doing her a favor by being friends with her. More than all of that, they’d kept her not-so-little secret about Willow. When the world had been literally set on fire, dragon shifters had used real dragons—like Willow—to help destroy everything. Most people thought they were mindless, violent beasts. Maybe they were, but Willow wasn’t. And Dallas wasn’t letting anyone take her pet.
“So what’s going on? Everything okay on your farm?” Because it wasn’t like Hazel to stop by unannounced.
Hazel grew corn, beans and broccoli, among other things. She also had a bunch of chickens. In the area—which was about thirty minutes outside New Orleans proper—there were six farms with their lands all connected, and over four years they’d created their own co-op. They provided vegetables and other things like eggs, cheese, oils and soaps for local farmers markets. After The Fall, they’d gotten even more organized and were working with the Alpha of New Orleans on providing much needed locally grown food to the community.
“I heard from Naomi that a group of shifters stopped by her farm.”
Dallas straightened slightly. “And?”
“They’re from King’s pack. They’re just making the rounds and checking in with everyone. But I figure your farm is going to be last on their list and I know you’d want to hide Willow. So I hurried over here since you didn’t answer your phone. I called you like six times.”
She winced, even as her heart rate kicked up. “Sorry, I’m so bad about that.” She knew she needed to be better about keeping her phone on her because she lived out here alone. And she liked it that way. No one from her former coven to deal with. But she did have a lot of human friends, and to her surprise she found that they’d been more accepting of who she was than supernaturals for as long as she could remember.
Nothing else mattered right now, however. Because she needed to get Willow out of here. There was no telling what would happen if King or his people discovered that she had a pet dragon. Because Willow was not a shifter, she was just an adorable baby dragonling that Dallas had found two months ago and taken in. She’d found an egg that Willow had to have hatched from, but there had been no sign of her parents. It was as if she’d just appeared.
She was growing so quickly and had stolen her way into Dallas’s heart. She even tried to herd Dallas’s goats. It was ridiculous and adorable at the same time the way she mothered them. But dragons had helped destroy the world and Dallas knew more than most how cruel supernaturals could be to creatures they deemed to be a threat. How they could judge and act without thinking first. They would kill Willow without even giving her a chance. “I’ll