the world around her from a whole new vantage point. “It’s beautiful.”
“Welcome to my world,” the dragon replied in a soft voice.
“This is how you see the world around you?” she asked, sitting up straight, though her fingers were still white at the knuckles where they closed around the spike on his back.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“My jealousy is through the roof right now,” she muttered. “Just so you know.”
The entire back of the dragon vibrated. It took a second for her to understand that he was laughing.
“I just wanted to make sure you were safe,” dragon-Rann said over the beat of his wings as they rose higher into the sky.
Away from the angry mob.
“I think I’m safe,” she said quietly. “I don’t think they can get me up here.”
“No, I don’t think they can,” dragon-Rann agreed.
Gayle relaxed just a bit as they steadied. The wings stopped beating, and they simply soared through the sky. She took one hand from the horn-grip and spread it wide against the scales of his neck, feeling the power, the majesty of the creature upon which she rode.
“You get to do this all the time?” she asked, still stunned by the panoramic landscape below them.
Everything was so small!
“Not as often as I would like,” he admitted. “But yes. It is quite freeing to be up here. It makes all the problems of my world seem smaller, knowing just how much more is out there.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
His wings beat again, and this time Gayle could feel them. She felt the powerful muscles of his shoulders twitch and flex. Beneath that, she felt the slow, steady beat of a heart that was probably larger than her head.
She looked down as the tent city disappeared behind them.
“Where are we going?” she asked as Rann banked northwest over Five Peaks, making it clear he had a destination in mind. “We can’t go to the city. You’d get swarmed if you landed there. As it is, people are going to be following you like mad.”
“I know,” Rann said tightly. “That’s why we usually fly at night. But I’ll drop lower once we’re out of town, lose them in the trees. We’ll be safe.”
“I believe you,” she said, meaning it. “But where are we going to be safe?”
“My safe place,” Rann rumbled. “Somewhere we don’t have to worry about those church idiots or anyone else.”
“Where’s that?” she asked, curious.
“My home.”
“I thought you lived in town?” she asked, her tone reminding him that she’d just told him they couldn’t go there.
“I have a place there,” he corrected. “But no. My home is on the mountain, with my family. My clan.”
“The mountain?” she repeated. “What do you mean? Wait. What do you mean your clan?”
“The other dragon shifters.”
Gayle massaged her face with her hand. “There’s so much I just don’t know,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start asking questions. You’re a dragon. Okay. You have family. Great. You live on a mountain. Which one? That seems like a good place to start I guess.”
She was babbling, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself either. The shocks just kept coming, one after another, and her brain was still stuck in adrenaline-flight mode from the race through the tent city.
“Mount Atrox,” Rann said, his neck vibrating with the power of his voice every time he spoke.
Is this why some girls like motorcycles so much?
Gayle hunched over, burying her face in her arms. How could she think of something like that at a time like this? She needed to focus!
“Mount Atrox. What about the Atrox family?” she asked. “They might come looking if a dragon lands on their mountain. We don’t want that kind of attention.”
Rann chuckled. “Gayle, they are my family.”
And suddenly, so much more made sense.
“Your family,” she breathed. “The Atrox family is a clan of dragon shifters.”
“Yes. As are all the other families.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly feeling very, very small.
Rann’s wings pumped harder.
“Rann?” she said after a bit more time had passed and her brain had begun to process all this new information.
“Yes?” he said, the same vibrations running up her legs as he spoke.
Damn that’s distracting.
“You said that woman wasn’t dead. The one on the news?”
“No,” he said. “The vampires—that is what they are, before you ask—didn’t kill her. Not literally.”
“What do you mean?”
Rann was quiet, the only sound the beating of his wings and the whistle of the air around her.
“They turned her,” he said eventually, and this time the vibration of his speaking didn’t feel