The (Not) Satisfied Dragon - Colette Rhodes Page 0,35

a comforting smile.

“I want to fly and get more comfortable with my dragon, but I'm not looking forward to the shift itself,” I admitted, surprised that I'd voiced my fears to them so easily. They were worming their way past my defenses.

“It won't be anything like your first shift,” Levi reassured me. “Your body knows what to do now. Relax into it, let it happen.”

“He’s right. We'll, uh, give you some privacy to undress,” Ezra said, clearing his throat.

I caught Hiram's smirk as they all turned their backs at the edge of the ledge, a wall of muscle that hid me from the view of anyone opposite the mountain. I quickly stripped and held the dress up to cover my front while I closed my eyes and focused on shifting. It felt like my dragon was a tangible, living part of me, lying in wait for me to call on her. It wasn't difficult or scary like I'd been worried it would be — how could it be, when my dragon was part of me?

I leaned into the sensation of rightness, as gold scales crawled up my arms and over the rest of my body. The feeling of them breaking through my skin was more like an uncomfortable itch than the pain I remembered from a few days ago. I dropped the dress to the ground as bones broke and grew, doubling over and wheezing through the painful, but not agonizing process. By the time I opened my eyes, I towered over my mates, my magnificent wings brushing against the wall of the den behind me.

I was spectacular, I could feel it.

Hiram was the first to approach, holding up his hand and letting me decide whether or not to bridge the gap. I gave him a cursory nudge with my nose before shifting closer to Levi and nuzzling his cheek. Just so Hiram knew where he stood. He laughed heartily as he pulled off his clothes and dived off the ledge, shifting into a gleaming silver dragon in midair and shooting up towards the sky. Show off.

One by one, they all did the same since there was no room on the ledge for them to shift with me standing on it, and I didn't know what to do next. It was very inconvenient not being able to speak in this form.

Fortunately, Ezra seemed to know what I was thinking. He turned to face me as Seff jumped into the air and reached up to run his fingers lightly along my apparently sensitive wing. “Jump, Shira. It's the only way to learn. Trust your body, trust your dragon. You'll know what to do.”

He stripped and followed the rest of his flight, leaving me with the bare minimum of instructions to go on. Jump off the side of a mountain and hopefully you won't die. Excellent.

I moved closer to the edge, peering down at the drop below me and the den entrances I could just see from my position. What if I just fell and ended up crashing into someone's home? Or just plummeted all the way into the valley below and died? I didn't expect some kind of grand exit from this world, but I felt like I'd come too far and survived too much to die falling off the side of a mountain because my wings didn't work.

Ezra growled, giving me a censuring look before tilting his head up to the sky in a clear don't look down message. Easy for him to say. He had air magic. If his wings didn't work, he and Hiram each had a backup. Hopefully, they'd use it to save me if I needed saving. With that cheery thought in mind, I shuffled back as far as I could before taking a running leap off the ledge, trying to put a decent amount of space between me and the mountain.

A strange, strangled sound came out of my dragon's mouth. The sound a dragon made when they were trying to scream, but apparently couldn't scream. For a few terrifying moments, I free fell, belly first, with the ground rushing up towards me at an alarming rate. This was it. This was how I died. Landing flat on my stomach and splattering all over the valley.

But as I made a mental list of all the things I'd never get to do in my life, a ripple of movement ran down my spine. And then another. It was me. My wings were doing what they were meant