Page 2 of Alpha Dragon's Wings of Love

Not that beast was the best way to describe my animal. He was an adorable fluff ball who came to me, thanks to some sort of recessive gene on one of my parents’ side. I didn’t pretend to understand the science of it. It didn’t matter. I was who I was.

My parents were both wolves, but no one would accuse my little cutie of coming from the wild. And I didn’t mind that. I liked my dog. What I didn’t love was my inability to control him.

As the years ticked by, my control stayed the same. Yes, I could often shift when I wanted to—usually, that wasn’t the issue. It was shifting back. Sometimes it took a half hour; other times? Days. And consequently, I avoided shifting, which made my beagle pissy, and human me as well, because it just didn’t feel right to be stuck in my skin all the time.

But the reality was, if I was going to survive in adulthood, I needed to be able to work, and that meant having fingers and a voice. Remote work was absolutely, positively a necessity. But that didn’t mean I could just disappear for days on end because my beagle decided, “Hey, chasing a ball sounds fun.”

But something had to give. I couldn’t keep going like this.

I finally talked to my parents, and they assured me I was perfect the way I was. And that was their job, wasn’t it? But it also didn’t make it true. Eventually, after much begging, they decided that maybe we needed to talk to the pack alpha.

Alpha turned out to be more helpful than I’d hoped, letting me know that there was a specialist who might be able to help—and even offering pack money to pay him. He admitted he hadn’t realized how bad things were for me, but neither had my parents until I’d gone to them in desperation.

I was embarrassed for so many reasons—embarrassed that it wascuteinstead of fierce and ferocious, that I couldn’t get a real job, a good job, and that I had to struggle with more side-hustle kinds of gigs and contract work, just in case I disappeared full-time. Remote never quite worked out for me, although I had some applications out that held promise.

Most recently, I was embarrassed that I didn’t have enough money to pay the stupid doctor.

My lifelong friend, Jonah, offered to take me. There was no way I was taking a plane. It would be impossible to shift midair and not have everybody around me notice. And even though I was cute and cuddly, they would, without a doubt, be taken aback.

People didn’t just change into other animals on airplanes. And, while being a shifter wasn’t unknown, that didn’t mean humans truly understood or had ever witnessed it. It was much better to take the car and avoid any chance of being hurt because I startled someone too much in a time when they were already anxious.

“Okay, we’ve got this.” Jonah handed me a list of items to pack. He was so into this, it was adorable.

Before I headed to the specialist, I filled out a ton of paperwork. He wanted to pretty much know everything that happened to me from the time I was a pup—what I ate as a child, how long I nursed, if there was any trauma in my birth. As if a normal person knew any of those things. My dad filled me in on any details I didn’t know, and we got it done. But it had been on the stressful side, to say the least.

I had all the papers in my folder, my bag packed to my friend’s specifications, and Jonah ready to go on an adventure. We were ready. Worst-case scenario, we had a fun week and no answers. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

But really the worst-case scenario—the one that was burning a hole in the back of my mind and had been for years—was the doctor telling me that losing control would get worse and worse and worse as time ticked by. That eventually I wouldn’t be able to shift at all, and I’d be stuck either as a human or as my beagle. And I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

I was made up of both. Choosing one meant that I’d only be half of myself. I shuddered at the thought.

We got in the car, me in the passenger seat, and cranked the radio up, singing along as we made our way to the highway for the first leg of the trip. We were going to camp along the way—partly for saving money but mostly so he could shift and sleep in his wolf form, his favorite way to snuggle down for the night. I liked camping well enough, and Jonah and I always had a blast.

“We gotta stop here.” I pointed to the billboard indicating a convenience store at the next exit. “It says they have 600 kinds of jerky.”

“You need 600 kinds of jerky?” Jonah sounded skeptical but turned on his blinker. He might not understand the draw, but he wasn’t going to turn me down.

“No, but I’m curious as to how it’s possible.”

It was far less wow than I’d imagined. They had a lot of different meats in the same varieties of seasonings all in jerky form. There were multiple kinds of barbecue—far more than I knew existed—and different levels of heat, and everything from emu to venison to beef. And shapes? From strips to chunks to “fun shapes.” It was interesting enough, but, in the end, I ended up grabbing a Slim Jim, my favorite, and Jonah grabbed his caffeine fix in the form of his favorite soda, and off we went to the next leg of our journey.

And that became our thing: stopping at convenience stores that advertised odd things, fromBest Donuts in the CountytoMeet All Your Keychain NeedstoBoiled Peanuts Round the Clock. Anything that we saw advertised that looked interesting, we stopped.

It was a good call, the stops distracting me from the root of why we were traveling in the first place. And anything that prevented me from hyper focusing on the reason we were there was worth it.

Everyone needed a Jonah in their life, and I was so happy to have mine. One day, he would find his mate and start a family, one that probably wouldn’t want a tagalong broken beagle. And as much as I wanted that for him, for Jonah to have the life he deserved, I wasn’t looking forward to it. He was the only person besides my parents who didn’t treat me as less than.

Maybe this trip would change that. Maybe the doctor would give me the cure and I’d be a normal shifter with normal abilities. I for sure wasn’t going to hold my breath. I’d had hope before. I knew how that turned out. And, spoiler alert: it wasn’t good.

Chapter Three

Nolan

I missed him.

That chant had never stopped in my head since I caught the scent of my mate at that rest stop. I went back there before I left the area, and the faintest trace remained, driving my beast from agitated to angry to uncontrollable.

Completely unfit to be around anyone after it became obvious that I’d lost my one chance to meet my fated mate, I had to make choices. Going home in my current state was not one of those because my dragon was willing to burn anyone to ash for any reason. I understood why he felt that way, but I couldn’t allow our rage to spill onto innocent bystanders.

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