Page 18 of Klaus

7

Klaus

Iasked myself why my heart sank as she disappeared, but no answer came.

It made no sense, and sense was something I’d relied on throughout my long, sometimes painful life. It was why I’d remained alive as long as I had. Because I used reason and chose a course of action based on what my reasoning told me.

And yet there was another factor which had always come through, and I felt them piercing at the back of my mind as I turned to face the setting sun. My instincts wouldn’t allow me to simply forget her because she’d asked me to. If anything, the fact that she’d gone so far as to request I leave her alone made it impossible to ever do so.

My lion wasn’t convinced, either. He wanted me to pursue her, follow her, find out what was wrong. She needed our help.

“She doesn’t want our help,” I muttered. “There’s no helping someone when they don’t wish to be helped.”

The lion didn’t wish to hear this. He rarely wished to hear that which didn’t meld with his opinions.

His presence began to overwhelm me, his consciousness expanding to overtake the human side of me. I knew better than to fight him and, in fact, saw no reason to. There was barely time to slide out of the shorts I’d used to swim in before the shift took place and my human consciousness faded into the background.

He’d wanted nothing more than this, the freedom to run down the slope toward the loch. The wind blew through his mane—my mane, mine, my legs running, my muscles stretching. My heart racing. The sheer joy of unleashing the fullness of my strength was like nothing else.

Paws pounding against the ground, I ran alongside the water’s edge with the mountain to my right. Dusk was coming on fast, but that was hardly a concern as I picked up speed until I was running full-out. Flying over the ground.

The flap of wings above my head served as a reminder that I was not flying. Not really. I might have had speed, I may have been the most fearsome and deadly beast imaginable, but I was still limited to land. The dragons could soar over everything, could look down at the world from a perspective I couldn’t imagine.

Massive though I was, and powerful, I must have looked like nothing but a kitten from the height of the dragon which sailed overhead. The knowledge of this did little to thrill me. I could almost taste my envy and resentment at being considered weaker or at a disadvantage.

None of them had ever given me a reason to think they believed so, but that meant little. The sense of being something other than them, different from them, lingered in my mind even as I enjoyed being in the form in which I felt the most comfortable.

I pushed all human thought to the back of my mind and focused on the now. The freedom, the exhilaration, the raw power pulsing through my body as it did what it was built to do.

A new scent.

I stopped dead, nostrils flaring as I sniffed the air. I hadn’t smelled anything like it since our arrival—the scent of my hosts was familiar enough, having spent so much time among them in St. Lucia. The scent wasn’t theirs.

It was human.

My sharp eyes scanned the land, moving slowly over the mountains and the smaller foothills at their base. I had been unwise, leaving myself open to attack in the valley while surrounded on three sides by higher ground. The wind was coming from the west to my left, and I looked in that direction for the source of what I’d noticed.

I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Had I imagined it?

No. Impossible. Someone had been there.

Another glance up at the sky confirmed that the dragon I’d noticed had already flown off. There was no one to confirm what I thought—no, what I knew—I’d sensed.

It was with a sense of caution that I returned to the boulder where I’d left my clothing, trotting rather than running. My ears tuned to even the slightest sounds, I heard everything, the chirping of crickets as they began their nightly song, the croaking of frogs near the water. Even the flapping of bat wings, so much smaller than those of the dragons.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Only when I was certain it was safe to do so, I shifted back to my human form and dressed. It was easier to think when I was human, too, and my thoughts ran wild as I rushed back to the cave with my eyes sweeping back and forth all the while.

“Where is Alan?” I asked the first dragon I came across. Bonnie, Gate’s mother, who was winding her long, gray-streaked hair into a braid.

“I am not sure.” She frowned.

I realized that coming in from the outdoors meant she must have been the dragon soaring above me, which meant she hadn’t seen him recently. “Were you just flying out there?”

“Aye, and I noticed you, cutting across the valley.”

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