Page 23 of New Nebraska Home

On a good day, my dragon was an arrogant, cocky motherfucker. It was always ready to be let loose and battle the world, but in reality, my dragon was about the size of a house cat and my powers were not anything to write home about. Though I had perfected making them seem like a bigger threat than they actually were. When your power was limited, it became a very important skill to make whatever you could do look like just the tiniest hint, or taste, of your abilities.

Since I came into town, it seemed like everything was intensifying. Not only my dragon’s agitation but the claws that I felt on the inside of my chest trying to push through were larger. The instincts were far sharper, as was the need to hoard what I saw as mine. Possessiveness had always been a dragon trait. At least I thought so, but I had never felt it like this. I wanted to claim the people in that house as mine, people I barely knew. I wanted to stand beside the other men, protect the child with my life…. and the girl… there was so much I wanted to do to her.

Was this feeling normal? I had no way of knowing.

I was one of many creatures that were kidnapped as a child and separated from my parents. Making it on my own had always been difficult, as was trying to figure out what I was, where I came from. There wasn’t much known about dragon shifters in the paranormal community or its historical texts, and I didn’t know if that was because other dragons preferred to be secretive or if there just weren’t many of us around to begin with. So, the things I knew as fact were only the things that I had personally experienced. Everything else was a guess based on myths and legends.

That’s why I was in New Nebraska. I came voluntarily, looking for more of my kind.

With humans paying big bucks to a few elementals who could easily detect and hunt down other paranormals, there was very little escaping the mandate to move here. But I never thought of not coming. I wanted to come. Humans didn’t even know to look for dragon shifters, and even many paranormals thought we were a myth. But with all the paranromals except Fae gathered in one place here, I was hoping I could find someone like me. That they could fill in the gaps of my knowledge.

Maybe they could be my home.

There was, of course, a specific myth that had me searching for my kind. Every city I road through, I always spent some time in their library, especially in their rare book collection. Some dusty book in the back of a library in Phoenix, Arizona of all places, talked about dragon shifters finding their clutch. The book said that when a dragon found its family, its powers increased significantly. The author of the book hypothesized that was because dragons at full power needed something to live for, so they didn’t go crazy and burn everything around them to the ground. Judging with how quick my temper was and how easily my dragon insisted on starting fights it could not win, I would say the author was probably onto something.

I could still smell that very distinct sawdust in the air. It was sweet, but there was something else about it that was unique. The closer I got, the stronger that scent became, and I was pretty sure it was sandalwood. To the best of my knowledge, sandalwood didn’t grow in these United States. Maybe Hawaii, but that was a far cry from where we were. Whoever was marching around these oak trees with sandalwood sawdust, chances were they were with the kid that Callum had back at the house.

Part of me didn’t like leaving Liz there, but my dragon insisted. The dragon felt Liz was safe with the other two and the more pertinent danger was the others that could attack her. It demanded their blood for her safety.

I didn’t think my dragon had ever been possessive over a person before, but everything with my dragon was new, and so much stronger. There had to be a clutch of dragons nearby for my powers to grow like this. That’s the only thing I could think of. If my family was close or my mate.

The book sadly had little on dragon mates. There was only one book I found that even mentioned dragons mating and it talked about a coven of witches that were said to have gone extinct nearly a century ago in Salem. The Daughters of Salem were supposed to be a powerful but ultimately doomed coven. Though from what I’d read, there was as much literature about them as there was on dragon shifters. Next to nothing and what you could find seemed to be fantasy.

The trees grouped thicker the further I went, and I lost the scent. My dragon was clawing at the inside of my chest, begging to be released, and I didn’t want to hold it back anymore. I could have, if I’d needed to. I hadn’t lost complete control yet. But I knew my dragon could move through the trees faster, silently stalking its prey, and I wanted to see what living in New Nebraska had done for his powers as well as mine.

Quickly, but silently, I took off my clothes, hanging them on a branch before shifting down into what should have been a tiny dragon. Instead of being the size of a small cat, my dragon’s head was a good three, maybe even four feet off the ground. My wings were much larger and even my tail felt stronger. Where there used to be smooth scaly black skin, I could now feel barb’s poking through from the back of my neck, traveling down my spine to the tip of my tail.

I felt stronger, my senses keener, and even my fangs felt so much bigger. Energy flowed through my veins and I ran, testing my new muscles, my speed and agility. I followed the scent, jumping over ditches through branches and even stretching my wings to glide a little between the trees. It was amazing. I had never been strong enough to fly before.

I wasn’t really flying though, more using my wings to glide between branches. It made me wonder, if I found more of my kind, my mate—a family of my own—would I be even stronger? Would I be able to soar in the clouds, maybe with someone like Liz on my back? Would she cling to my scales petrified or lift her arms up and scream in glee? God, I wanted to know.

When I made it to the other side of the trees, I found another car, a beat-up red pickup with the license plate covered. The other car had been a decoy. If we had been fast enough, we would have caught them to find them empty-handed while the real son of bitches got away.

It was okay. I didn’t need a license plate number. I recognized the alpha wolf crawling in the back, hooting and hollering like a jackass. He was going to pay for this. Fire burned in my chest, and I wanted to let it flow, burning every mother fucker to a crisp, but I couldn’t, not yet. There was no way to tell how strong I was, if the burning crawling up my neck was a torrent of lava-like I hoped or an itty bitty little flame that could barely light a cigarette.

Besides, I wanted them afraid of me. Not knowing what I was, and what I was capable of was going to fuel their nightmares far better than I ever could.

I sank back into the trees, heading back to the house. There was at least one little fucker that could be taught a lesson.

The trip back to the house only took me seconds with my clothes in my talons. I stopped just outside the back door to get redressed. I could hear the others talking to the elemental we’d detained, demanding answers. Maybe a little of the dragon intimidation would be enough to scare the shit out of him like it did his shifter buddies.

I took a single step in the room, and the kid yelled just before I was bathed in a torrent of flames with Liz screaming my name. It sure did sound sweet.

Liz

DRAGONS ARE HOT

Callum’s hand still pinned the kid against my kitchen wall by his throat as we watched the flames pour from his body onto Malik. My heart seized as I let out a scream of shock or possibly fear. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling other than the blistering heat coming from the flames, and my heart stopping, then racing.

Brock’s arms wrapped around me and pulled me away from the fire. The water coming from his hands instantly cooled my skin, but I fought his hold. I wasn’t the one that needed Brock’s water magic. I wasn’t the one that this kid had set on fire while trying to come back into the house.

Soon after Callum had grabbed the kid and we’d tried to get some answers from him, he’d been trying to set something on fire. He had burned one of the doilies my grandmother made, which pissed me off, and left scorch marks on my couch, so we moved into the kitchen where the flames and Brock’s water magic wouldn’t do as much damage.

Once we moved, he hadn’t been able to set anything alight. The one time he came close to scorching the raw wood in the door frame, Brock put it out in a second. There wasn’t even a black mark on the wood. How this kid got the juice to bathe Malik in a stream of constant fire, I would never understand. Not that I understood how elementals worked.

“Let me go,” I cried as I tried to fight my way to Malik. Brock turned me in his arms so I could see what was happening, but he didn’t let me go.

“I don’t think Malik needs our help,” Brock said in an almost awe-like whisper. It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, and then I noticed that the flames that surrounded Malik didn’t seem to be touching him. They were on his skin, dancing in shades of red and gold, but Malik seemed more annoyed than anything else.

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