Page 33 of Bewitching the Dragon
She shrugged.
He glanced at Ketu, who nodded. And then Rahu’s body started to shimmer, and Becca stared despite herself, despite the absolute impossibility of the situation.
She watched as his hands transformed into claws—giant, black claws that stuck out from under shiny, metallic scales. They appeared silver, although when the sun bounced off of them it created dozens of tiny rainbow halos. She shaded her eyes with her hand and kept watching, admittedly fascinated.
His head elongated and grew bigger and bigger while his ears turned into something resembling flippers and horns sprouted out of the fast-disappearing hair.
Horns!
His face became a snout. Smoke shot from the slits his nostrils had become, while the rest of his body transformed into something of a lizard shape, except far larger than the bearded dragon she’d intended to buy for her classroom. He was scaly too. With wings. Great silver wings that, when he spread them, spanned the entire width of the backyard.
Holy crap.
Becca continued to stare until the transformation was complete. The entire process took only seconds, but those seconds felt like ions in the moment.
Rahu was a dragon. Dragons existed.
Rahu was adragon.
This…this couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. Actually, it made even less sense now that she’d seen it happen. Because until this point, she could convince herself these people were simply crazy. But now—now it was real, and she couldn’t process.
This was too much.
“What you’re trying not to believe is actually true. You aren’t human.”
They insisted Becca wasn’t human either. But not a dragon. No, she couldn’t dothat.
She only made light flare around her hand. Practically a parlor trick compared to turning into a ten-foot tall, scaly beast.
Guess that explained the fence.
“I can’t,” she whispered, and every single person—dragon…whatever—in the vicinity turned toward her, as if they’d heard the barely spoken words. For all she knew, they had.
“I can’t do this,” she said, a little louder this time.
The dragon, the actual one standing on all four legs in the middle of the backyard, shook its head and snorted. A ball of fire burst from its mouth.
Becca gave a yelp and rushed toward the house. The French door flew open without anyone touching it and banged against the wall, the glass windowpanes shattering.
She shrieked and started hopping around, afraid to cut her bare feet on the shards of glass. As if by magic—oh hell—an invisible broom seemed to sweep the bits of glass out of her path.
Becca ran straight through the house to the front door and burst through it, out into the front yard. She didn’t have shoes or a purse or her keys or phone, and she didn’t care. She just needed to get the hell away from those people. Dragons. Whatever.
She couldn’t take this. It wasn’t real.
But it was.
It was much too real.
Just like her parents dying.
Running down the sidewalk, she shook her head as images popped into it, scenes she didn’t recall ever seeing before, yet she knew in her gut were real.
Her parents’ deaths. Specifically, her mother.
She’d been attacked. By a group of men. Really big men. Five of them. They all had long, dark hair, and their skin tones varied from pasty white to darkest black.
And their eyes glowed.
