4
Mara
Okay … so he was a dragon shifter. Those were pretty rare.
Stepping back, it felt like I’d lost track of every thought I’d had in my entire life. My jaw hung slack in surprise, and I had to move my eyes quickly to catch every single inch of him. His dragon form was huge, navy blue so deep and dark it almost looked black. His wings were intricately patterned like stained glass and shimmered in the warm morning light.
A gold spiral swirled out from the left part of his chest, where his human heart would have been.
He was beautiful.
Stepping back, pulling my sweater tighter around my body, I realized what kind of risk I was putting myself in.
I had heard about dragon shifters; nearly every shifter child was scared into coming in at night to get away from dragon shifters. They were rare, elusive, but were known to cause trouble wherever they went. A house had burned down a couple of months ago from a young one that had run away from home, and I heard another had a witch and her injured friend holed up in a mountain cabin for days.
I’d never heard one good thing about them, except that they were beautiful.
That much was true. All the descriptions could not have prepared me for seeing him in the flesh.
As he walked towards me, his claws crunching the leaves and debris beneath him, I was awestruck. His skin looked like a pool of sleek dark oil as he moved towards me. His wings reminded me more of a butterfly’s wings than a dragon’s, causing colorful light to kaleidoscope as they flexed in the afternoon sun.
I backed away, not sure how else to protect myself, and gasped when he stopped.
He stared me down, those big green eyes gleamed and flit over my face like he was searching for a reaction.
“I have to go,” I murmured.
“Wait—” He shifted quickly back into his human form as I started to walk away.
His body was incredible.
I couldn’t help but admire him as I stopped in my tracks. His pecs begged to be touched, and his chest was imprinted with the same golden mark as his dragon form. I wanted to trace my fingers across it, feel if it had the same texture as his skin. I quickly looked away in embarrassment.
“I wanted to be honest with you. I’m not dangerous,” he said softly. His eyes now looked heavy and dark with nerves, despite how calm the rest of his face was. There were layers to him besides just being a dragon shifter, and I wanted to know what they were.
“I have to get to work,” I insisted.
“I promise you; I’m telling the truth about who I am.”
“I get that you think that, but I can’t handle this right now.” The words flew out a little sharper than I wanted them to, and I flinched a little as I turned and walked away. I didn’t want to hurt him, but there was enough going on in my life already.
Part of me worried he’d chase me, worried he was going to follow me and try to talk me out of it, but all I could feel was his eyes on me. Glancing back, as I stepped out of the tree line, I realized he was gone.
“Okay.” I sighed under my breath.
The further I walked away, the more it felt like I was losing a part of myself. It was weird: I’d only even known he’d existed for twenty-four hours, and yet I was starting to feel like I needed to be around him to function.
How on Earth could I miss a total stranger?
My whole morning, working on the pet groomer’s window, I kept expecting to see him. I didn’t know what he’d do when he confronted me. I didn’t want to get into a fight. Not in front of a client’s shop.
I stopped after applying a thick layer of paint, my base on which to paint some puppies tumbling out of soap bubbles and went two doors over for lunch. Halfway through a turkey and swiss on wheat, I could smell him.
I hadn’t given too much stock to what he’d smelled like before, but the moment I got a whiff, it registered as him. He smelled like the forest after the first rain in ages: refreshed pine, crisp but sucking in every bit of moisture.
It triggered such a vivid image that I absolutely knew it was him.
No perfume, or cologne, or plug-in crap could copy that smell. Leaving my sandwich behind half eaten, I rushed out of the restaurant before I could stop myself. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to see him so badly, but my mind and my body were reacting as though I’d die if I didn’t get to talk to him.