Something very, very powerful had just appeared at the edges of what his griffin’s new powers could sense.
Whoever it was was close to Mountain View—and quickly coming closer.
In his mind’s eye, he could see flames and feel the sizzling heat of fire. But it wasn’t Braeden, the dragon of fire. He knew Braeden and his mate Alyx. His griffin wouldn’t have been filled with such instinctive alarm.
Which meant this had to be...
“Shit,” he said, hastily stepping in front of Chiara. “A fire dragon.”
She gasped and gripped his shoulder. “Where?”
He could hear a dragon’s challenging roar now. A moment later, a dragon arose—but it was a dragon he knew.
Gregory had obviously felt the same powerful intruder approaching. The storm dragon had shifted and was now soaring in the air above the small shifter town, ready to deal with any threat.
And then they could see their enemy.
At first, it looked like a ball of fire was approaching.
It came from the east, a brilliant blaze of red and orange and yellow, trailing through the sky with the burning colors of a sunset.
But it was far more dangerous. A power exuded from the dragon that set Jared’s teeth on edge.
He wanted to shift, to challenge the intruder—but he also didn’t want to abandon Chiara on the ground.
“Wait,” she said a heartbeat later, as if she could feel how torn he was. “That’s not—that’s not a dragon!”
“What else would it be?” he demanded. But then, as he stared at the brilliant colors approaching, he saw that Chiara was right.
The intruder was close enough to make out details—and the stranger looked like no dragon Jared had ever seen.
In fact, the strange shifter reminded him of a peacock... A large peacock made of burning fire.
All of a sudden, he remembered Braeden and Alyx’s story about the strange shifter who had helped them when they were trapped in the fire dragon lair—only to later betray them.
They’d called her the firebird. And that was exactly what this shifter looked like.
Long feathers of red and orange burned against the bright blue of the sky, trailing brilliant flames. Jared had never seen anything like it before. Whoever this firebird was, she was powerful.
Had she come to try and find new allies, now that they’d dealt another blow to the fire dragons?
And then Jared realized that the firebird hadn’t come alone. She was carrying something. Something that looked very much like a human...
All of a sudden Chiara gasped and stiffened. Her fingers dug into Jared’s arm as she peered up at the sky.
The firebird had just skillfully evaded the storm dragon, who was trailing her warily without attacking.
“That’s my dad!” Chiara cried out, moments before the firebird dropped its burden right in front of their feet.
She rushed towards the man as he groaned and groggily tried to raise himself back up to his feet.
Jared, meanwhile, kept his eyes on the firebird.
For a moment, they locked eyes. Then, with a trilling cry, the shifter rose up into the sky again—but one of her feathers was slowly falling towards the earth, brilliant and so entrancing that Jared could barely take his eyes off it.
When it hit the ground, the fiery blaze of it dimmed just a little. Even so, Jared found himself drawn towards it by an irresistible pull. It was like being hypnotized; he couldn’t look away from the pulsing of red, orange, and yellow, like a feather made out of living flame...
When he reached out to touch it, it didn’t burn his hand.