She gave me an irritated look. “Well, short of sitting on a dock somewhere and waiting for dawn when someone wakes up, I don’t know what you want from me. The estate is a three-hour boat ride northwest of the city, on an island nobody goes to anymore. What do you want to do, swim?”
I quirked my mouth at her and shifted just enough to stretch my wings. “No, April. Naturally, I plan to fly.”
8
April
Gray’s sense of urgency didn’t really hit home until he refused to let me even go to my apartment to pack a bag.
I waved a hand down my body. “In case you missed it, I’m naked, and I’m guessing a dragon ride isn’t happening at a low altitude.”
With a huff of frustration, he nodded, but held me back when I started for the door. As part of my residency, I also had the small apartment above the shop next door to the gallery, so I wasn’t afraid to do a naked sprint up the back stairs to get clean clothes and throw some other things into an overnight bag. Instead, he blew out a longer breath, causing thick, white smoke to billow around me. When it settled against my skin, I stared down in alarm. Warm clothing slowly materialized over my limbs, right down to a pair of pale suede Ugg boots on my feet. The outfit of jeans, a sweater, and down jacket was too much for the studio, but with a scarf and knit cap for my head, perfect for a high-altitude jaunt.
“You’re still naked,” I said as he tugged me out the door, glancing both ways down the empty alley.
He turned toward me and backed a couple feet away, then the air shimmered around him as he grew into the dragon I’d witnessed him shift into just a few minutes ago.
I gawked up at him, still just as stunned to see him in all his dragon glory as I was the first time. More, even, since I wasn’t distracted by a crazy man attacking us. He bent low, stretching out his front leg as if bowing, and folded one wing closer to his body.
“Climb on,” came a deep, rumbling voice that vibrated deep into my core.
My heart in my throat, I stepped gingerly up onto his foreleg, swinging one leg over his broad shoulders. He was twice the size of a large horse, so I had to sit forward, just between two ridges of the thick protrusions that ran down the length of his spine.
“Someone’s going to see you.”
In answer, his scales rippled with a faint whispering noise, turning a reflective silver rather than opaque white.
“I’ll appear as no more than a cloud if someone looks up. We’ll be well camouflaged in this weather.”
I couldn’t help but let out a yelp of surprised elation as his haunches bunched beneath him, and we hurtled up into the air. We climbed higher and higher, his wings flapping and the muscles of his shoulders flexing beneath my thighs. Sweet fuck, I was riding a dragon!
The higher we went, the more wispy clouds flowed past until the world was nothing but gray darkness. Every so often, he dropped beneath the cloud cover, and I caught a glimpse of the sprawling metropolis beneath us, with the Space Needle glowing in the misty night. Everything gradually faded into blackness as we continued past the edge of the Sound and out over the water. Then it was just the sparse lights of the islands.
“Which island?”
His voice thrummed through my head, and I stopped gawking at the view to focus. It had been more than twenty years since I’d been home. It felt strange to still think of the place that way, but I did. It was where some of my best memories lived, and it still belonged to me even though the side of the family who had originally owned it had seemingly fallen off the face of the planet. Memories of my mother were hazy, dream-like things, as if they belonged to another person who lived in an idyllic fantasy world.
My parents had met when Dad was in his early twenties. To hear him tell it, their relationship wasn’t much more than an extended one-night stand. An impulsive affair that ended as spontaneously as it had begun, but left behind a damaged man and daughter with an overdeveloped independent streak. We’d never heard from Mom or her family again. Then when I turned twenty-one, I received a call from an attorney who gave me the only confirmation I’d ever get that my mother had remembered me before she died.
The trust still sat untouched because accessing it would have felt like a betrayal of all that Dad had done for me growing up. The deed to the estate was shoved in the back of a box of files somewhere in my house. I never bothered visiting again. It wouldn’t feel right to go without Dad, and learning of Mom’s death had sent him into a bad enough spiral that I knew better than to risk a repeat.
But the place was so far in my past, I doubted anyone would connect it to me. Even the deed had the wrong name on it, though it was still me: “April St. George” was what it said, not April Vincent. I’d been given Mom’s family name when I was born, but Dad had it legally changed when I was ready to start school, so there would be no question that I was his daughter.
As for the estate, I had no idea what to expect. The paperwork I’d signed included monthly payments from the trust to a property management company for upkeep to ensure the place didn’t fall to pieces, so I pretty much avoided thinking about it.
But the most important detail was that Dad had explicitly told me to go there the last time I saw him, and I had no reason to doubt that it was the right call.
I barely remembered where it was, much less ever flown to it before, so it took a few minutes of hunting for visible landmarks before I grew frustrated. “I don’t know! It’s been too long.”
“Open your eyes, April. You have dragon blood, which leaves a mark you should be able to follow. Any location where you’ve spent time will be easy to find if you’re looking. If I were your mate, I’d be able to see it too, but right now, it’s mixed with all the other dragon trails up here.”
All the other dragon trails? How many was he talking? At his urging, I concentrated and shifted my vision the way I’d learned. I let out a gasp of awe when the night sky grew brilliant with a webwork of crisscrossing lines like colorful contrails of small jets had been flying over these waters all night.
“How many dragons are there out tonight?”
“These aren’t all from one night. The trails linger for months for others to see, but your own should be visible to you indefinitely. Find your path.”
I wasn’t sure where to start, but as we flew on, one brighter trail stood out with more solidity than the others. While most of them faded in and out, this one remained a steady, pale green.
“That green one, do you see it?”
“Yes. I’ve got it.” Gray banked slightly, changing his heading so he was aimed on the exact path the trail led us.
What would normally have been a long boat ride turned into less than an hour in the air. My heartbeat sped up when dawn began to break, turning the darkness into gray light. Gray’s big body tilted lower, and a long dock came into view with a row of lights atop tall poles along one side. Then the boathouse and the trees beyond. Only the gray peaks of the main house were visible through the foliage of trees.
“There’s no one here. I’m going to land on the dock.”
His feet clattered against the weathered wooden planks before he came to rest, folding his wings against his sides. I slid off, and he shifted back into the tall, gorgeous man whose appearance in the gallery the day before was definitely starting to feel like destiny.