My brother’s talons were in my thigh again. The piercing of his talons caused me to growl. Damn it all if he wasn’t trying to kill me for real. I didn’t want to be the wimp in our duo, but sometimes the fights felt more real than play.

A lot of things had changed since we were kids.

Shit, Samson. Get the fuck off me.

He heard the message loud and clear through the telepathic bond we shared. Still, I wasn’t sure if he’d relented because of my station as his Alpha or because I was his little brother. Some things still confused me.

A blue and silver blur flashed in front of me, and I had the perfect opportunity to take a strike at him. A slice of my spade at the end of my tail would slice his belly open. His wings would tear if I ripped my claw through his wing web.

Shit. I have to stop thinking these things.

I shuttered my human eyes and allowed the slightly fuzzy dragon lids to take over. My dragon didn’t see the details. He only saw the big picture.

Sometimes I wished he would just take over completely and not let go.

Let’s go to the mountain.

There was a mountain the humans were afraid of. Our ancestors had spread the rumor that people walked up to the peak of this mountain to commit suicide. It wasn’t true, of course. We Vikings didn’t commit suicide.

Though Valhalla was a far reach, even for me.

Samson shifted almost as soon as his feet hit the top of the peak. We leapt into the mountain air, the ferocious downdraft of air from my wings battering up and down propelled me further up into the clouds. It was beautiful up there. The trees didn’t care about gravity, it seemed to me. They wound sideways and took root between cliffs—whatever got them the most sunlight.

“You staying, dreki?” Samson asked.

“I think we are the only ones left who use that word anymore,” I said, taking my time to shift back to human. Every time was harder than the last. I thought my brother might have noticed, but he wasn’t saying anything if he did.

My muscles ached again like they did when I was a new dreki, shifting for the first time. Our father made us shift as often as possible to get used to it.

It had never hurt like this, though.

“You were flying weird.”

I kicked some dirt and watched the clumps tumble over the edge. “Was not? Anyway, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Usually you are stealth as fuck. Today, it was like you’d lost your GPS or some shit.”

“I’m off lately.”

“No shit. That’s not all that’s off—or still on, should I say.” Before I knew it, Samson had the collar of my shirt pulled down. Leave it to him to bring it into the wide open.

“I know.”

“When did it start?”

Scrubbing a hand down my face, I gave him the look. He and I both knew when this ninety-five percent shifting back to human shit began.

“Right after her, huh? Two sniffs and you were a dead man. Maybe she’ll come back. Hell, she’d better. Otherwise, we’ll have a full-time dragon guarding our shit.”

Her—didn’t even know her name. The waitress serving the two women at the diner had forgotten and they had paid with cash. For months I’d scoured the video surveillance of the whole damned town, waiting for a glimpse, putting my ear to the speaker just to catch her voice or a word from her mouth.

Fucking desperate.

But that’s what we males are before we find our mates—desperate and tired of looking in the wrong places.

I would’ve chased her if she had been of age. Maybe I should’ve and at least known where she was when the time came.

In a rare moment of empathy, my brother patted me on the back. “It’ll be okay. There are plans in place for these things. You will see her again. I’m sure of it.”

“You’re turning sappy on me?”

“Not really. I just want you to sober up. You’re drunk on her, and it’s starting to show. There are some whispers in the clan. You’ve got to shake that shit off a little bit. You know, Taylor Swift it to death.”

I nearly pushed him off the cliff for that.

“Taylor Swift that shit, huh? I’m supposed to shake off the craze that’s building in my bones like plaque? Yeah, you’ve been watching too much YouTube. Next thing we know, you’ll be saying ‘YOLO’ or ‘You do you.’ ”

One of his eyebrows popped up. “You do you, huh? Where’d you hear that? Instagram?”

“I don’t do social media.”

“Dragon-fodder. You might not do social media, but you work the hell out of that Warcrap stuff.”

“It’s WarCraft, and shut it.”

“Yes, Alpha. Let’s get back down there. We have to prep for those summer visitors. And since you won’t give me permission to give the tourists tours on my dragon back, we will have to suffice with your survival in the woods, ‘don’t let the bears eat you before the dragons get a taste’ shit.”

* * *

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Samson kicked a clump of dirt at the circle-shaped pit and flung himself backward so he was laying down on the ground. “It’s a fire. I’m a dragon. That shit should shoot out of my fingers or something.”

“I think fire out of the fingers is more of an Avengers thing. Here, let me show you again.”

With a flick of his leg, he’d swept my legs out from under me before I could react, sending me on the ground next to him, but in a much less flattering position. My brother was an asshole.

“How about I show you something for a change, little brother?”

I slapped the side of his head. He usually pulled that move on me, but it was my turn. “Okay. You made your point. If you really want in on this business, you’ve got to be good at a skill. So far you suck at fire-making. What else you got?”

“What else is there? Cactus-skinning? Squirrel-shooting?” he said, and then threw one arm over his face to shield himself from the sun beaming down on us.

Cactus-skinning. Someone should skin him.

I looked around the mess of a campground for something Samson could do. He had always struggled with a blue-collar approach to life, and camping was no exception. “How are you at pitching a tent?” I asked and then immediately regretted it.

“Ask my female. She knows my tent-pitching skills best.”

I curled my lip at his remark. My brother had always been a little on the crude side. Before I could answer, a gargled snore tore from his mouth and I knew the conversation was over before it began. I’d wanted to ask his advice, from a male that hadn’t yet found his mate to one who had been mated, happily mated, for a long time. Not that any dragon was unhappily mated. Once you were mated, joy was pretty much guaranteed.

Taking another look at the flyers I had been working on while he attempted, and failed, at making a fire, I wondered if this whole thing would be a bust.

“Stop scratching at it. It looks like you’re one of those wolves—like you’ve got fleas or some shit. It certainly isn’t going to make your life any easier if you look like you’ve contracted the mange, is it?”

I brought my hand out of the back of my shirt where I hadn’t even realized I’d been messing with the scales again. There were four now, and I could feel another beginning to emerge from my neck.

“I wasn’t scratching. I was just touching them. It’s a habit. It’s weird having them there when I’m not…”

“Flying around? Yeah, I can’t even imagine. It’s like you’re in a perpetual shift or something. Plus, you were talking to yourself again. While we’re on the subject, no, you aren’t going to fail and I’ll be damned if you burn those fliers even if I do make a fire.”

Samson was the only one I allowed myself to space out with. The more the craze took over, the more I spaced out, the more I talked to myself, and the more scales that refused to shift into skin. I was like the real version of Howl’s Moving Castle, but there was no Sophie to save me from the monster inside.

Believe me, I’d tried to find her.

There weren’t many choices in Castleton, and as the Alpha, I didn’t travel far away from the clan’s treasure. It was my job, above all, to protect the clan, which meant protecting the clan’s possessions as well.

“Even if it does fail, at least it will keep me busy for a while. Anything that takes up hours in the day is a plus lately.”

Samson sat up. “Is something else happening? More than the scales and the talking to yourself?”

There was a lot more.

“No. Not that I would tell you if there was. It’s fine. One day I’ll hike through the woods and stumble on a lost woman with blonde hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. That will be it.”

“Damn, I didn’t peg you for the Barbie type, but okay. Whatever makes the scales go away.”

I restacked the wood into a teepee formation and waved my arm toward it. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you get your head out of my ass and put it to better use making a fire?”

He shoved me out of the way. “Whatever. I made a perfectly good fire last night and you know it.”

“Yeah, but half-shifting and spitting fire onto the wood doesn’t count. You have to use the sticks, or at least the flint and steel. No more spitting fire.”

“You’re no fun. Even when we were kids you were no fun.”

“You were having enough fun for the both of us. There was no point,” I said as I looked over at him.

“I guess that’s what lost me Alpha, huh? Dad had no choice but to pick the respectable one. The responsible one.”

I shrugged one shoulder and menacingly looked at it like it had done me an offense. I never shrugged. Just wasn’t that kind of guy. “I don’t know why Dad did some of the things he did.”