Don’t worry, dear. This won’t hurt a bit.

I opened my eyes to find the doctor standing over me, his image blurred, the bright overhead lights directly behind his head nearly blinding me whenever he moved. They cast his face in shadow, but I would know him anywhere.

That voice of his. A voice which had haunted my dreams ever since we’d first met, I hadn’t known it until that very moment, but I’d seen and heard him every night in dreams I’d all but forgotten once they’d ended.

Just think. What you and your clan are doing here will make history. You’ll make it possible for us to cure disease, to end human suffering.

I had known it was all a lie, hadn’t I? They didn’t want to help anyone, not really. They’d create a cure, certainly, but not out of generosity. Whoever they were, they’d sell it to the highest bidder. And that bidder would either make it next to impossible for the public to afford it.

I knew enough of the world to know that much.

“What are you doing to me?” I whispered, my voice little more than the croak of a wounded animal. Why were they injecting me with some nameless liquid? What purpose did that serve?

I heard a snort from the blurry, shadowy figure above me.

“She’s waking up.”

They moved, and when they did, the light they’d been standing in front of shone straight into my eyes.

I winced, squeezing my lids tightly shut to block out as much as possible.

It wasn’t an overhead fluorescent light. It was the sun. I was outdoors. There was dirt and grass and leaves beneath me, I could smell them, even though taking a deep breath made my head hurt worse than ever.

It was starting to come back. The pain. I was no longer in the lab, that was far behind me. I’d been looking for Klaus, hadn’t I? Yes, and he wasn’t there. And someone had hurt me.

The man who’d spoken, the man who’d been standing over me.

Sleep would be lovely. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. To let myself drift off to where pain no longer existed, utter darkness.

It simply wasn’t an option. Dragon or no, I had to summon my strength. I wouldn’t allow them to harm me while I slept through the ordeal.

A mental check told me my arms and legs were in working order. I could wiggle my fingers and toes with ease. While the simple act of breathing caused fresh pain in my head, it caused no pain in my ribs. My body was in decent shape. They hadn’t caused any further harm.

Not that the blow to my head wasn’t a problem. I was simply relieved that they hadn’t abused me while I was unconscious.

I eased my eyes open, careful of the sun’s presence. It had moved somewhat since my last memory of it, telling me an hour or two had passed. No more than that. I ran my hands along my sides, feeling the terrycloth robe beneath them. It was cold in the woods, and already a chill day, and I was barely clothed.

“Sit up.”

The command was like the bark of a dog, sudden, sharp, threatening. I jerked in surprise at the sound but did not obey.

“Are you hard of hearing, girl?”

Something hard dug into my ribs. From the corner of my eye, I caught the gleam of metal as it reflected the sun. A rifle? Sweat immediately began beading on my forehead, along the back of my neck.

That day came back to me again at the sight of the weapon, so like the ones my friends and family had fallen before. Why again? It wasn’t supposed to happen again.

“Girl?” the other one asked, his voice gritty and gruff. “Please. This ain’t no girl. She’s nothing but an animal.”

“Which reminds me.” Just like that, a set of shackles closed over my wrists, another over my ankles. They’d slipped up. They should’ve shackled me when I was unconscious. It was a terrible chance they took, leaving me free to shift when I awoke.

To shift.

The joke was on them, wasn’t it?

And yet…

Through the fog of my memory, something tugged at me. Something just at the corners, ready to slip through my fingers unless I closed them tight. What was it, though? I fought to bring it back, whatever it was, certain it was important.

I’d heard something, hadn’t I? Something familiar. A familiar voice.

Not my dragon. Was it? Had it been her? Somewhere in my head, she still existed. The more I repeated this to myself, the truer it sounded. She was still in there. I only had to find her again. Soon.

When one of them took my shoulders and forced me to sit up, I bit my lip to hold back a cry of pain and could taste my own blood. My vision swam, my stomach churned. I was going to vomit.

“You’d better not even think about throwing up,” the one with the rifle growled. “I don’t feel like having to smell your sick while we’re here.”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I had no desire to test his patience. Not when he held that gun. I’d seen what it could do.

There was no option but to keep back the nausea, to breathe as deeply as I dared and focus on holding down whatever wanted to come up. It felt like ages but was likely no more than few minutes before I felt confident opening my mouth to speak.

“Why are you here? What is the purpose to this?” I didn’t wish to lift my head, but I could raise my eyes high enough to get a look at both of them.

One was tall, dark-haired, with a nasty sneer. He had the rifle. The other was much younger, with fair hair and barely a trace of stubble on his cheeks. A child.

A child who had called me an animal.

If there was ever a time for the dragon to make her appearance…

The young man grinned, leaning against a tree with his hands in his pockets. “We came here to finish what the rest of our first team started, of course.”

“Shut up,” the other one snarled. “She doesn’t need to hear any of this. I don’t want you shooting your mouth off, trying to sound like a big shot.”

“She asked a question, I gave her an answer,” the child replied with a shrug. It didn’t matter to him, either way. He was having a good time, proving to himself what a big man he was by kidnapping a woman he didn’t realize was all but defenseless.

We were in the woods, or at least a wooded area. I didn’t recognize it, however, not the way I would’ve immediately recognized the woods which sat just beyond the entrance of the cave. The ground was considerably stonier.

I turned my head to the left, moving slowly and with extreme caution, and through slight spaces between the trees, I saw the side of the mountain. We were beside it, as opposed to before it. Perhaps in the rocky areas between the valley and the mountain, where trees grew in tight clusters.

“Am I the only one you took?” I asked, remembering the way I couldn’t find Klaus. If they had killed him…

The older man eyed me up and down. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes a great deal of difference,” I spat, quickly losing my self-control. What did it matter? They would kill me because I wouldn’t be able to shift. Because my dragon was gone, because of that damned bastard who’d destroyed me. “Perhaps you don’t understand this since you obviously have no soul, but there’s such a thing as caring for others. I care for the people in that cave.”

“People,” the child snorted.

“Shut up,” I snarled, my head whipping around before I could think twice about the pain which would surely result. What difference did any of it make? I’d be dead soon, wouldn’t I? Pain wouldn’t matter. “They’re people, just as you believe you are. And they would never consider doing something as barbaric as what you’re doing to me, as what your friends did to the rest of us. Gunning down the innocent, and why? Greed? You’re pathetic.”

The butt of the gun smashed into my face, and I heard a cracking sound in my head as my nose broke and blood began pouring down my face, over my chin.

“You’d do well to watch what you say,” the man with the gun warned, the butt of the weapon poised over my face as though he was readying himself to strike another blow. “I would hate to destroy that pretty face any further.”

I didn’t say a word, letting my eyes do the talking as I glared at him.

He smiled, his thin lips quirking up to reveal dimples in an otherwise serious face. “Boy, you’ve got some life in you. It’s a shame we had to meet under these circumstances. The spitfires are the best.”

I spat blood at his feet in reply, cutting my eyes back up in his direction in time to catch his look of utter disgust. Good. He knew just a small bit of the disgust he caused me.

“You bitch.” He raised the gun again, ready to deliver what would surely be a stronger, more brutal blow, when a growl made the three of us turn our heads as one.

A fully-grown lion bounded out of the shadows, roaring as he did.

The child let out a scream of pure horror, fumbling for his rifle with shaking hands. I watched with mixed horror and pleasure as Klaus slashed at him with long, razor-sharp claws, tearing crimson stripes down the side of his fair face and throat.

But he wasn’t looking out for the man with the rifle, who’d been on the verge of striking me when he attacked.

“Look out!” I screamed when the rifle rose.

The older man, the more experienced man, the man who was shaken but not shocked at the sight of an attacking lion.

Klaus dodged the spray of bullets which emerged from the gun, bullets which lodged themselves in trees and sent bits of wood and bark flying in all directions.

I fought my way to my knees, ankles still shackled, and raised my arms above my head with the intention of hitting the man with the iron cuffs. He caught me out of the corner of his eye and swung the rifle around again, hitting the side of my head and knocking me on my side.

The lion let out a roar of rage. Through the hair which hung in my eyes, I saw him leaping toward the armed man to fight for me.

He was outmatched, and I knew it. I’d seen what weapons like that could do.

I opened my mouth to scream, but a sound, very much unlike my natural voice came out. “You will not harm him!” I bellowed in a deep, powerful voice which seemed to shake the leaves from the trees.

The man turned, shocked, the bullets he was about to fire into Klaus’s chest and stomach hitting one of his hind legs instead.

The roar turned to a whine of pain as Klaus fell, blood pouring from his wounds.

A familiar rushing sensation came over me, as if something buried down deep inside was coming to the surface in a burst of violent speed, and I gave into it because yes, yes, this was right.

The dragon burst free of its confines and towered over the armed man, bellowing again in an earsplitting roar which made him cower at my feet. Even so, he raised the gun as if to fire at me.

Klaus roared in caution, but I needed no warning. I needed only to lash out with my tail and make contact with the man’s fragile body, sending him flying against a tree and knocking the rifle from his hands.

I bellowed again, reveling in the pure joy of being who I was. Who I truly was.

The man twitched sporadically. I made certain he was looking up at me before I crushed his face with another blow from my tail, as he had tried to crush mine.

And immediately, I turned to Klaus.

He had shifted into his human form to better understand the wounds to his leg, which he was examining with shaking hands. But he smiled up at me when I bent to get a better look.

Our eyes locked.

“You make a beautiful dragon, you know,” he whispered. I warmed all over in pleasure, but the scent of his blood was more important, blood which hadn’t yet stopped flowing. He’d lost so much already.

There was no choice but to do what had to be done. I loved him. He was mine, and I was his, and there was nothing to be done about it but ensure he stayed alive.

So I reached out, sliding my arms beneath him and lifting him off the ground.

“What are you doing?” he sputtered, shaking his head, trying to push me away.

It was a stupid thing to do, really, and he would see that in time. I took off, exhilaration at the feeling of flying again almost overtaking the urgent need to get Klaus help. All shifters healed quickly, not just dragons, but he was still bleeding. If it didn’t stop soon…

Isla and Dallas were outside the cave, perhaps looking for us.

I landed, Klaus still clutched close to my chest.

“What happened?” Dallas cried out as I lowered Klaus to the ground. It didn’t take a doctor to see what was wrong with him. In an instant, he took off his belt and tied it around Klaus’s thigh to staunch the flow of blood, then covered him with his shirt before carrying in into the cave at a flat-out run.

I shifted, and Isla immediately noticed the crooked angle of my nose. “It’s a long story,” I whispered, not certain whether I should laugh or cry. I settled on both.