When he woke the next morning, Liam reached for Cadence, but she wasn’t in bed. He rolled over and saw her sitting by the window. Her hair was down, and she wasn’t dressed. She looked lovely, perfect.
“Hey,” Liam said, sitting up. “How are you doing, pretty girl?” She turned to him and smiled.
“A little sore,” she admitted. “But good.”
“Last night was fun,” he said.
“It was perfect,” she clarified. She came over to look at his wrist. “I can’t believe I bit you,” she admitted, but he just laughed.
“It was a natural instinct,” he said. “I’m not sorry. Now everyone I meet will know I’m loved by a beautiful woman.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Besides, it’s one of the fantastic things about being with a dragonwoman.”
“I have super biting abilities?”
“Among other abilities,” he wiggled his eyebrows and she laughed. Then Cadence wrapped her arms around Liam and they tumbled together onto the bed.
“I’m ready to go outside,” she said. “Do you want to watch me try?”
“You’re going to try to shift?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure if it will work,” she admitted. “And I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I think I need to try. I need to see if mating you was the key to being able to shift.”
Liam kissed her on the forehead.
“You know that even if this doesn’t work, it’s okay, right? We’ll keep trying, Cadence. We’ll find a way.”
Being a shifter was so important. He couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. She had this part of herself locked away where she couldn’t reach it. Cadence needed to be able to access that. She needed to be able to grasp that part of herself.
“It’s going to work,” she said, and her determination surprised him.
“All right,” Liam agreed. “Let’s go outside, then.”
They walked outside of the cabin. He sat on the steps to the porch while she walked a few yards ahead of the cabin. She was naked in the middle of nature, and she looked beautiful. Liam knew nudity was normal and expected among shifters, but seeing Cadence in her human form this way made him feel incredible.
Masculine.
She made him feel decidedly masculine.
“All right,” she walked in circles for a few seconds, and dug her toes into the dirt. She was stalling, but that didn’t matter. She could take all the time in the world if that’s what she needed, and he would wait for her. He would always wait for her.
Then, Cadence decided to be brave.
He knew the exact moment she decided she was ready because she went to the center of the space she’d been walking in, and she stood very, very still. Her front was to Liam and she bowed her head and closed her eyes. For a minute, he thought she might be praying.
She crouched, and then she jumped into the air.
This time, she didn’t land.
This time, she soared.
Cadence shifted in the air to a beautiful purple dragon, and she began to fly. A wave of happiness rolled over Liam, and he began to tear up. She was beautiful in the sky. Everything about her was lovely, and he was lucky enough to be the very first person to see her in dragon form.
As they’d suspected, she was a purple dragon. Like Molly, she had silver-tipped wings, but her snout was an even deeper purple: not teal, like her mother. Cadence flew higher and higher and higher. She soared up, up, up, and then she came down.
She landed gracefully and instantly shifted back. She started jumping up and down.
“Liam!” She shrieked. “We did it!”
“No,” he corrected her. “You did it.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she insisted. “Without your love to guide me, to carry me through this. I couldn’t have experienced this without you by my side.”
He kissed her.
She was the most precious thing in the world to him, and he kissed her to show her that. He kissed her to show her that their life together was going to be beautiful, that he would do anything he could to make her happy.
“Come on,” Cadence said.
“Where are we going?”
Her eyes twinkled. “I want to take you for a ride.”
He laughed. “I can honestly say I’ve never done this before.”
“Me neither, but I think we should try.”
She shifted and lay as flat as possible so Liam could climb up on top of her. Once he was ready, Cadence leapt into the air and began to fly, and this time, Liam was right there with her.
He’d never seen Dragon Isle from above before, never even imagined it was possible. The world seemed much smaller and manageable from up here. The island seemed almost tiny, but that’s because they were so high.
Cadence began to circle the island, and Liam wondered what adventures they were going to have on it. There were jungles to explore and trees to climb and rivers to swim in. There were dragons to meet and experiences to be shared. There were endless possibilities.
And he got to share them all with her.
He got to share them with Cadence.
As they flew through the sky, Liam laid his head against his mate’s dragon body. He didn’t know why he’d been so lucky to have found her after all of this time, but he knew that he was going to spend the rest of his life making her happy.
He loved her.
Always and forever.