MY FEET POUNDED the ground as I ran down the secluded street that housed the cabin I had been hiding out in. I thought this plan would have lasted longer, but only two days and the hunters had found me. Dammit! As the rage and fear mixed within me, I could sense my skin tightening, the pearlescent scales forming along my arms. No! It had been two weeks since I’d fallen off of the ledge while hiking the Grand Canyon and ignited some freak power that had shifted my body into a dragon.

Yes, a dragon.

I didn’t know how to control it. I didn’t know how it happened, or if I was living with a really bad case of schizophrenia. I just knew that ever since that day I had been running for my life from these hunters who kept trying to kill me. I didn’t fancy dying at the tender age of twenty-one, so I just kept running. The whizzing sound of bullets snapped around me, only serving to make me go faster.

Screw it.

I let the shift come. It was probably the only way I could get out of here alive at this point anyway. Trying to keep my dragon down in a time like this was painful. Not that I had much control over her at all.

Hah! “My” dragon. Sloane, you’ve lost your damn mind.

“Get her!” one of the men growled behind me, and that’s when I allowed the burning heat along my spine to ignite.

I screamed as my limbs ripped with a searing agony and my bones broke, snapping and tearing; the pain nearly made me pass out. Sweat glistened on my skin as a splitting sensation exploded along my shoulder blades sprouting wings out of my back. Bones rearranged, skin moved, muscle bulked, and in less than forty-five seconds I was an eight-foot-tall dragon with red pearlescent scales that matched my flaming red human hair.

One of the hunters yelled and I looked back just in time to see a black falcon dive from the skies and take a chunk out of one of his ears. Yes! I’d always liked birds—maybe he recognized me as one of his high-flying friends and had decided to help. Either way, he bought me some time. Using my back talons, I leapt up off of the snow-packed ground and took flight. I was a mere two feet off the ground when I felt the slice of a harpoon tear into my wing, piercing the leathery flesh.

A shriek tore from my lungs as the sharp hot pain dug into the rubbery hide of my dragon wing. I frantically flapped, trying to rip free of the harpoon, but with a yank I was pulled hard back to the ground. My body slammed into a bed of pine needles with such force that I heard one of my ribs snap. Dammit.

The hunters had me; there was no getting away this time. As I lay there panting in pain, rage built up inside me. How dare these bastards try to hunt me like a deer! I was a person— Kind of—but I didn’t ask for this freak thing to happen, and how the hell did they even keep finding me? I just wanted to be left alone, but they were always one step behind me, as if they could smell or sense me. I was living a nightmare and I just wanted it to stop.

At these thoughts, a low, deep, pressure built in my belly. One of the black-clad hunters pulled a sharp blade from his thigh holster. He had short-cropped, sandy-blond hair, standing over six feet tall with a muscular build akin to a linebacker; he looked at me with such hate in his eyes. I didn’t understand it. What did I do to deserve such malice? The blade in his hands glowed with a red fire-like hue, and something deep in my gut told me that if that thing cut me, I was done for. As two more of the hunters stalked towards me from each side, the heaviness building in my stomach turned so hot I thought I might melt.

“Get her other wing!” one of the other hunters called in a gravelly voice.

Oh. Hell. No. I would not go out like this, like a freaking animal that posed a risk to society. I had done nothing wrong! I hadn’t hurt anyone! I just wanted to be left alone to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. There was no way I was letting this group of douchebags take me out.

The pressure that had been building in my belly started moving up to my chest, and then to my throat. Pain laced around my esophagus. The burning pressure threatening to suffocate me if I didn’t release it, I opened my mouth and let all of the heaviness that had been building out in one big yell. Except no sound came out, only a bright red streak of fire.

Holy shit!

Warm hot liquid shot out of my dragon’s mouth, spraying down the two men advancing on me. Their bodies were doused in hot flames and chaos erupted. They dropped into the snow and started rolling away from me as I fell backward in shock. The force of my fall pulled on the rope that held the harpoon in my wing, making me flinch in pain as the rope pulled taut. I could smell burning flesh and saw that the hunter who had been holding the glowing knife had dropped it when he stumbled back, ablaze, to throw himself into the snow.

Thank God for small favors.

That knife belonged in a really weird kitchen, not in me.

With no time to waste, I yanked hard on my right wing, tearing the harpoon out of the hunter’s hands. The man holding my harpoon let go, stumbling backward, no doubt in fear that I would spray him with fire next. I wouldn’t be able to fly now, not with a broken wing and busted ribs—but holy shit I could breathe fire! Little did these jerks know, I had no idea how to replicate that, or if it could be done back to back, but it seemed like the odds had turned in my favor.

Best to keep that information to myself and let them think I was a fire-breathing badass.

Turning, I planned to continue running, when one of the hunters stepped in front of my path with a huge rock in his hands. His hair was half burned and his face was red and shiny with fresh blisters, but the hatred in his eyes were what had me nervous.

Oops, I pissed him off.

I barely moved my head out of the way in time, and the rock he held crashed down on my injured wing. I let out a shriek that must have been heard for miles. The neighbors would no doubt be coming out of their cabins to find out what sounded like ten cats being tortured. Dragon screeches were a unique sound.

Mother Fricker…

Pain exploded in my shoulder and I realized I had no idea how to fight in this dragon body. Not that I was a prizefighter in my human form, but I could certainly knee these bastards in the balls. As a dragon, I didn’t have arms to punch, didn’t have legs to kick. I only had four clawed stumps that didn’t work as well as arms and legs. I had fire that wasn’t working right now and a busted wing. I was screwed. If this was some really long paranoid delusion, now would be the time for it to stop.

As the hunter advanced on me, my thoughts went dark. Maybe I should just let them kill me, or take me, or drain me, or whatever it was they were trying to do. I was sick of running. My great idea for graduation was to hike the Grand Canyon by myself for five days and this is where it had got me—on the run, and ten minutes from being dead. Ever since the Grand Canyon, I hadn’t slept more than two hours a night without jerking awake from nightmares or paranoia that they were coming for me. I hadn’t eaten much, and didn’t have proper clothes because mine kept tearing when I transformed; I had to steal them when I shifted back.

I had nine dollars in my bank account, no job, and no one I could turn to. This was some messed up weird life I was living and I didn’t even know how it happened. One fall. One fall and I thought I was done for, splat on the rocks; people would read about it in the news. But no, my body … transformed … and this was my life now.

The hunter took two steps forward and I took one step back, looking over my shoulder. Great. I was surrounded. Since when did fire not kill people? Damn snow. The thought did strike me that these guys were un-killable, that they were somehow not human, but I let it go to the deep dark place where I kept those freaky thoughts and told it to stay there.

Just when I had resolved to roll over and let them have me, a pack of … animals … appeared out of the trees not twenty feet from me. I blinked my eyes rapidly; I couldn’t process what I was seeing—a lion, a coyote, a wolf, and a red fox were walking towards me—creeping out in a slow, stalking type of walk, fanning out in a formation that looked choreographed. What the ever-loving hell…? The circus had arrived. I had officially lost it.

If I were a human, I would have barked out in laughter, but in my dragon form a weird snort came out. Running up behind the animals was a tall guy in his mid-twenties with black hair, scruffy stubble, and piercing green eyes. I could feel the heat of his gaze from here. His face was covered in shock as his eyes roamed over my red dragon. Great. The bearded guy had a shotgun in one hand and I wondered who he wanted to shoot first—the circus animals trespassing his property, the weird bleeding dragon, or the hunters with glowing red knives? By the way he was looking at me, it was probably me that would take the first bullet.

Even though I was an eight-foot-tall fire-breathing dragon, I was still a twenty-one-year-old girl inside, and those wild animals stalking slowly towards made me freeze in fear. It was perfect, really. I get killed by human hunters only to have my remains be eaten by a freaking lion. I must have done something really crappy in a past life to deserve this.

The hunter nearest me spun away, facing the animals with his harpoon raised. “We don’t want trouble with your kind. Get out of here!” the hunter yelled, and my vision began to blur. Was he talking to them? Trying to reason with wild animals was even crazier than breathing fire.

Almost.

A wave of dizziness crashed over me and I looked down to see that I had lost a ton of blood, like a bucketful. My heart raced at the sight of all that thick crimson fluid. Dammit, while the hunters were distracted with the circus was a great time for me to run and get the hell out of here, but I felt like I was going to faint. I just had to be a fire-breathing dragon with no special healing abilities, didn’t I? A defective dragon. Any mythical dragon I had read about or seen in movies had healing powers, so what the hell?

Please, God, don’t let me die like this, I begged in panic. I hadn’t been to church since my mom died of breast cancer when I was sixteen, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask for God’s help now. If the big man upstairs was real, maybe he would have mercy on me. The sudden cracking of bones startled me, until I realized they were my own. I was changing form, back to human. I had zero control over this; my dragon seemed to be the one in control, which terrified me the most. Well, I came into this world as a naked human, best to die as one too.

As my body finished its change, I collapsed naked on the snow and pine needles in a puddle of blood, and looked up at the bright blue sky. That falcon was circling above me, cawing as if calling out to his family. The way his wings glided across the sky looked so free, and I longed to be up there with him. Damn, the Earth could really be beautiful. Humans weren’t so bad either, although I preferred animals. Maybe if reincarnation was real I could come back as a bird, or even a dolphin…

My mind was going spacey, and I knew with one hundred percent certainty that I was going to die. A wolf growl pulled my attention from the sky to the drama unfolding before me. I watched in fascination as the … pack of circus animals … stalked around me and the three hunters, forming a circle. Make that two hunters; the one who had the knife was definitely burned to a crisp. So they could die? Good to know. One of the hunters, the one with the gravelly voice wearing a ski mask, bent down and picked up the red glowing dagger and advanced on me.

“Keep the shifters out of my way while I finish her off!” he yelled to his partner.

What could I do? The trees surrounding me were blurring at the tips and I knew I was moments from passing out and leaving this body. Still, I’d grown up poor, without a father, and I’d lost my mother at sixteen, so I wasn’t weak. I’d taken care of my dying mother for two years at the tender age of fourteen, until she became a living skeleton and passed away. At that point, you just wanted them out of pain. But I had grown up way faster than the other kids my age and I wasn’t dying now without a fight. I didn’t have it within me to give up. I reached my arm out, blindly grasping until I had the harpoon grasped in my weak left hand. If I was going to die naked in the woods, this freaking arrow was going to be shoved in some douchebag’s eyeball.

I propped myself up on my elbow and raised the arrow at the oncoming hunter like a spear. That’s when the circus attacked. They charged in unison, both horrifying and beautiful. The lion leaped into the air, knocking one of the hunters down. Then the smaller coyote went in for the kill, going right for the throat. I’d never seen anything like it, and my favorite show was Animal Planet. It was as if they shared one mind. The hunters fought back but they were no match for the pack of wild animals.

The hunter holding the glowing red knife screamed as the small black wolf tore into his neck, coming away with a chunk of flesh. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. I was both terrified and fascinated with these creatures. Once the circus had killed the hunters, one of them, the black wolf, turned on me, approaching slowly with her head down. I instinctively knew it was a female. Or my dragon knew and I got it from her; it must have been one of my new senses. Hardly practical. Hardly going to keep me alive when she attacked me.

“Stay … back...” I fought to speak, my voice deep and warbled. Too much blood lost. This wolf was beautiful, so beautiful that I wanted to reach out and touch her silky black fur. Stupid idea, but clearly my blood loss had taken my brain cells with it.

Then my delusion ramped up a notch. Before my eyes, the wolf began to … transform. Like I did. Her bones cracked and shifted as her body slimmed down, until kneeling before me was a young girl in her early twenties, with long raven-black hair, and a body covered in tattoos, naked as the day she was born.

“What the fu—?” Before I could finish that thought, the darkness took me into her sweet embrace and I welcomed death.