When the fog cleared and his heart started beating again, O realized that they were laying in a tangle of sweaty limbs and jumping heartbeats on the living room floor. Not wanting to crush her, O scooped her up and stumbled to the bed. He tossed her on like a sack of potatoes and jumped on beside her, making the mattress bounce her a full 6 inches in the air.

She turned and grinned at him. One of her hands automatically reached out and traced the scars on his side. He felt his mirth dim a little bit. It was a really good thing that he’d forgotten about them for this long. It meant that she was good for him. She was helping him forget his pain, little by little. But it didn’t mean he wanted to explain them. Tell her how he got them.

She opened her mouth and he braced for the question. But instead she shocked the shit out of him.

“So. You’re a dragon, huh?”

For the first time in his life, O found himself utterly speechless. He opened his mouth and closed it. Opened it and closed it. Kept it closed, thought really hard. Opened it. And closed it.

“You look like a fish opening and closing your mouth like that,” she said. “And not one of the cool tropical ones. You look like a trout.”

“How the flying fuck did you know that?” he exclaimed.

“Because I’ve been fishing before, duh. It’s an American pastime.”

“No, not about me looking like a fish. About me being a dragon.”

“Oh,” she brushed some of his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “You showed me.”

“When?!”

“When you came like a freight train, lost all control of your body and mind and poured just about every moment of your life straight into my brain.” She shivered a little at the memory, a wicked grin playing over her face. “It was cool, kind of what I imagine doing drugs to feel like.”

O flopped backwards. “Are you a witch?” he asked her, raising his head up off the bed. “How the hell did you make me do that?”

“Nope,” she solemnly shook her head. “There’s only one mythical creature in this bed right now.”

“Is that, like, a house rule of yours?” he grinned at her. He needed something to do with his hands. He felt like he was coming out of his skin. He sat up and rearranged them on the bed so that she was in between his legs and he had hair to braid in his hands.

He gently, precisely, sectioned her hair and started an intricate braid. “So, in homage to a question you recently asked me, why the hell aren’t you freaking out right now?” he asked her, genuinely mystified that she hadn’t gone jetting out the door the moment she realized she was dealing with a hybrid man/dragon.

She shrugged and tried to look back at him, but he kept her head in place with the braid. This thing was complicated, and he wasn’t going to let her mess it up now.

“I don’t know. Maybe if you’d tried to explain it to me with words, then I would have freaked out. But seeing it like that, there’s no arguing. There’s no way to lie about it. It just is.”

“But the dragon thing doesn’t bother you? I mean, it’s not like I’m half leopard or bear or something. Something of your world.”

She paused and he thought she was pressing her hand into her eyes. But she didn’t leave him hanging for long. “I mean, you’re right. This is insane. I’m not gonna lie. It’s a lot to wrap my head around. But I think the lingering relaxation effects of the orgasms are easing the passage of the information.”

O couldn’t see her face, but he knew she was grinning.

“Okay!” she clapped her hands together. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Speed questions. I need information. I have a million questions. And I want straight answers.”

“Fair enough.”

“Okay, where to start. Where to start.”

“How about you start with my childhood and work up from there. Then we can get to the mommy issues and take a hard turn into the usual. A nerd in school, could never get a date. Acne. The works. Oh! And I hope you’ll ask about how I lost my virginity, then we’ll really be cooking with gas. By the end of this question and answer sesh, there’s nothing you won’t know about my sordid past.”

“O?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and let me think for a second.”

“Again, fair enough.”

He could feel her grin again and it put him at ease. She wanted to be here with him. She was just trying to get a grasp on all of it. For a woman whose life had been turned on its ass in the last twelve hours, he had to figure she was doing pretty well.

“Okay, I guess we should start with the whole dragon thing.”

“What about it?”

“What color are you when you’re a dragon?”

O’s hands relaxed on the braids and he threw his head back and laughed. “THAT’S the first thing you want to know about me being a dragon? Not how or how often or when or where? You want to know what color I am.”

“Well, I want to know all that other crap, too, I just really want to know what color you are. So quit stalling and spill the beans.” She poked his leg. “You’re lagging on the whole speed part of speed questions.”

He looped another section of her hair into the braid. “Okay. I guess I’m kind of a turquoisey, blue-ish, green-ish color.

She gave a nod. “When are you a dragon?”

“Anytime I want to be, as long as I’m in the dragon realm.”

“There’s another realm?”

“Yup, it’s kind of a parallel universe. Same as earth in a lot of ways. Except for all the dragons.”

“How do you get there?”

“Through portals. They’re kind of like wormholes. Most people think there’s only one, and it’s in the King’s fortress. But, being the Oracle, I happen to know there are a lot more. I’m good at finding them.”

“Okay. Wow. Okay.” She paused, but not for long. “So you can be either a human or a dragon?”

“Yeah. I’m a shifter.”

“Are other shifters oracles, too?”

“Nope. I’m the only one I ever met.”

Again, she paused. “Lonely.”

He didn’t hesitate, although her words sliced through his formerly lonesome heart like butter. “It’s not lonely by nature, I don’t think. For a long time I think that was just because of who I am. I never knew what was a prophecy and what was reality. I used to accidentally tell people their fates all the time. Or I’d see their biggest secrets and not realize they were secrets.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing,” she crowed. “What was the worst one you ever did?”

“I once tried to be nice and console a female dragon shifter through her breakup with her girlfriend. She hadn’t even realized she was gay yet. The girlfriend was about five years out, it turned out.”

“Wow. WOW. That’s terrible!”

“Yeah, but one upside is that once you know your future, sometimes you can still change it. The two of them are still together, actually.”

“All thanks to your big mouth.”

He grinned behind her and looped the last section of her hair into the braid, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in concentration. “Next question.”

“Why did you leave the dragon realm?”

“There’s an evil tyrant whose family stole the throne from the proper royal line about 500 years ago. The tyrant, whose name is King Dalyer, has been on a rampage, killing, pillaging, the works.” O’s voice fell away. He ignored the deeply bitter taste in his mouth, and the answering sting of pain in his side when he thought of Dalyer.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Oh! Right.” He scanned his head for how to answer her. “Nothing we’ve tried to stop him has worked. He’s too powerful. Not even the Surgere, a pretty badass group of rebels that I’m a part of, has been able to stop him. But then I started getting these dreams. Visions. Of a man in the human realm. He’s the key. He can stop Dalyer. Somehow. If I could just find him.”

“So that’s why you’re here in the human realm. You’re looking for him.”

“Yeah. I know he’s in the Rocky Mountains somewhere.”

“But then you met us…”

“And I got a little sidetracked.” He tied off the bottom of the braid and ran his hands smoothly over his creation. “Meeting your destiny will do that.”

She tipped her head back to look at him. “So when you find him, you’ll go back to the dragon realm?”

O nodded, keeping a loose smile on his face, although his heart clenched at the thought of leaving Mel and Ike.

She sat back up and turned around so that she was facing him on all fours, her naked body a deep blue in the light of the rising moon. “And then you’re gonna come back and live here with me and Ike,” she said. It wasn’t a question or a demand. It was a fact. She was stating it.

O tipped his head to one side and studied her hair. “I messed up the braid right at the beginning,” he said, running one hand over it. “I didn’t section your hair right. Oh well. Next time I’ll get it right.”

“O…”

“I don’t know, Mel. I really try not to look into my own future. It’s suicide. If there are good things waiting, then knowing my future might mess them up. If there are bad things, then I just prematurely dread them.”

She nodded. “I get that.” Leaning forward, she stole a quick kiss. “But I already know how it’s gonna work out. You’re gonna spend your life with me. Because, just, feel it?”

Mel placed her cheek firmly on his, and O did feel it. The surge between them. Their souls were a living thing between them. Each one drawing the other out of its hiding place. They called to one another. And answered. There was no going back from this.

“I think you’re smarter than I am,” O said.

“I think I’m smarter than everybody,” Mel grinned, pulling back from him, her off-center nose making him smile. “Last speed question, okay?”

He nodded.

“What’s your real name? Because nobody just up and named you Oracle.”

O laughed again. “You know? Not enough people question that.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “Owen. My real name is Owen.”

“So ‘O’ is actually really apt.”

“When other people call me that, it’s short for ‘Oracle’. But when you call me that, it can be short for ‘Owen’.”

“Deal,” she said and rolled out of bed. “I’m hungry. Gonna order a pizza.”

O flopped back onto the bed and watched her walk out of the room. It felt good, this whole telling somebody absolutely everything thing. He’d been deeply censoring himself since he was a kid. And honestly, even the people who loved him rarely ever asked him questions about himself. Being an oracle meant that he talked about other people a whole lot.

Mel popped her head back into the room. “Oh, and O?”

He rolled his head to one side to look at her.

“Ike and I are gonna help you find this guy.”

“I know,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t read your own future?”

“I didn’t have to read my future to know that you weren’t gonna let me do this on my own.”