Donald
Natalie grew up.
No wonder she smelled so familiar.
The human is different than she was before. She’s smarter now, and wiser. She’s clever and brave. She embarked on some sort of journey to come find me in order to save the clan, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t completely hot.
I always thought she was a cool kid, but she was just that – a kid. She was an obnoxious troublemaker who roamed the clan trying to be extra badass because she wasn’t a dragon, so she always felt the need to prove herself.
Well, she’s proving herself now.
And she’s telling me the clan is in trouble.
“Natalie,” I start. “I left for a reason.”
She looks at me with those big, blinking eyes.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I did everything I could…”
She starts to move toward me and then seems to remember she’s hooked up to the IV. Natalie looks at it for just a second, and then she pulls the needle from her wrist and moves toward me.
“You shouldn’t have pulled out your IV,” I start, but I swallow hard because she’s left the blanket behind. Natalie, the most beautiful human in all of Fablestone, is standing naked in front of me. For the first time ever, I wish I wasn’t a shifter, wish I wasn’t naked right now. I wish I was normal and human and fucking clothed because I can’t hide my body’s reaction to her.
I can’t hide my heart’s reaction to her.
“You did everything you could,” she agrees. She’s close enough to touch, close enough to hold. I could hold her now. I could press my body to hers and just hug her. It would be a nice sensation: sweet and warm. It would be perfect.
“I can’t save them,” I whisper, and this is truly my greatest fear. I can’t believe I’m admitting it out loud because for the past fucking decade, I’ve been trying to make up for the fact that I didn’t save one kid. Every doctor has patients die. It’s kind of in the job description, but losing Trey was terrible for me. It was the very first time I’d ever lost a kid and no amount of training ever prepares you for that.
I can’t stand the thought of losing another child.
Not another dragonling.
Not any child.
“Donald,” she steps forward and places her hands on my chest. She shouldn’t be touching me there, but she does. I can hear her heart beating loudly in her chest, threatening to jump right out.
“Natalie.”
“You have to come. Please. You don’t know what I’ve been through to get to you, to find you. Everyone has been worried about you for years.”
“They’re fine without me,” I say.
“Nothing has been fine without you,” she corrects me. “Henrietta has been trying to manage taking care of people.”
“But she’s a vet,” I protest, forgetting for a brief moment how good her hands feel on me. “Didn’t Fablestone get a doctor?”
“Here and there,” she admits. “But nobody regular. Nobody who wanted to stay long term. We live in the middle of the forest,” she shrugs. “And anyone who really wants to live in the darkness of the woods tends to prefer Thunderstorm over Fablestone.”
Thunderstorm is another dragon clan that lives in the forest. We have no hard feelings toward them, but we have had some friendly competition in the past. Thunderstorm tends to rely on tech more than Fablestone, and it’s more modern in general. Still, Fablestone has a homey, comfortable quality to it. Besides, I loved growing up in the clan. Some of the best years of my life were spent there.
And now the clan needs me.
People are dying, and that terrifies me.
“Tell me what happened,” I start, and Natalie breathes a sigh of relief. She’s still touching me, but she seems a little more calm, and her heart rate slows.
“A few weeks ago, a dragon was taken. David. Cameron’s brother-in-law. His wife tried to rescue him, but she was unable to. Instead, she was taken, as well. A rescue mission was launched – that bit’s kind of a long story – and most of the clan went to Lucky to break in and rescue as many shifters as they could.”
“And how did that go?”
“It went…perfectly,” she scrunches up her face for a second and then looks back to me. “Too perfectly. Thunderstorm did a similar rescue op at the same time. We knew of two Lucky buildings in the forests, near the edge, and the set-ups were identical. Each clan found four scientists and twelve shifters at the facilities.”
“So you brought the shifters back,” I say, knowing where this is going.
It was a Trojan horse.
The scientists, or whatever group this Lucky is, baited the dragons into attacking and taking the shifters back. They either couldn’t locate our clan headquarters or weren’t able to infiltrate them directly, so they did the next best thing: they infected the shifters.
“They were sick,” she says, confirming my fears. “I don’t know what they have, Donald. None of us do. We didn’t notice at first, but then other people started getting sick. My father…”
Her voice trails off, and I realize that’s the worst part about this whole thing.
Natalie isn’t a shifter.
She’s not susceptible to shifter illnesses. She never has been. As the token human child in a clan full of shifters, she always seemed to be healthier than the rest of the kids. In reality, she just wasn’t being exposed to the germs that typically affect human littles.
And now I have the chance to save her father.
I let her brother die all those years ago.
No matter what she says, no matter what anyone says, I should have fought harder to save him. Now I’m being given another chance to do good, to do something to help my clan. I’m being given the chance to rescue people who need me, but first I have to figure out exactly what we’re dealing with.
The snow is still falling outside, so we have some time to come up with a plan before we fly back to Fablestone and save the day.
“All right,” I tell her. “What are the symptoms?”
“What?”
“What are the symptoms of the illness?”
“You’re going to help me?”
“Of course I’m going to help you, Natalie, but you have to tell me what the symptoms are, first.”
“I…I…”
Then she launches herself at me, pressing her breasts against my chest, and wraps her arms tightly around me.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Just…thank you.”