15,000 years later

“And though we know very little about the tribe who once lived here, my aunt, the renowned historian, Alisha Ataneq-Nightwolf, and I have extensive evidence that they were descended from a pack that may date all the way back to Ice Age Siberia. And my cousin, Fensa, is working on a theory that Arizona might have been home to the very first of the fifty time portals located across the U.S.”

“Excuse me, I have a question.”

Koko Lonewolf tried to suppress a flare of annoyance as the birthday girl interrupted her lecture. Again.

Perla Deslobo, the twelve-year-old princess of the Arizona pack, had requested this guided tour and was accompanied by two members of her private staff. A security guard, and a squat woman only a few inches taller than the Princess herself—Koko assumed she must be the long-suffering nanny.

Koko was well-acquainted with security guards and nannies after growing up as the Princess of Wyoming. However, she distinctly remembered asking for a Harry Potter-themed roller skating party for her twelfth birthday. Princess Perla, on the other hand, had requested a guided tour of the original kingdom town, a collection of wolf-made cave dwellings, still in-tact after all these centuries. For the second year in a row, according to their Advanced Wolf Studies department head who’d given her this assignment.

As an anthropologist, Koko usually loved giving tours. But in this case, Princess Perla seemed more interested in asking an endless ream of questions, than in listening to Koko’s prepared lecture.

“As I explained before, Princess, there will be plenty of time after the tour for questions—”

“If those early shifters were from Siberia, how did they get here?”

Well, if the kid was going to keep interrupting, at least she was asking good questions, Koko thought before answering, “During the last major ice age, a land bridge connected North America to the Eurasian continent, specifically to the area we now call Russia. It’s believed that many, if not most, of the human and wolf First Nations people crossed the bridge to get here. In most cases, they were following elk and other herd animals, and stopped along the way, settling in Canada and the northernmost parts of the U.S., before later generations eventually made their way to Arizona. However, unlike those other groups, our shifter tribe didn’t stop along the way. According to the pictograms and carvings they left behind, they were led here by a giant female, and a serpent god. We can’t be sure exactly when—”

“You mean a dragon.”

“I’m sorry?” Koko said, trying to hold on to her shit as Perla interrupted her for what felt like the hundredth time.

“My grandma says the First Tribe was led here by a dragon man who fell in love with a giant wolf woman. But then she left him, and the dragon was so sad, he went to sleep for a long time. The tribe eventually forgot about him because he’d been gone for so long. But then one day, over a thousand seasons later, a cave wall broke open and he reappeared. The people were surprised because they’d always assumed he was just a story. But he wasn’t, and everybody saw him. Then he flew up into the sky, and the people were sad because he was never seen again. Ever.”

“Wow!” the other security guard said, looking extremely impressed with Perla’s native version of the story.

“Well, if that’s true, it’s an excellent example of a myth,” Koko inserted, trying to steer this collective car back into reality land. “In fact, this tribe is the source of some of our most enduring North American myt—”

“Excuse me, I have another question,” Perla said again, this time raising her hand in the air.

“And once more, I want to remind you that the time for questions is at the end of the—”

“My grandma says it is a true story,” Perla said aloud. “Grandma says her grandma passed it on to her so they would never forget they used to have a dragon. And I’m supposed to pass it on to my granddaughter since I’m the Princess of Arizona.”

Yes, you’re the Princess of Arizona, which means I can’t strangle your little neck, Koko reminded herself as she gritted her teeth behind her tight smile. Typically, an inquisitive child wouldn’t push her buttons so hard, but this one reminded Koko a little too much of her older sister. Sarah Lonewolf, Queen of Wyoming, and self-professed know-it-all from birth. This kid was like a walking trigger for the many childhood arguments she’d had with the sister who always thought she knew better than Koko. Still did, in fact…

“That’s not a question, and perhaps your grandmother should lead your next birthday tour,” Koko suggested between gritted teeth.

“She has a bad hip and can’t get up the mountain anymore.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

“But I liked Miss Fensa. She gave me this tour last year. Why isn’t she here this year?”

Koko’s irritation was suddenly replaced with sadness.

The only reason Koko was guiding the child’s birthday tour instead of her cousin, Fensa, was because Fensa had disappeared from the apartment they shared two weeks ago. Nobody knew for sure where she’d gone, but everyone was freaking out that the she-wolf who was supposed to be taking over the Michigan throne after grad school, had disappeared without a trace. Including Koko.

Which was why the head of the Advanced Wolf Studies department had suggested she lead this “special favor” tour for the Arizona royal family. “Do something with your mind other than worry about your cousin,” he’d suggested.

As if. But she’d been giving it the literal college try. Until the Princess brought up Fensa.

“Are you alright?” the nanny asked Koko.

Koko shook off her worry, and pasted on a smile she could only hope didn’t look as false as it felt. “Hey, speaking of pictographs, let’s go back down to the caves and take a look at some of them. Inside are some of the earliest samples of cave art in the world, and there’s even a few examples of what many scientists think may be one of the earliest forms of writing in North America.”

“It’s the dragon god’s language,” the literal little princess said with the authority of a historian who’d gotten her Ph.D. at Oxford. “Grandma says—”

The girl suddenly stopped talking, but not because of the killing look Koko shot her way. The portal they stood beside suddenly erupted with a massive burst of light. Muted but bright, it looked like the small space had quietly exploded, then immediately imploded, leaving behind only the sound of heavy thumping.

And when the light cleared…

Koko and the Princess gasped.

There was a dragon. A ten-foot-tall dragon with golden scales hovering in front of them. And that thumping sound? That would also be him. Or more specifically, his large golden wings beating against the air as he kept himself and the woman he carried aloft. Then Koko gasped again.

Because the woman was…Fensa!

Fensa, in her typical modern Indiana she-wolf uniform of a self-cooling tank and smart shorts. But her sun hat was missing, as were her shoes. It was as if she’d been snatched from her apartment wearing nothing but her lounge clothes. Her head lolled to one side, and she appeared to be unconscious.

She also appeared to be pregnant. Like, super, super pregnant.

The security guard gaped, then remembered to pull out his gun, just as the nanny fainted dead away.

But the talkative little Princess only said, “WOW! Wait till I tell Grandma about this!”