After a quick shower and some food, I went in search of Ollie. He was with Mia and Tim in the sitting room. I didn’t know what they’d been talking about, but there’d been a lot of laughter as I approached the door. Predictably, it stopped as soon as I stuck my head into the room. Even though I’d expected it, that stung.
“Flying?” I asked Ollie.
He scrambled to his feet from where he was curled up on the rug in front of the fire. “D’you want to join us?” I asked Tim. Ever since his mega blow-up at Christmas, I’d stopped asking him anything as it simply gave him the excuse to rip up at me, but something about the laughter in the room made things feel different. More like they used to be.
“No.” His reply was instant, automatic.
“Another time,” I said, and turned to Mia. “Sorry, kiddo—we’re going to be back too late for you to come.”
I wasn’t sure why I’d said that. Long gone were the days when I enforced a bedtime for her, but to my surprise, she didn’t protest. There was that look in her eyes that had been ever-present since the moot, one of barely suppressed amusement as she looked from me to Ollie. “Of course,” she said.
“So where are we going?” Ollie peered through the windscreen into the swathe of brightness cut by the headlights, with impenetrable darkness beyond. “I can’t see a thing out there. Not that it would make any difference if I could, because I don’t know this area.”
“Out to the west of Winchester. There’s a planetarium to the east. They don’t have a telescope, but theydohave lots of visitors who love looking up into the night sky.”
“Oof,” Ollie said. He paused. “Do you think we’ll ever let humans know we exist? It would be super cool to fly over Avebury in sunlight.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking. “I don’t know about that. At night time, it’s ours. When no one else is around, it feels as if you could have gone back through time.”
“It did feel like that, didn’t it?”
The longing in his voice… “We could go up there one night if you like. It’s not far.”
“That would beawesome,” he said. “And I promise not to crash into Silbury Hill this time. Or you.”
I smiled at the memory. Weird, because at the time, his disrespect had infuriated me. “There are some Long Barrows a bit further away from the henge that you might like to have a look at, too. They don’t have the same atmosphere as Avebury, but it’s still pretty awesome, looking down on Saxon history.” What the hell? I couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, I’d used the word awesome. Ollie had infected me with his enthusiasm.
“You canfly over the Court if you absolutely have to fly and you’re careful,” I told him, realising belatedly that, with no transport, he’d have to wait for me or Tim to go flying. When a dragon needed to fly, theyneededto fly. It wasn’t something we could schedule. I flew over the Court most nights, but I knew the position of the few houses scattered around and it wasmyterritory. I’d be damned if humans were going to take that from me. The thought reminded me of his question.
“My guess is that, sooner or later, our existence is going to become known,” I said. There’d been an incident in Oxford a few months ago, with talk on social media of trumpeting sounds and bright lights flickering in the sky. To anyone who knew, it was clear that the sounds people had recorded were dragons bugling, although no dragons had ever claimed Oxford as their territory. Thankfully, the general consensus was that it had been some type of student prank. “But I hope it doesn’t happen in my lifetime. Even if they don’t use us for experiments, humans would never look at us in the same way again.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, before brightening and sitting up as I turned the car off the narrow, tree-lined road and into a parking area, empty at this time of night.
“There’s about two hundred acres of woodland here, with little chance anyone’s going to be around. If they are, they’ll be doing deals or having sex rather than concentrating on their surroundings, so it’s pretty safe.”
I led the way towards one of the few clearings the country park boasted. He followed me trustingly as I led him into the dark, wild woods at midnight.
OLLIE
We stripped off only feet from one another, and I snuck some peeks because he’d left the flashlight on his phoneturned on as we undressed. He was even more perfect without clothes. The breadth of his shoulders was matched by an almost barrel-like chest—from all that beating of metal, I guessed uninformedly—and his arms were corded with muscle, yet he had a small waist, meaning he didn’t look like a steroid-pumped gym rat. And his arse. I wanted to write songs about his arse. One or tworeallypicky people might think it was on the flat side, but to me, it was perfect.
I had just enough self-control not to look when he turned towards me. I longed to find out if his cock was as perfect as the rest of him, but that would be dangerously close to perving. Not that I minded that as much as the fact he might catch me looking.
“See you back here in a couple of hours,” he said. “If you get lost, call.Quietly.”
It seemed we weren’t going to fly together. I shouldn’t be disappointed—he was the head of a family and I was no one special. He’d already done a lot, bringing me out here.
“Thanks,” I told him, and shifted.
He didn’t follow suit, not straight away, but stood looking at me as my scales glinted in the light of his phone.
My dragon scented the night air, and I needed to get up into the vast sky, to feel freedom again. I unfolded my wings and, with a jump, launched myself upwards.
ARCHER
I waited some time before shifting and following Ollie into the sky. Having seen his copper form once more, my dragon was desperate to possess him, to hoard him, and I needed to talk him down. Ollie wasn’t ours to take. But God, I wished he was.
I couldn’t have Ollie, but Icouldfly. Out here wasn’t like flying over the Court. I loved patrolling my borders to keep myfamily safe, but it was still a duty. In the countryside, flight was freedom. No responsibilities, no worries—just me and the big, dark sky, which felt infinite. It reminded me of being a young dragon again, when I didn’t know all the things I knew now. When I’d hadfun.
