“I can’t believe…” Maya breathed. Corin put his arm around her and she sagged against him. “It wasme,” she whispered, as though she barely dared say the words aloud. “Tomás’s magic … came fromme.”
29
Maya
Her mother was a dragon shifter. Her mom. Hermom.
“Do you need to sit down?” Corin murmured in her ear, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to frown at him or, yeah, sit down. That might be good.
The dragon-who-was-her-MOM-oh-my-god looked as though she was trying to speak again. Her jaw clicked shut, and she managed to look awkward and like she was trying not to be any trouble.
In dragon shape.
Indragonshape.
“I need your help,” she whispered to Corin.
“Anything in particular?”
She shook her head. “Everything?”
For the second time in less than two years, her world had turned upside down.
But this time, she wasn’t alone.
Corin kissed her, then stepped forward, shedding his jacket. “Take this,” he offered to her mom, holding it out to use as aprivacy shield as she shifted back into human form. She stared at it for a minute as though uncomprehending, then sneezed again.
She tried to hide the sneeze in herwing.Maya covered her mouth before she could burst out laughing.
And then the shimmering flames surrounded her again, and the bonfire-bright dragon was her mom again. Her normal, human mom. Except her mom wasn’t human, she was a shifter.
What does that make me?
Had her mom kept this from her, her entire life? The way Lainie’s parents had kept shifters a secret from her until she returned to Hideaway?
No, she decided, without hesitation. Her mom might not be the most open person in the world, but she’d always given Maya everything she needed to succeed in the world. If she’d been a shifter her whole life, and expected Maya would be too, she would have told her.
Which meant…
Gabriela wrapped herself in Corin’s jacket. “I’ve been trying to tell you,” she said, embarrassed. “I just…”
“Couldn’t find the right way to tell me that magic was real?”
They both looked over at Tomás, who had jumped on the necklace Seline threw to the ground and was looping it over and over his long neck.
“Same here,” Maya admitted, and her mom let out a gulp of laughter. “Tomás is a dragon shifter, too. Everything he can do…”
“I guess I passed down more than my curls,” Gabriela joked weakly. They stared at each other, wordless, but for the first time in years, with complete understanding.
“How long have you known?” Maya asked at last, breaking the silence.
“A few months. It started after you left. I thought it was the change at first, you know? A bit early, but, well, better to getthings over with, and then one day…” She gestured with both hands. “I sneezed, and I wasn’t even human anymore!”
“That’s why you’ve taken leave from work.”
“I can still clean like this, but so many people have cameras in their houses. What if they saw me? What would I say?”
“And it’s not just the dragon shape? Can you use telepathy, too?”
