Whatever rage or despair was driving him, they had to find him and show him he wasn’t alone anymore.
And…
Every shifter on this mission to catch up with him was a predator. All except Keeley, Lance’s mate, but she was human, so she had an excuse. MacInnis was a snow leopard shifter. Delacourt, a lion. Up in the cockpit, their pilot Ames was a cheetah shifter. Even the little dragon shifter they were all here to protect was presumably a predator, though so far the hatchling had only shown interest in hunting shiny jewelry and foil wrappers.
Hunting down the missing dragon shifter answered a deep instinct inside them. They were in their element.
Carol was a predator, too.
She shouldn’t be so afraid.
“Not bothering you? That doesn’t sound like Maggie. But I’ll take your word for it.” Lance flashed her a grin and turned to include the others in the conversation. “If we have to land and wait out the storm, so be it…”
Carol should have kept paying attention, but there was a baby dragon dangling off her lower lip.
“Preeee-EEEEEE-EEEEEEEE—”
With another hurried glance around the room, Carol put one hand in front of her mouth and flashed her teeth so that only Maggie could see them. The little dragon squealed like she’d just seen the Crown Jewels and opened her own mouth wide.
“…Your teeth are also very pointy?” Carol said uncertainly.
“Pree!”
“Are we sure he’s heading south?” Mathis’ voice was a low growl.
“His family lives—lived—in Antarctica. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Besides—”
He broke off as lightning flared outside the plane. Lance frowned and pressed the intercom button. “Ames, what’s our status? Seems like things are getting worse out there. Should webe flying in conditions like this?” His eyes darted to the back of the plane, where his mate Keeley was sleeping in the other cabin.
“Our status is—” The pilot’s voice crackled into a buzz of mingled static and swearing. “I don’t know what the fuck it is, buddy. Our GPS has gone all screwy, comms are out, and this storm wasn’t even on the radar until it was on top of us. This is some weird shit.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lance said through gritted teeth.
A shiver prickled down Carol’s spine. She would have put it down to her shifter intuition, except her shark didn’t intuit things. It did what it was doing now. Slipping through the shadows of her mind. Staying out of the way.
Lance rubbed the permanent crease between his eyebrows. “How far are we from the nearest airstrip?”
“We’re over the fucking ocean, Lance. Not a lot of airstrips around.”
“The nearest land, then—”
Another bolt of lightning flared outside. Maggie shrieked and dug her claws into Carol’s sweater. Carol petted her uncertainly. The little dragon was normally so fearless, it was easy to forget she’d only hatched a few weeks ago. She was only a little baby—a fact Maggie also seemed determined to ignore, given how little time she preferred to spend in her weaker human baby form.
But all her chirpy bluster couldn’t stand up to a storm like this.
“It’s okay,” Carol murmured. “It’s just a storm. We’ll get through it. And then we’ll be one step closer to getting you home.”
“Chree chree?” Maggie snaked her head up to peer at Carol from half an inch away. A wavery image of a big, shiny dragon with very big, very sharp teeth filled her mind.
“That’s right. We’re going to find your uncle.”
BIG DRAGON?
Carol winced. She wasn’t the only one. Maggie’s excitement was instant andloud.She gave up clinging to Carol’s sweater and turned to face the front of the plane, her whole body stiff and trembling like a pointer dog.BIG! OVER THERE!
It wasn’t words, though it felt like it. It wasn’t the way an adult shifter would use telepathy to communicate. It was the hugeness of a tiny dragon’s thoughts, hammering into Carol’s mind.
BIG! GO NOW? NOW?
