“We’re going as fast as we can.” Carol’s voice shook with repressed laughter.
“And that answers our question about where Rouse is. Whether his destination is Antarctica or somewhere closer, we’re on his tail.” Lance rubbed his face, wincing. “If this storm sets him back, maybe that’s a good thing. We might catch him before he leaves the continent.”
And arrives on an icier one,Carol added silently.
“This whole mission, we’ve been a step behind. If we’d made it to the safehouse a few hours earlier, maybe—” Lance jerked his head to the side. “No point wishing for would-have-beens. Let’s focus on what we’ve got.”
“A homing device in the form of a baby dragon, and enough tiny bottles of whiskey to get all of Santa’s elves drunk off their faces?” Mathis suggested.
“Wrong Pole,” Lance said dryly. “And keep those out of Maggie’s sight. Bad enough she’s keeping old beer bottles in her treasure box without hard liquor rattling around in there as well.” He sighed. “And in case you thought this mission wasn’t complicated enough—remember, Rouse can shield himself using his dragon magic.”
“But so can we,” Mathis rumbled.
Lance nodded. “And we know something he doesn’t.”
Everyone looked at Maggie, who preened at the attention.
“He isn’t the last dragon shifter,” Carol whispered.
It was hard to believe the little dragon had only hatched a few weeks ago. Harder still to believe the world Carol and her colleagues suddenly found themselves living in. As animal shifters, they were all used to hiding their abilities from humans.
Except it turned out there was more magic hiding in the world than even normal shifters dreamed of.
Most of her life, Carol would have called dragon shifters a myth. Everyone knew that shifters only turned into animals that actually existed. And dragons didn’t. Period.
And then a little dragon hatched in the subway in New York City, and everything changed.
Humans still didn’t know that shifters existed. But now, regular animal shifters knew they weren’t alone. And if dragon shifters could exist… what else might be out there?
Carol glanced out the window. The stormy night outside turned the glass into a shadowed mirror, and her reflection peered anxiously back at her. Lips pressed tightly over teeth that belonged in a shark’s mouth, not a human’s. Eyes with no whites, just eerily flat, gray-black irises like something off a corpse.
Maybe there were others out there who…
She looked away quickly. She wasn’t like this because she was born this way. She was like this because she was broken.
It would be cruel to hope there was someone else out there like her.
Something flickered in the corner of her eye. She snapped her head back to the window, but there was nothing outside but storm clouds. It must have been more lightning. Maybe further away? That was good, right? The sooner they got out of this storm, the better.
Maggie wriggled with frustration.BIG,she insisted, and then went still and shivering. A questioning nervousness filled Carol’s mind.
The intercom crackled. “Shit.”
“That’s not the sort of thing I want to hear from my pilot, Ames,” Lance said through gritted teeth.
“You’re not wrong,” their pilot responded. “There’s something—”
His voice disappeared in a burst of static.
Trepidation prickled icily down Carol’s back. Lance frowned. “What do you—”
The plane jolted, metal and engines screaming. Carol doubled over, seatbelt cutting across her stomach. Maggie exploded out of her arms and dashed down the aisle.
“Pree! Pree! Pree!”
Carol fumbled with her seatbelt catch. “Maggie!”
“What the hell was that?” Mathis growled.
