From what seemed a great distance, Baz heard Fern saying: “Oh, wonderful, here they go, better get inside. Arden, come on—Arden?”
He wanted to know what was happening, because something clearly was, but his attention was entirely consumed with Declan stalking toward him. Declan’s dark jacket billowed out, farther than should be possible.
Unfairly, Declan had always been able to shift with his clothes on.
Never taking his eyes off his cousin, Baz shed his jacket. The rest of his current outfit would just have to go; there wasn’t time to take it off properly.
He let his grizzly free, and tore out of his clothes, just as Declan shifted.
Baz had only rarely seen his cousin shift, because Declan kept close control over it, even among gatherings of fellow shifters. Only immediate family members knew about his shift form. It was a carefully kept secret—though apparently, they hadn’t been careful enough.
Now he had a front row seat as Declan’s shift form roiled out of him. Most shifters transformed instantly, but there had always been something fluid about Declan’s changes, a smooth but not instant transition like the flow of oil or water. Declan did not erupt, he rolled from one shape to another, and then the lean coils of a black dragon half-filled the muddy street.
Declan was bigger. Baz had never quite realized how much bigger. In a flat-out fight between dragon and bear, Baz was aware he couldn’t possibly win. But he also couldn’t lose—not if Arden was at stake.
Baz went on the offensive, lunging forward, jaws wide.
He clamped onto Declan’s shoulder, but his teeth slid off scales. Declan snapped at his back, but was similarly thwarted by Baz’s heavy fur and the thick, solid muscle of his grizzly ruff.
“Idiots!” someone yelled. It sounded like Lexie.
Baz’s teeth glanced off a softer part of the less heavily scaled underside of Declan’s neck. Abruptly he tasted blood, just as Declan’s snapping teeth and claws scored painfully down his ribs. And then with no transition, something else took over, a purely instinctive rage left over from their childhood. Without warning, it was no longer a pair of adult shifters vying for alpha dominance, but two boys clawing at each other, snarling, doing next to no damage as they wallowed furiously in the mud of the street.
Baz whacked Declan in the head with a paw, and he suffered a series of painful but not damaging blows from Declan’s wings.
It all came to an end when Baz became aware that he was being dragged slowly out of the fray. Snarling, turning to claw his attacker, he found another bear, a female one, with her teeth latched onto his leg, tearing him away from the fight.
Declan was having similar problems, as another she-bear had attached herself to his scaled leg and was pulling him slowly backwards.
He and Baz were so covered with mud that their different coloring, Baz’s dark blond grizzly fur and Declan’s black scales, were barely distinguishable from each other.
Baz shifted, and abruptly his mouth was full of mud and his leg was in a bear’s teeth. “Ow! Let go! Lexie, give it up!”
Lexie spat him out and staggered back. She was muddy too, and Baz wondered when exactly the girls had waded into the fight, stopping them from being seriously hurt. He was naked and covered in mud. A little way down the street, Declan had shifted back, fully clothed, and was now coated with mud from head to foot. His sister was the one pulling him out of the fight, and Maida, at least, had the sense to stay a bear for the moment.
Fern was well back on the sidewalk, though her skirt and blouse were splattered with mud from their fight.
“Are you both ready to listen to reason now?” she demanded.
Baz sat up, coughing and wiping mud off his face. “What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter withyou?” Lexie demanded. She had shifted back as well, and while not quite as mud-covered as Baz, she looked as if someone had gone at her with a mud-covered paint roller. “I wanted you to know the truth, not have the two of you go off like a pair of Roman candles loaded with pure stupidity!”
“Hey!” Declan protested. He still had his leg held firmly but gently in his sister’s teeth, in spite of his efforts to free himself.
“Where’s Arden?” Baz asked, suddenly realizing what was missing from this street scene. “Wait—where’s my truck?”
“Oh wow, you noticed,” Lexie said sarcastically.
“She’s gone,” Fern said. “She took your truck and left when all of this started, Baz.”
Maida delicately dropped Declan’s leg, shifted, lost her balance, and fell naked to her hands and knees in the mud. “Ugh,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “My tongue. Blech.” She tried to wipe at her mouth, only to drop her hand when she realized she was making things worse. “Why are you two so stupid?”
“She’s gone?” Baz repeated, stunned and horrified.
“All I can say,” Maida said, in between scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her hand, “after watching the two of you brawling like a couple of idiots, is that I don’t blame her for leaving.”
ARDEN
