In movies and books, dragon transformations were always violent—bones cracking, skin splitting, agonized screaming. This was different. This was fluid, graceful, like watching storm clouds gather and reshape themselves into something new.
One moment, Aero stood before her. The next, a dragon filled the beach.
He was massive. She’d known he would be—storm dragons were among the largest of their kind—but knowing and seeing were different things entirely. His scales were storm-gray, shifting like thunderclouds in the moonlight, darker in some places, silver-bright in others. Lightning crackled along his spine and wing ridges, casting flickering illumination across the sand. His wings, folded against his sides, looked like they could span forty feet when spread.
His eyes—those same lightning-touched eyes she’d been losing herself in for weeks—watched her with an intensity that made her heart stutter.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, you’rebeautiful.”
A deep rumble rolled through his massive chest—something between thunder and satisfaction, resonant in a way that she felt as much as heard.
“That’s still adorable,” she said, stepping closer. “Even when you’re the size of a house.”
His massive head lowered, scales inches from her face, steam rising from his nostrils in the cool night air.
Cassia reached out and laid her palm against his snout.
The charge between them didn’t spark. Itsang.
Power flowed from him into her and back again—not violent, not chaotic, but harmonized. Like two instruments playing the same chord. Like two storms meeting and merging instead of colliding.
“This is what we can be,” she whispered, understanding flooding through her. “When we’re not fighting it. When we just… let it happen.”
Aero’s dragon head dipped in a nod. Then he shifted his position, lowering himself to the sand, one wing extending toward her in unmistakable invitation.
“You want me to…”
Another rumble. Impatient, this time.Get on, it seemed to say.Trust me.
Cassia climbed onto his back.
The scales were warm beneath her, radiating heat like sunbaked stone. She found a natural seat between his shoulder blades, her legs bracing against the powerful muscles, her hands gripping the ridge of scales that ran along his spine.
His wings unfurled. Forty feet of membrane and bone, lightning flickering along the joints.
“Hold on,” his voice rumbled—not words exactly, but meaning she understood somewhere deeper than language.
And then they were airborne.
THIRTY-SIX
CASSIA
Flying with Aero was nothing like she’d imagined.
It was better. It waseverything.
The ground fell away beneath them as his powerful wings beat against the night air. Haven Shores shrank to a glitter of lights, then to a scattered constellation, then to something faint against the darkness of the coast.
Her magic responded instinctively.
Not with chaos—with joy. Pure, unfiltered joy that reached out to his storm power and tangled with it in ways that should have been impossible. She called the wind, and it came eagerly, lifting them higher. He summoned lightning, and it danced around them without threat, illuminating their path like a beacon.
Storm clouds parted for them. The stars wheeled overhead. The ocean stretched, infinite and dark below.
Cassia threw her head back and laughed.
The sound was lost to the wind, but Aero heard it. His wings adjusted, carrying them into a spiral that made her stomach swoop and her heart soar. He was showing off, she realized. The ancient, emotionally stuck dragon elder wasshowing off for her.
