The shame of that moment was permanently burned into my brain—a scar that didn’t show but ached and throbbed just as much as the more visible ones on my skin. I remembered how Pedro Sanchez had called me a freak and hit me in the face with a football on purpose—then laughed about it when I started to cry out of pain and shame.
That had been when Ari first stepped in, I thought, watching his broad back as we made our way through the locker room. He had punched Pedro Sanchez and put him in his place—first defending me and then helping Megan to get me to the Healer’s office. He had wrapped me in his own shirt to help me hide my scars and had stood guard outside my door, refusing to let anyone hurt me.
Was that when his Drake first took notice of me? I wondered as we passed through the door that led out into the broad expanse of green lawn that was the athletic field. It was silvery in the light of the full moon overhead. Was that when he first started to want me?
But want me for what? If he didn’t want to eat me, what use could a huge dragon possibly have for me? Did he think of me as some kind of a pet that he’d picked out and saved from torture or death, the same way a human might pick out the ugliest dog at the pound because it was slated to be put down? Was that how Ari’s Drake saw me?
I supposed I would find out.
The field was dominated by a huge, oval track with a smaller green oval of grass in its center. It was here that Pedro Sanchez had hit me in the face with a football and Ari had punched him. And this was also the place where we came to a halt.
Ari turned to face us and no doubt saw a lot of curious faces. Drakes normally didn’t change in public and I doubted any of our Coven had ever seen what we were about to witness. Of course, he had changed before when he saved me from the Guardian, but at that time, I had been preoccupied with not getting eaten and hadn’t seen anything but the giant reptilian head rising up before me with its long, sharp curving teeth…oh dear.
Don’t think like that—don’t think of it! I ordered myself fiercely. I couldn’t judge Ari’s Drake by my one bad experience with the Guardian and I couldn’t allow my fear of fire to color our first meeting either. This was really important—more important, potentially, that meeting his family.
Because if his mother and father didn’t like me…well, who was I kidding? They most definitely were not going to like me. But the point was, if they didn’t like me, I could live with it. But if Ari’s Drake and I didn’t get along, well—it was like not getting along with Ari himself. They were two halves of the same whole and if I couldn’t get along with one of them, we were going to have trouble.
“I will shift here,” Ari said.
And without ceremony, he started stripping.
We all just stood there, watching as he took off his Nocturne Academy blazer and tie as well as his white cotton shirt, baring his muscular chest. But when he started taking off his trousers, Avery cleared his throat.
“Look, it’s not like you’re not fulfilling a personal fantasy to see a muscular Drake in his skivvies, Ari,” he remarked. “But there are ladies present. Just exactly how much are you going to take off?”
“I will leave my underthings on,” Avery remarked, nodding down at the black boxer-briefs he was still wearing. He had taken off everything else, including his shoes and socks, and folded it all into a neat pile which he set to one side.
“Every time I shift, my much larger Drake form destroys any smaller, human clothing I might be wearing,” he explained. “And since I may need to shift back and speak to Kaitlyn after she meets my Drake, it’s better to keep what I’m wearing intact.”
“Makes sense,” Griffin remarked and we all nodded, though I couldn’t help feeling intimidated by the sight of Ari’s bronze body gilded by the silver moonlight. He looked like a perfect specimen of a man to me—like a statue of a Greek God. I wondered all over again, how someone who looked like him could possibly want someone who looked like me.
And yet, here we were, getting ready to watch him shift because he hoped he could convince me to come with him so I could meet his parents.
It was unreal.
“You had better all stand back a bit,” Ari remarked, looking at us with a frown. “My Drake has considerably more mass and takes up much more space than I do.”