Rourke
She flew away.
Sheflewaway!
“What the fuck?” I shout, staring at the dark sky watching her huge dragon grow smaller and smaller. “I’m seeing things.” I groan, rubbing my eyes. “I’ve finally lost my fucking mind.” The girl I’m supposed to protect with my life justflewaway.
“If you’ve lost your mind, then I’m pretty sure we’re all on the same drugs.” Torren deadpans. I cut my gaze to him, noticing that he too is staring into the distance at the same spot I was.
“What are we going to do?” Derrin asks the question we’re all thinking.
“We’ll wait an hour, if she hasn’t returned then…” Jason says looking forlornly towards the mountains.
“Then what?” I ask.
“We search and hope that wherever she’s gone, she has the sense to stay away from human eyes.” Remmie answers over his shoulder as he walks back inside the cabin, dodging around the rubble from where Areyna broke the house.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jason
It’s beenten days and there’s still no sign of Areyna. No reports on the news of a dragon and no word from any of our contacts. We haven’t heard from Richard since that day and we’ve heard no news on what happened to Ossias. It’s like everyone has gone their own way now that Areyna is gone. Manny left four days ago, said he thought he might be able to search for her using their mate link, but even he’s gone radio silent. Torren, Remmie, and Derrin went looking for her on foot and never returned.
I’ve chosen to stay behind in the hope that she’ll return to us, but every day that she doesn’t my hope is slowly dying. I know I don’t deserve her, not after what I did, but maybe one day she’ll come back to me.
THIRTY-NINE
Derrin
Fifteen days of searching.We’ve found nothing. No tracks, no half-eaten animals, no signs that any predatory creature has been hiding out anywhere near Cageton. I’m at a loss over what we should do. Torren wants to chase after Richard, see if he knows anything, but Jason informed us over two weeks ago that he hadn’t been able to find any information on Richard’s whereabouts either. Ossias is in the wind and we’ve had no communication from the Council. The only thing we do know is that more of the Council members have died of mysterious illnesses. It’s getting harder to know who to trust when asking for information. Anyone could be in league with Richard and Ossias.
I hear a rustling in the woods to our left and turn to look in that direction. The sound is too quiet to be a dragon, but my heart skips a beat thinking it might be Areyna in her humanoid form.
“Fuck Manny, you scared the shit out of us.” Torren chuckles at his own reaction.
I don’t utter a word. I haven’t laughed or smiled since Areyna went missing. Rem thinks she’s somewhere close by, simply because we haven’t felt the effects of the bond yet, but I have a feeling that the bond is gone. I feel hollow inside, as though someone has ripped out a piece of my soul and left a giant hole.
I don’t know what to do with myself half the time. So all I’ve been doing is searching.
I’ll never stop searching, not until the girl I fell for is back in my arms.
FORTY
Areyna
Time passesin the setting of the sun and the rising of the sun. Every time it comes up, I feel like I’ve been given a new chance to live my life, but every time it goes down, I’m right back to where I was before, humanoid with a thirst for blood that never stops.
At first shifting back and forth between the dragon form and human form was agonising, but after the first few days, I got used to it. I still feel torn between the two forms, unable to control the animal that I become, but the shift itself is easier.
My heart feels broken every time I return to this humanoid form. I want to find the guys, tell them why I’ve stayed away, why I’ve avoided them when they’ve gotten too close to where I’m hiding, but I can’t, not until I can find a way to control my hunger in both forms.
A week ago I was flying around near the boundary that separates the forest and Cageton, I saw a man herding cattle and my dragon wanted to eat him. I came so close to losing myself that I struggled to turn away from him. I have no idea how other shifters do it, how they control the animals inside them, but I’m determined to find a way.
I won’t let anything stop me from gaining control.
I dive down into the lake, swimming quickly to the mouth of the underground cavern that’s been my home for the last few weeks. I’ve added some basic comforts, a blanket, stolen from a farmer’s line, a pot and wooden spoon, a few bowls and a stack of tin food, again all stolen from various places, but it’s still just a cavern with no real creature comforts. Out of all the things I thought I’d miss, I never thought it would be anything as simple as a fucking toilet. At the moment my bathroom consists of a hole and a stolen roll of toilet paper which makes me giggle every time I see it.
I’d been flying over a small campsite when I heard raised voices, the woman was shouting at the man for perving on a girl while they were swimming in the lake. She went inside their tent and emerged with an armload of toilet paper rolls, one by one she pelted them at him, calling him every name under the sun, “You’re nothing but acock sucking twat waffle with a chicken dick!”Bam, right in the chest with a dunny roll.“I can’t believe I went down on your pin dick and pretended to like it.”The next roll sailed over him only to bounce off the tree and smack into the back of his head. Another roll flew right past my hiding spot, so I scooped it up and tucked it into the bag that was lying near the tree. I have no idea whose bag it was. The woman kept yelling, devolving into just yelling out random names,“Dead beat, dickhead!”There’s a pause as she catches her breath and rustling sounds like she was searching for something else to throw at him,“You’re a stupid fucking wanker, worse than a dodgy bogan and a dud root!”It’s like she’s running out of steam and I take that as my cue to get out of there before they realised that they had an audience.