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  Gwynne felt herself contort then, unable to utter more words. Her spine was popping, limbs lengthening. She looked down at her hands, which pressed themselves to the ground as her entire body seemed to lurch forward. Once again they altered, changing to golden feet with razor-sharp claws which dug into the hard earth below her.

  The agony of the change continued as every inch of her body shifted now; each cell conforming to this new form, her déor rising to its full glory.

  A moment later she seemed to settle, the pain easing, and looked at Lachlan’s face. Her neck arched and he seemed almost to be below her now, vulnerable in spite of his size and the hard muscles that Gwynne knew so well. The body that she’d spent so many hours exploring and caressing. The man who had been inside her, intimate and loving.

  The fearless alpha, seeing the threat before him, was backing away towards the crumbling walls of Dundurn. A drake, particularly an angry one, was not to be trifled with, and he knew it. More than that, he knew that his mate was inside, fighting her beast and losing.

  In her rage, Gwynne advanced towards him. Rational thought was an impossibility. In that moment, all she wanted was to slap him or to yell at him for what he and his cousin had done to her.

  Feeling heat rising within her body as anger built up, Gwynne tried to unleash a stream of expletives at him, to give him a piece of her mind.

  No voice came, though. There was nothing human in her in that moment.

  Instead, an enormous flame shot in front of her face just as Lachlan disappeared into the nether, into another time.

  * * *

  Trial By Fire 4

  Scorch marks remained on Dundurn’s thick stones, surrounding one of the few doorways which still remained intact after centuries of weather and war had ravaged the structure. Evidence of burns which Gwynne had inflicted, aimed towards Lachlan. The physical marks of her absolute loss of composure. Of her temper, uncontrolled. Of the new creature’s spirit which inhabited her.

  She attempted to take a step forward, but immediately found it difficult to manipulate the limbs underneath her torso. Her hind legs—yes, she had four legs, and could feel that arms were a thing of the past—seemed almost to bend the wrong way, as though her ankles were where her knees should be. Everything felt wrong, backwards. Foreign and uncomfortable. Gwynne was an alien inside her own flesh.

  Crooking her head around, she stared at as much of her form as she could. If she’d felt insecure about her human body, this was something entirely different; she felt enormous. Being curvy and voluptuous was one thing. Now she was a fire-breathing mythological creature. Her pale, soft, white flesh, the skin that her lovers had stroked so often with gentle fingers, was gone, replaced by this strange and alien coating of armour.

  Her torso was sheeted in glimmering golden scales. Gwynne recalled the paintings of the Lady Gwendolyn. Gold silk. Always gold. But how had the painters known what she was to become?

  She twisted around in an attempt to gain a better view, and watched her body moving like that of a snake, her spine far more flexible than a human’s.

  So this was a drake. A fire breather; a shining creature with hard scales and a harder heart.

  As she craned her neck upward and turned, she saw that her back was not bare. Instead, two large wings sat folded upon it. They looked like those of a bat, the skin stretched and diaphanous even in their rest position.

  She could fly?

  Surely not; the idea that a jumbo jet could make its way into the sky had always baffled Gwynne. There was no way that she could do so, and certainly not with no control over her own body.

  For several minutes she studied herself, fascinated. And then, as though waking from a dream, she recalled where she was: the ruins atop the hill, which could be seen from modern-day Trekilling. Why no one had come at her with torches or nuclear warheads was beyond her, and as human instincts began to kick in, Gwynne realized that she needed to conceal herself. Not to mention the small issue of Kapral’s body.

  Damn it, why had she attacked Lachlan? She hadn’t meant to, not like that. She was a wronged woman, but she felt for him. He was important to her, a part of her.

  A part of her.

  This was what the alphas had told her; that the ritual would make them part of her body. And it had done so. Not in a way that she’d expected, though. The secrets that they’d kept from her had concealed a truth about her blood, her very genetics. They’d known something about her lineage, then; more than either man had let on.

  Anger and resentment surged up again, and all of a sudden heat seemed to radiate from within Gwynne’s body; she could feel her skin smoulder like hot ash. She looked down to see that a faint red glow seemed to erupt from between her scales, as though she were volcanic. It would almost have been a moment to revel in fascination at her abilities, if not for the fact that shifting into a mythological creature was proving more than a little traumatic.

  “Calm yourself, Gwynne,” she told herself. “Stop with the freak-outs.”

  Lachlan had mentioned something about control. Learning to control this, her body, her shifting, moving through time. Unfortunately there was little time to learn her own inner workings before she would be discovered by the townspeople.

  Her first priority was the body. Kapral lay on the ground, so small now, next to her. She remembered the day when Lachlan’s dire wolf had tossed the man over the cliff’s edge. It would be a far more useful tactic now that he was dead and couldn’t shift into his flying form, though she hated to think of it.

  Kapral had been an awful man, cruel, inhuman. But surely he deserved a proper burial.

  Gwynne’s eyes darted downward to the town below, and she saw no movement. As she focused on the the view of Trekilling, she realized something: everything was more clear in her vision, more sharp than it had been. Colours had changed. The sky’s blue was intense, the pockets of cloud filled with a range of hues, rather than the simple shades of grey and white which normally occupied them.

  In spite of the distance, she could see figures walking through the streets of the town. If they looked towards her, they didn’t seem to see her, however, and she tried to work out how such a thing could be. It was as though an invisible wall concealed her from them. But now was not the time to take chances or to speculate further about her appearance. She needed to dispose of Kapral and to move away.

  Trying to keep herself from breathing molten air on the body, she bent down and gingerly picked him up in her mouth. This move struck her as odd even as it occurred; human instinct should have dictated that she use the closest things to hands. But her dragon’s teeth simply grabbed hold of his clothing of their own volition and she lifted him easily, like a mother cat with her young. It was the dragon who controlled her actions now.

  She advanced a few steps, acclimatizing to her new legs, and as Lachlan had done, tossed the man far into the distance with a flick of her neck, out over the cresting waves below.

  “Good-bye, Kapral,” she thought, no malice in her mind. He’d been a monster, but then so was she.

  * * *

  Trial By Fire 5

  Gwynne stood looking out over the sea, recalling the early days in Cornwall when she’d been so naïve and innocent; ignorant of everything that was to befall her. Of her fate, her strange destiny with the alphas.

  She pictured the woman who had wandered into the pub in Trekilling and seen Lachlan for the first time. She missed that simple human form. That body which had always seemed so imperfect now called out to her to come back, to inhabit it again. To leave the strange scaled creature behind.

  She sealed her eyes, trying to summon a voice which might dictate what she needed to do to find her way back to herself, to her own flesh. Comfort, familiarity.

  But there was no voice; only her own, guessing at elusive answers which muddled her mind. Speculation about how to find her way into herself. And then, perhaps, to her wolves.

  “Be Gwynne,” she told herself at last, simply and
clearly. “Be human.”

  Her body seemed to relax then, to settle deep into the earth as though deflating. Again she heard the crackling of bones, this time thrusting themselves back into position, into her human form as she lay on the ground.

  After a few seconds she looked down to see her own skin. All of it, in fact; she was naked as the wolves so often were after shifting. She looked around, scanning the landscape for baffled tourists, but saw no one. Thank God for that at least, she thought. It was a blessing that no one ever came up to the ruins; that legend had caused the site to be a source of fear, a barrier between truth and fiction.

  She missed Lachlan already, though she’d felt so hurt just moments earlier. Humanity had re-entered her body now and once again he was in her mind; her mate, her saviour. The man who had helped her so many times and who, she knew, loved her. Something inside her had kept her from being kind and patient, from listening. This déor would take some taming, she knew; a wild creature had taken up residence inside her and struggled even now to get out. It was up to her to learn to overtake it, not to allow it to rule her.

  And in the meantime, she’d lost the person who was her greatest support in the world. Pushed him away, cast him out of her century with a violent force.

  Tentatively she rose, gathering the largest pieces of shredded clothing that she could find to cover herself. She managed to drape herself enough not to appear indecent, and moved away from the castle’s remnants, towards the small cottage that she’d visited with Lachlan all those days ago. It seemed like years—centuries—had passed since then.

  And in a sense they had. So much had changed. So much could never be revisited.

  * * *

  Her feet were slow at first, almost as though a heavy weight forced them to drag along the ground, but she soon regained the feel of her human limbs and began to walk confidently despite her near-nudity. Surprisingly enough she wasn’t cold, in spite of the time of year, which was verging on winter. She felt perspiration trickle down her spine to the small of her back, even, as if the day were in the middle of summer and she were walking under a beating sun.

  The bad news was that she was still in her own modern time. Still away from Dundurn and her alphas, unsure of whether Lachlan could or would ever forgive her for trying to kill him. Unsure of how she felt about what he and Rauth had perpetrated; the lie that they’d told her, or at least the truth that they’d concealed. The three had been so intimate, so trusting. And yet here she was, betrayed.

  It was only a short while before she spotted the small house in the distance, warm and inviting. A refuge for her body, her emotions.

  When she stood a foot away she put a hesitant hand on the doorknob, fearing that the structure would be sealed up. But she recalled her run with Lachlan that night so long ago. They had only ever locked the house from the inside, and when they’d fled there had been no key.

  And sure enough it was open. The door swung inward and Gwynne was able at last to breathe a sigh of relief. She was safe, at least temporarily, albeit far from the place she most wanted to be; far from anyone she cared about.

  More than anything she wished that in her arsenal of surprises came a psychic link to Lachlan. Rauth was another matter, of course; by now he would be hearing of her exploits, and no doubt he would be displeased with her in some way. But Lachlan was her protector, and had been more than once. And now she’d managed to alienate him, if that was the term for breathing fire on someone and nearly killing him.

  She wanted to tell him that she was sorry; that she hadn’t meant it. No, of course she hadn’t. Her talent for making flames shoot from her face had come as much as a shock to her as to anyone.

  Gwynne barred the door, not that she was terribly fearful of anyone entering behind her. Feelings of threat or rage would likely only result in their being barbecued. But still, she was at least a little vulnerable, a little human. Without control over her new skills she was a threat even to herself.

  “Awful lot of wood in this place,” she muttered, glancing around. What had once seemed like a charmingly rustic cottage now appeared to be a potential pyre. Would she spend the rest of her life feeling this way, as though she were her own fire hazard?

  On a narrow piece of wall in the bedroom was an old mirror, and she examined herself as she’d done countless times, always with the goal of assessing her imperfections and inadequacies. But this time was different. She looked for traces of a new being. A new Gwynne.

  What greeted her was her own face, only a heightened version of it. Rauth had said that they were part of her now, her two light-blue-eyed shifters. And it showed. Her green eyes seemed brighter; her hair still glossier than before, as though that too were strengthened. But there was no sign of the frightening drake who’d expelled Lachlan into another world, another time.

  Staring fixedly in the mirror, she attempted to conjure the creature. It would be too large to be contained in this place; even the dire wolves would have a hard time moving here without knocking over furniture. But Gwynne recalled that her limbs had changed first; perhaps she could manage that at least.

  “Be a drake,” she said to herself, recalling her mother’s last name. Drake. Surely it was no coincidence, and yet in the ten years she’d spent with the woman, Gwynne had never seen her in any form other than human.

  She began to think of her mother. To allow years of frustration, feelings of abandonment and resentment build. Anger towards the woman who had abandoned a young daughter and a husband.

  “Why did you leave me?” she asked the face in the mirror before her.

  And in that moment her face changed.

  It didn’t hurt so much this time as the first; it was more of a stretch than a tear. But her pale skin set against dark hair shifted to yellow, golden, even, like the silk that she and Lady Gwendolyn had worn.

  Her eyes, so bright now, remained so against her new flesh, standing out, her pupils narrowing.

  As for the face itself, it simply became unrecognizable. A long muzzle overtook it, with two nostrils like those of a horse, huffing bits of smoke into the air around her.

  “Calm,” she told herself. “Don’t burn yourself to death, now.”

  She looked down again. Her body was changing, this time without the impediment of clothing to interfere, other than the torn rags which she’d pieced together.

  But her drake seemed smaller this time, as though her déor could sense that she was inside. That she would put her surroundings at risk if she burst through them.

  “Interesting,” she thought, amused. So this was another talent. Outdoors she filled the air around her; inside she was a presence in a room. She’d be all the rage at cocktail parties.

  Again, she told herself to be human, to revert to her own body, and again she seemed to deflate, her face shifting back to that of Gwynne: bright-eyed, even pretty. Yes, she was pretty. Even the drake’s face had a certain charm, but it felt like that of a pet, of a creature whom Gwynne was looking after. It was impossible yet to imagine that it was the face of some part of her.

  The exertion of shifting finally depleted her of energy, and, tired, she lay down on the old couch, pulling its woollen blanket over herself, and her mind was engulfed by thoughts of her future and of her solitude and loneliness.

  And then, as the dark of evening crept in through the narrow openings between the metal bars which covered the windows, she slept.

  * * *

  When the sun had risen, a hard knock at the door interrupted Gwynne’s slumber. At first she thought she’d dreamt the sound. That it had simply been wishful thinking; someone come to find her. To take her home.

  And then came more knocks, louder even than before.

  She grabbed the blanket off the couch and wrapped it around herself before calling out, “Who’s there?” Internally she wanted to inform any visitor that she would kill them with nose-flames if they bothered her, but it didn’t seem appropriate.

  “Open the door, cwen, before I sma
sh it down.”

  She lifted the wooden beam that served as a barricade and allowed the visitor to push the door open.

  “Rauth,” she said, allowing the smile which forced her face to accept it.

  “Hello, Gwynne.”

  * * *

  Trial By Fire 6

  “How did you find me, or get here for that matter?” she asked as she walked back towards the couch to sit. “I’ve never known you to be a time traveler.”

  Rauth remained standing, looking around at the house’s décor.

  “I can use the portals, as many can. Lachlan directed me here. He guessed where you would be, and with precision as usual. He knows you well.”

  “He does,” said Gwynne, remorse hitting her in the chest like a blow from a fist. The more time that passed since Lachlan had gone back through the portal, the worse she felt about their parting.

  “So you’ve never been to this place?” she asked, attempting to change the subject.

  “No, I have not. Why would I come here? This is not my time. I have no interest in this era or anything in it.” Rauth walked around the space, idly picking up a vase or feeling a curtain between his fingers, unimpressed at the progress that humanity had made over the centuries.

  “You do have the most narrow world view,” said Gwynne. “You have opportunities to see so much in your life but you choose to hang around your medieval castle and fight off birds.”

  “I do. It’s the life chosen for me, rather than that which I choose. But duty is significant to me, Gwynne, and one day perhaps it will be to you as well.”

  Gwynne felt as though she’d been reprimanded, though for what, she didn’t know.

  “I hear,” Rauth continued, sitting finally, “that there is a new flyer in our midst.”