Page 2 of The Hidden
I shake away the sad memories and focus on the road in front of me. Miles blur by, and the next thing I know, the smooth female voice of my GPS tells me I’m only twenty miles away from my destination. I’m on a winding mountain road that seems to be nothing but switchbacks, and I’m having fun leaning into each turn and pushing my bike and myself to see just how much speed we can take. But with each mile I fly through, the more it feels like a boulder is resting on my sternum. Trees flash past me, and I can’t help but dip back into all the curiosity I have about this place.
Gran didn’t like talking about where she came from. That subject, and my dad, were pretty off limits, but the closer I get to the address that Gran left, the more I wonder if this is where her home pack lived. Gran wasn’t latent like I am. She’d talk about shifting with longing and fondness, but whenever I’d ask her to shift, she’d become morose; she’d wave it away and say those days were behind her. She seemed almost relieved when my wolf couldn’t complete the transformation.
I sniff at the air as much as I can with my helmet on, but I don’t smell wolves or any other shifters for that matter. The crisp mountain air is cool and laced with moisture. I can smell snow on the breeze, and I really hope wherever I’m going has a place to crash for the night, or it could be a cold drive back to the last town I passed. I turn down a small road I would have never noticed on my own; thank fuck for Google Maps. I drive slowly and cautiously down the hard packed dirt path until the posh feminine voice announces, “You have arrived.”
I pull into a clearing that has a small stone cabin sitting in the center. The road I’m on ends abruptly, and I stop and step off my bike. I stretch my back and legs out and wait to see if anyone is going to come out and greet me from the small little house. No one does, and after staring at the house and surrounding unkempt grass for a couple minutes, I conclude that it’s empty. My gaze travels around, taking in the trees and the patches of tall grass and weeds. I’m not sure what to think about this place, but it’s clearly not home to Gran’s pack—or anything else, it seems.
I pull my backpack off, and my heart drops as I unzip it and pull out the urn holding Gran’s ashes.
“Well, Gran, we’re here,” I announce as I unwrap the plastic protecting her in my bag. “I’m not sure why this place was where you wanted to be, but I guess it’s only right that you kept those answers to yourself; fuck knows you did enough of that when you were alive, too.”
I can practically hear her telling me towatch my language, and I give the urn in my hands a sad smile.
“Love you, Gran,” I tell her as I walk away from the road and out into the clearing.
I look for a good spot for her and start to move toward a patch of dandelions that are in the wispy, make-a-wish stage of their lives. Out of nowhere, a white light flashes all around me, and I’m suddenly airborne, being thrown back with g-force like speed. Pain sizzles through my body, and I’m pretty sure I was just electrocuted by some invisible fucking force field. I slam into a tree behind me, and I can feel my bones breaking upon contact. I crumble to the ground, the smell of burnt skin and hair filling my nose. A whimper escapes me, but I’m broken and unable to make more sound than that.
My vision blurs and then comes into focus. Blades of grass solidify in my view, but beyond that, I can just make out my smoking hand. My mother’s ring is black, and there’s a brutal crack down the center of the stone. Anguish bleeds into me and ripples through the pain flooding my system. The last thing I see is the ring breaking apart and crumbling into nothing on my finger before everything goes black.
2
Fresh air clears my senses as I come to. I feel groggy and surprisingly pain free. Wind whips past my face, and I revel in the feel of it. I shake away the disconnected feeling I’m currently experiencing and look around to find I’m surrounded by blue sky and wispy clouds.
What the hell? Did I die?
I flash through the sky and pull my wings closer to my body so I can fall into a fast dive.
Wings?
Confused panic crashes into me, and I come all the way to my senses.What the fuck is going on?I’m in the sky, the motherfucking sky, and I have wings.Wings!My strong black wings flare out, and I go from a dive into a soar. I scream internally, and a terrifying screech comes out of me at the same time.
Holy shit, I’m a dragon!How the fuck am I a dragon?
I look around, and shock filters through my excitement and disorientation. I’m soaring over cliffs that are a reddish-purple, and not because the setting sun turned them that color, they just happen to be reddish-purple mountains. There are patches of trees and other greenery speckled about, and I know right away that I am not surrounded by the Rocky Mountains anymore. I’m a fucking dragon, somehow flying through the sky, in a place I’ve never seen before, and I have no idea how any of it is happening.
A glittering light catches my eye, and I realize it’s a lake of some sort. I have the sudden drive to see if I can catch what I look like in the reflection of the water. Just as that thought flashes through my mind, I feel myself lean in that direction and give a couple powerful flaps of my massive wings to propel me exactly where I want to go.It seems I’m a narcissistic dragon.I ride the wind toward the sparkling lake and try to figure out how my dragon body just seems to know how to do this.
I’m so overwhelmed by colors and smells and the feel of my new form that I can’t seem to process anything. All I can think of is the sight of my mother’s ring disintegrating on my hand, and I just know instinctively that somehow this is all connected. When my wolf—dragon, I correct myself, because it’s clear now that I am most definitelynota fucking wolf shifter— couldn’t surface, I was devastated. I’ve mourned the inability to do something that should have been so natural for me as a shifter.
All the times my grandmother watched me struggle to let my animal out surge to the forefront of my mind. The pain it caused me physically and emotionally not to be able to shift echoes through me like a fresh wound, and I realize this whole time, it’s been because of the ring my gran gave me. Fury boils through my veins, and as much as I love my gran and appreciate everything she’s done for me, I’m raging to know that for some reason, she lied to me.
For the first time since she died, I’m glad that she’s gone. Because if I were able to confront her about this, I don’t know that she and I would ever be able to come back from the fight that would take place. She’s been fucking lying to me, and as soon as I can figure out how to shift out of this form and get back to that clearing and my bike, I’m going to scour Gran’s house and find some fucking answers.
My wings flap and adjust my angle as I approach the lake. I have no idea how they’re just doing that, but I suspect it has something to do with the hint of other consciousness I feel inside of me. I don’t poke at it too much as I don’t want my animal to lose focus of the awesome flying she’s doing, but as soon as our four feet are planted firmly on the ground, I’ll be demanding to know how the hell all of this is happening. I glide lower over the water, and my shadow flows ominously across the surface of the blue lake. I look down to search for my reflection, and shock surges through me.
I’m not a dragon, I realize, as white feathers and a black...beak? Yep, that’s most definitely a beak shining back up at me from the surface of the smooth water. I have ears that are long and angle back from my face like a horse’s ears do when it’s angry. Large purple eyes stare back at me, the same stunned confusion swimming in them that’s coursing through my insides. My wings are massive and covered in obsidian feathers that almost appear to soak up the light all around them.
The white feathers on my face continue down my neck, stopping just past my chest to make way for velvety white fur. The sun reflects off the lake, and it makes my coat shine and gleam. My arms, or front legs, are snow-feathered to the forearm, and my hands resemble a bird’s feet. All five of my fingers are tipped by lethal looking black talons, but my back legs look like white furry paws, with a hint of black claws that are sheathed and waiting to be called on.
What in the flying fuck am I?
The lake ends abruptly, and I twist so that I can turn around and stare at myself some more; see what else I can find that either adds to this fucked up puzzle or helps put everything together for me. A shadow falls over me, and if I hadn’t just witnessed my own shadow fall over the lake as I blocked the sun from its surface, I wouldn’t know that something huge just blocked the sun above me as it flew past.
Fuck, please don’t let it be a dragon!
There’s a shift in the air above me, and whatever the fuck I am knowsthatis a really bad thing. I hold on for the ride as my literal fight or flight instincts take over. My wings fold in and I’m instantaneously diving through the sky. I drop like a downed plane, and if I weren’t sure some big scary thing was trying to eat me right now, I’d really fucking love the speed I’m achieving. Suddenly my wings shoot out, and an updraft grabs ahold of me, redirecting my trajectory from falling to rising. I pump my powerful wings frantically, ascending, as the current helps me to move even faster. I know somehow if I can make it to the clouds, then I’ll be safer, shrouded, and much harder to spot.
My speed feels supersonic, but it must not be fast enough, because just as I’m about to reach the white fluffy underbelly of the clouds, a screech-laced roar fills the air around me. The shadow attacks me from the side, and I feel like a seal that’s been body slammed by a killer whale. I twist and my feet and hands dig into something hard, as I fall backwards. My own scream-screech is torn from my throat, and I rear back to avoid the black and gray beak that snaps toward my neck. Pain digs into where I’m pretty sure my stomach is, and I kick out at whatever this thing is that’s hurting me.
