Page 62 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

We fly home over the sleeping town, and Shadow Wolf Creek is even prettier headed back, the streets gone quiet under the moon. I lean into Jalen’s warmth and quit fighting the truth of it. I feel full, complete, in a way I don’t have practice with. I cameinto this valley with a stolen folder and a life that fit in a tote bag, and my man built me a whole world and pulled it off in a day.

The mountain comes up ahead, and I wait for the climb to the balcony.

It doesn’t come.

Jalen banks left instead and takes us down, low over the treetops, into the valley below the Caves. A clearing opens in the middle of the forest, wide and silver with moonlight, and he sets me down soft in the grass at the edge of it.

“What are we doing?” I ask.

“There’s someone I want you to meet.” He backs away from me, out into the open.

The grass is cool under my bare feet, and I curl my toes into it. “Jalen. What are you doing?”

He smiles at me across the clearing. “He’s been waiting for this moment. Desperate to meet you.”

Then he pulls his shirt over his head and drops it in the grass, and his pants follow.

Any other night I’d have plenty to say about all that man standing bare in the moonlight. Tonight the air feels too big for jokes.

My eyes go wide when it starts.

Heat rolls off him hard enough to bend the air. He drops forward onto his hands, and the change takes him. His back stretches. His shoulders split wide, and wings pour up out of them, bigger than the ones I know, then bigger than the clearing’s edge. Dark green scales rise out of his skin and lock together, row over row, climbing him while he grows. He goes up past the size of a man, then past the SUV we drove to the diner, and he keeps going until he’s taller than the roofline of my old building. The ground under my feet carries every bit of that new weight. A tail sweeps out behind him and drags a path through the grass. His neck pulls long. His face goes last. His jawstretches out long, heavy ridges rise over his brow, and he keeps his green eyes on me through all of it.

And then it’s done, and a dragon the size of a house stands in the clearing where my man was.

His scales are a deep forest green, darker than his eyes, and they shine where the moon touches them. His wings settle against his sides, green as bottle glass at the edges, the exact green that caught me in a Stillwater lobby.

My mouth falls open.

He looks down at me from way up in the night, and I know that look from across a breakfast table. It’s Jalen, all of him.

Everything hits me at the same time, too big to sort. The warmth behind my heart swells until I have to press my palm flat over it.

Then he comes to me. Each step rolls the ground, and he folds himself lower and lower until that massive head is level with mine, and he brushes his snout against my middle, so careful for something so big. His breath washes over me, warm enough to feel through my clothes.

My tears spill over, and I don’t wipe them. I put both hands on his snout, and his scales are warm under my hands.

“Hi, boy,” I get out. “You’re so beautiful.”

I rub his head, up between his eyes where the scales run small and smooth, and a moan rolls out of him, deep enough that I feel it through the ground.

Then the warmth behind my heart opens all the way, and what pours through it is him. It’s love, steady and huge, more than one body should be able to hold.

I sink to my knees in the grass, still holding on to him, and I break into sobs from somewhere I keep locked.

He pulls his great head back, and a low sound moves through him. His wings sag off his shoulders.

I can’t stop crying. Trying makes it worse.

Then the change runs backward over him, scales folding away into skin, and Jalen crosses the grass and comes down into a crouch in front of me. He cups my face in both hands.

“Baby, I’m sorry.” His thumbs move over my cheeks. “I just— I just wanted you to meet him.”

I look up at him through the mess I’m making of myself, and I finally say the words I’ve been holding since a booth screeched across a bar floor.

“I love you, Jalen.” My voice breaks in half. “I love you. I love your dragon.”

He pulls back. His face goes blank.