Lucas laughed. “He’s nots the biting types. Mores a destroyer ofs worlds. We spends a lots of times keeping his tempers tantrums to a minimum.”
I stared at him. “Is it true that he’s that powerful?”
Lucas’s smile faded. “He’s mores powerful than anyones knows, ors at leasts, admits to.”
“Well, we’ll need him if we are going to take down Galeran.”
“No, thats is the worsts thing we could do.” The fear in Lucas’s voice was very real. “We cannot sends Nikolai afters his father.”
“Why not?” It seemed so simple—find Galeran. Use Nikolai to blast him to smithereens.
“Its woulds be likes using a supernova to takes out a car thief,” Lucas said. “Nikolai is alls about brutes power. He has tons of rage associated withs his father. We pits him against Galeran, and he’ll brings an entire realm downs.”
My throat went dry. He was that powerful? The look in Lucas’s eyes gave me the answer.
“So... We’ll keep him far, far away from Galeran.”
Lucas nodded. “Exactly.” He took a deep breath and returned to the task at hand. “I cans help withs your shifting issues, as I shifts to all kinds of things,” he said. “It’s alls abouts visualization. The trick, withs you, is knowing whats your beast wills ends up looking like. So the first fews shifts mights be a bit hairy.”
I swallowed. “You mean, scaly.”
“Well, boths, actually, ifs yous are anything likes Dani.”
I ran my eyes over his beast. “You’re small for a Dragon.”
He snorted. “I cans go bigger ifs I consumes more crystal dust, but I finds this size is pretty versatile. There ares times whens size is an asset, though.” His voice deepened slightly, but then he shook his head. “Okay, let’s starts withs pulling your wings backs into your shoulders.”
“I can’t do it. Been trying,” I confessed.
“Overthinkings it, probably,” Lucas reasoned. “Watch mes do mines, and then I’ll coach yous through it.” He embraced his human, but stopped the transformation at the wings, and turned so I could see them reduce in size, the finger bones shrinking until they were small enough to tuck along the shoulder blades. Then I saw how they retracted into the skin, and it folded smoothly over them.
I swallowed. “That just seems—wrong.”
Lucas snorted a laugh. “The entire shapeshifter thing is pretty weird to a human. But your tail is likely the closest thing to the wings, in terms of absorbing it beneath skin.”
My brows lifted. He was right. It reduced to a few bones and pulled beneath the skin. Not as complex as the wings, but a similar concept.
“Okay, let’s try you,” he said.
I pulled off the cloak, and his eyes scanned my wings. “You need to reduce them more before they can fold inside.”
I took a deep breath and did so. With his calming influence, the entire process went smoothly.
Which was when I realized I’d been letting my emotions run the show.
It was the number one rule for shapeshifting—control your emotions. Tapping into their power helped me shift, especially when I was stonkered. But if I put them in charge, I was headed for a world of hurt.
Shifting from one form to the other required clear visualization from where I was to where I was going. Doing partials was even more demanding because I was only going partway and holding it there. I’d been so freaked out about becoming a hybrid that I’d forgotten that simple rule. I’d been behaving like a frightened adolescent.
Lucas seemed to sense my shame. “I shapeshift into different things all the time,” he said, “And I was still freaked about becoming a Dragon. Took me a while to get my mind around it. Now, I can’t imagine life any other way.” He gestured to the black scales covering his body. “You’ll love the look, believe me. No more running around naked.”
“Hey. I like running around in the nuddy.”
The dark brows twitched. “Okay, then. Noted. Now, how about you do a full shift, and I’ll talk you through the Dragon bits?”
I swallowed. I’d been shifting all my life. There’d been times when I’d been so tired that shifting was risky. But I’d never been afraid to do it before now. It was like the most fundamental part of who I was had become something completely unknown to me.
At the back of my mind, I sensed Anna, immersed in her fight session with the Bellatis. At least I knew who I was. She struggled with that concept every single day.
