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I gasped, dropping to my knees, body buckling under the pressure. How could this be natural? There was nothing natural-feeling about it. I fought the dragon at every step. Skin splitting, crimson scales forcing their way up to the surface, gleaming in the sunlight. My fingers twisted, contorting. Bones lengthened, thickened. Nails sharpened into wicked black claws. And then my shoulders burst open, wings unfurling, vast and sinewy, scraping the rough stone ceiling as they stretched outward.

I fell onto my hands. No, not hands—talons. The floor gave a shudder at the sudden increase in my weight. A guttural noise tore from my throat. I barely recognized myself. My body was alien. Too big, I was too big. The classroom was too small. The walls were pressing in on me. The ceiling suddenly became too low, too close.

I staggered towards the edge of the room and out onto the landing. My wings brushed against the walls as I went, scales scraping, knocking pieces of stone down in a hailstorm. I tried to breathe, tried to get control. But there wasn’t time—it was too late. There was no room. No space. I had no choice.

I squeezed my eye shut. And jumped.

Birds pushed their young from their nest when they were ready to fly, didn’t they? But I wasn’t a fucking bird. And I wasn’t flying. I was falling. I laughed—or tried to. The sound stuck in my throat. I couldn’t even laugh as I died. I supposed that was ironic. I was going to die because I was too stupid to fly. Because I wasn’t made for this, wasn’t meant to be this thing.

Then instinct took over. Ancient. Undeniable. My wings snapped open with a crack, catching the air. Pain lanced through my back as my muscles adjusted. I pitched forward, then up, wings carrying me higher. I didn’t even dare open my eye. I just … felt it. The air rushing over my scales. The power in the beat of my wings. Open space around me.

Freedom.

Slowly, I cracked my eye open.

I was flying. I was fucking flying.

The sea stretched out below me, glinting so brilliantly in the sunlight it was blinding. Behind me lay Bloodwing. I beat my wings, self-preservation kicking in, knowing I had to get away from the school and out of sight as fast as possible. With the glare from the sun, if anyone had happened to see me, chances were good they’d assume I was just Nyxaris. Black scales might look red in the sun, right?

I tilted my head upwards and spotted a cluster of clouds. I nearly crowed. Looked like Bloodwing was in for a storm, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I flew straight towards the cloud clusters. Instinct—it was all I had, and thank fuck it was enough. I angled my wings, banking into the approaching storm front. The clouds swallowed me whole. For a moment, I breathed easy; it was peaceful within the swirling gray and white. The world dropped away. Nothing but mist and the muted sound of my own wings as they cut through the damp air.

The vapor was so dense I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Like being inside a gray cocoon. The perfect hiding place. I was safe. I’d done it—I’d flown. I’d stay under cover until nightfall, then turn back to Bloodwing. Hopefully once the beast in me had gotten nice and tuckered out, I’d be able to land and force myself back into my human form.

I tried hard to ignore the part of me screaming for blood. Not Pendragon’s blood—for once. No, the dragon didn’t have good taste. Right now, it craved flesh. Meat. A fresh kill. It wanted to hunt.

Feed, the voice in my head snarled, now that it was fully free and had me flesh and bone. Tear. Rip. Kill. The whispers had been in the back of my mind for months, but now things felt truly out of control. I could hear it, hear the dragon inside of me screaming. Kill. Hunt. Feed. Weak. Prey.

But I wasn’t giving in. Not now. Not ever.

I could feel the dragon pulling. Where instinct had just saved me, now it tried to drag me down—back to the earth, to where the dragon knew it would find warm flesh and blood.

Prey below. Spill their blood. Rip and tear.

The hunger was frantic, desperate, but also gleeful. That’s what scared me the most—the excitement at the thought of killing. I’d never known anything like it before. I’d never relished acts of violence. Whatever I’d done, I’d always done out of necessity. Or, on rare occasions, anger. But this went beyond any of that.

I squeezed my eye shut as I flew, forcing my mind away. Tried to think of anything else. My classes. Visha. My house. Theo. I latched on to Pendragon. Her face. The freckles on the curve of her hip. The smell of her hair. The sound of her voice as she’d gasped my name the last time we’d …

Movement. I sensed it. Warning flashing inside me just before I saw it. A flash of darkness, cutting through the mist to my right. I turned my head, hoping I’d been wrong, every muscle in my body tensing up. Something massive moved through the cloudbank. Not a storm, not a shadow.

Nyxaris.

The older dragon’s head came into view as he sliced through the clouds, trying to pull alongside me. My heart hammered. The voice in my head had thankfully shut up. Maybe just as intimidated by Nyxaris as I was. Was I really doing this? Was I really flying alongside a fucking dragon? I pushed the thought away. Every-thing about the scenario should have been impossible. But it wasn’t.

You fly very poorly.

I jerked, wings nearly seizing up from the shock. The voice was in my mind. But this was different from the beast’s demands for blood. Was this what Pendragon could hear?

Who are you? Nyxaris’s voice was cold.

My thrallguard training leaped into action. My mind clamping down, slamming up mental shields I’d spent years perfecting.

Why do you hide, cousin of scales? Nyxaris murmured in my head.

Cousin. Good, he had no clue who I really was.

Or is it that you’ve forgotten how to speak? The black dragon’s voice was sharper. Vorago? Is it you? He veered closer, skimming through the clouds.

I panicked. Wings folding, I dropped altitude in a sickening plunge. Air whipped past me, cold and stinging, burning my eyes.