Chapter Sixteen

ARCHER

It was almost ten pm by the time I was fully satisfied with the sculpture. I took some photos for my website and messaged Bhavanjot, the specialist courier who looked after all my larger pieces, letting him know it was ready for collection.

Rolling my shoulders back, I groaned at the stiffness. I'd kill for a hot shower and sleep. But I'd said I'd take Ollie flying.

I'd need to be careful when we were undressing to shift. When he'd touched me earlier, it had been like an electric jolt through my entire body. Maybe he'd seen my reaction and that was why he'd reacted as if I'd scalded him. I had to get this under control. I would get this under control.

After a quick shower and some food, I went in search of Ollie. He was with Mia and Tim in the sitting room. I didn't know what they'd been talking about, but there'd been a lot of laughter as I approached the door. Predictably, it stopped as soon as I stuck my head into the room. Even though I'd expected it, that stung.

"Flying?" I asked Ollie.

He scrambled to his feet from where he was curled up on the rug in front of the fire. "D'you want to join us?" I asked Tim. Ever since his mega blow-up at Christmas, I'd stopped asking him anything as it simply gave him the excuse to rip up at me, but something about the laughter in the room made things feel different. More like they used to be.

"No." His reply was instant, automatic.

"Another time," I said, and turned to Mia. "Sorry, kiddo—we're going to be back too late for you to come."

I wasn't sure why I'd said that. Long gone were the days when I enforced a bedtime for her, but to my surprise, she didn't protest. There was that look in her eyes that had been ever-present since the moot, one of barely suppressed amusement as she looked from me to Ollie. "Of course," she said.

"So where are we going?" Ollie peered through the windscreen into the swathe of brightness cut by the headlights, with impenetrable darkness beyond. "I can't see a thing out there. Not that it would make any difference if I could, because I don't know this area."

"Out to the west of Winchester. There's a planetarium to the east. They don't have a telescope, but they do have lots of visitors who love looking up into the night sky."

"Oof," Ollie said. He paused. "Do you think we'll ever let humans know we exist? It would be super cool to fly over Avebury in sunlight."

I was silent for a moment, thinking. "I don't know about that. At night time, it's ours. When no one else is around, it feels as if you could have gone back through time."

"It did feel like that, didn't it?"

The longing in his voice… "We could go up there one night if you like. It's not far."

"That would be awesome, " he said. "And I promise not to crash into Silbury Hill this time. Or you."

I smiled at the memory. Weird, because at the time, his disrespect had infuriated me. "There are some Long Barrows a bit further away from the henge that you might like to have a look at, too. They don't have the same atmosphere as Avebury, but it's still pretty awesome, looking down on Saxon history." What the hell? I couldn't remember the last time, if ever, I'd used the word awesome. Ollie had infected me with his enthusiasm.

"You can fly over the Court if you absolutely have to fly and you're careful," I told him, realising belatedly that, with no transport, he'd have to wait for me or Tim to go flying. When a dragon needed to fly, they needed to fly. It wasn't something we could schedule. I flew over the Court most nights, but I knew the position of the few houses scattered around and it was my territory. I'd be damned if humans were going to take that from me. The thought reminded me of his question.

"My guess is that, sooner or later, our existence is going to become known," I said. There'd been an incident in Oxford a few months ago, with talk on social media of trumpeting sounds and bright lights flickering in the sky. To anyone who knew, it was clear that the sounds people had recorded were dragons bugling, although no dragons had ever claimed Oxford as their territory. Thankfully, the general consensus was that it had been some type of student prank. "But I hope it doesn't happen in my lifetime. Even if they don't use us for experiments, humans would never look at us in the same way again."

"Yeah." He sighed, before brightening and sitting up as I turned the car off the narrow, tree-lined road and into a parking area, empty at this time of night.

"There's about two hundred acres of woodland here, with little chance anyone's going to be around. If they are, they'll be doing deals or having sex rather than concentrating on their surroundings, so it's pretty safe."

I led the way towards one of the few clearings the country park boasted. He followed me trustingly as I led him into the dark, wild woods at midnight.

OLLIE

We stripped off only feet from one another, and I snuck some peeks because he'd left the flashlight on his phone turned on as we undressed. He was even more perfect without clothes. The breadth of his shoulders was matched by an almost barrel-like chest—from all that beating of metal, I guessed uninformedly—and his arms were corded with muscle, yet he had a small waist, meaning he didn't look like a steroid-pumped gym rat. And his arse. I wanted to write songs about his arse. One or two really picky people might think it was on the flat side, but to me, it was perfect.

I had just enough self-control not to look when he turned towards me. I longed to find out if his cock was as perfect as the rest of him, but that would be dangerously close to perving. Not that I minded that as much as the fact he might catch me looking.

"See you back here in a couple of hours," he said. "If you get lost, call. Quietly. "

It seemed we weren't going to fly together. I shouldn't be disappointed—he was the head of a family and I was no one special. He'd already done a lot, bringing me out here.

"Thanks," I told him, and shifted.

He didn't follow suit, not straight away, but stood looking at me as my scales glinted in the light of his phone.

My dragon scented the night air, and I needed to get up into the vast sky, to feel freedom again. I unfolded my wings and, with a jump, launched myself upwards.

ARCHER

I waited some time before shifting and following Ollie into the sky. Having seen his copper form once more, my dragon was desperate to possess him, to hoard him, and I needed to talk him down. Ollie wasn't ours to take. But God, I wished he was.

I couldn't have Ollie, but I could fly. Out here wasn't like flying over the Court. I loved patrolling my borders to keep my family safe, but it was still a duty. In the countryside, flight was freedom. No responsibilities, no worries—just me and the big, dark sky, which felt infinite. It reminded me of being a young dragon again, when I didn't know all the things I knew now. When I'd had fun.

I weaved through cold, thick clouds before riding the thermals with outstretched wings, wild and free, and wished I could be this way forever.

OLLIE

Archer had been right. This place felt safe . No lights from houses for miles, and car headlights only occasionally swept around the edge of the woods. I took myself up high, hoping to spot Archer in the intermittent moonlight, and before long, I saw him beneath me, a great, dark shape, wings extended as he rode the air. I wished I could be so graceful. I loved flying, but Jack had always said I wasn't exactly gainly. My wings were slightly out of proportion to the rest of my body, he'd said, examining me critically.

Driving those thoughts away, I pretended I was an owl and stooped out of the sky, plummeting down fast, almost touching the tops of the trees and pulling away at the last minute.

I repeated the trick a few times before looking for Archer again. I wasn't bored—no one could grow bored of flying—but it felt sad to fly alone. Dragons always trod a fine line between liking personal space and needing other dragons around.

He was moving at a steady pace around the perimeter of the woodland. I flew over to him, ensuring he could see me coming, and made wide, loose, lazy-looking circles around him. At a respectful distance—I wasn't going to risk a repeat of Avebury.

To my amazement, he turned his head to watch me, and after I'd looped around him a few times, he sped up. He was still watching me, and I realised this was an invitation to play. I swooped around him in decreasing circles, ever faster, trying to keep up with him, and he began to circle me back. We were going around one another as if a piece of invisible rope held us together.

The pattern felt oddly familiar, though I didn't know why until all the natural history documentaries I watched came into focus and I realised—this felt like a mating dance. The push and pull, coming closer but never allowing one another to touch before dancing away in the night sky. And all in silence, because thinking to one another would have broken the spell of whatever this was.

This was amazing —me and Archer, dancing in the sky, having fun, but with a charged edge to everything that left me hoping this might be more than playing.

Eventually, he did pull away, heading for the clearing we'd taken off from. I followed hot on his tail, not wanting to lose this flirtatious closeness that had developed. When I dropped to the grass, wild anticipation blotted out the discomfort of shifting. I'd scarcely changed shape when he strode across the clearing to me, pulled me to him, and his lips descended on mine.

His tongue pushed into my mouth, and arousal shot through me. He tasted of metal and power and Archer. His hands moved from my biceps, one to cup my head against the sheer force of his kiss and the other on my arse, the rough patches on his warm fingers sending sparks through me.

I kissed him back with everything I had, my body like water, flowing and moulding against his solid strength with no structure of my own. Except for my cock, which was getting so hard as I pressed against him that I was breathless.

It was everything I wanted, even better than I'd dreamed, but suddenly he pulled away. I was left cold and panting in the moonlight, wondering what the hell was happening.

"Fuck," he said.

Sadly, it didn't sound like an invitation. I was standing there like an idiot, hard dick on display, and he was turning away from me. "I'm sorry." His voice was low and strained, as if he didn't often apologise. "I shouldn't have—"

"You bloody shouldn't have stopped is what you shouldn't have done." It wasn't often I lost my temper—like about three times in my life so far—but the disappointment was unbelievable. "What's going on, Archer?"

He swung back to me, and with relief I saw I wasn't the only one with issues around the groin area. "You can't say no to me."

I stared at him, trying to process the words. The moon filtered through a wispy cloud to light his face, but I couldn't read his expression.

"You really think so?"

His lips twisted, and he bent to pick up his clothes. "Get dressed."

At the command in his voice, I turned automatically to my own pile of clothes, and then I realised what he'd done. "Oh, very clever." A tiny part of me worried that this was a head of family I was being so disrespectful to, but the rest of me knew this was Archer. "Look, can we at least talk about what just happened?"

"Nothing to talk about." He roughly pulled his jumper on and headed out of the clearing while I was still fumbling with my jeans. Out of time, I stuck my socks in my pocket and stamped into my new boots to follow the faint, bobbing light of his phone through the trees.