Page 1 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

1

JALEN

Something is wrong with my nose. I wake up in my bed already sure of it, and I lie still under my blanket trying to place what’s off. The itch sits deep at the root of my nose, past where a finger could reach it. My dragon turns over under my skin, and heat climbs through my chest without settling anywhere.

I sit up and stretch my arms over my head. Halfway through, I sneeze so hard I drop back onto my elbows.

Smoke curls out of my nostrils and drifts toward my ceiling. A thinner ribbon leaks off the points of my ears.That’s new.I wave it away from my face and shake off the rest.

Dragons don’t get sick. It’s rare enough that I can’t name the last time it happened to me, and I can name everything. I keep receipts on this entire valley, dates and sources included, and my own body is the one file that’s never needed updating.

Newspapers pile in drifts against my dresser, my notebooks stack knee-high along the wall, and loose pens ride the tops of both. My podcast rig sits in the far corner where the room throws the sound right, and my mic is still tilted where I left it.

Last night was a live special. In the back half I congratulated Nyra on her new baby before she’d told Marcus. I said it on air with half the valley listening. My defense is that she came by the Chronicle office yesterday smelling sweet and new over her usual pine, and I know that scent from when her son Elijah was on the way.

The town is going to have opinions today. Marcus forgives everyone in this valley, so he’ll get over it. Nyra owns knives. I haven’t checked my comments, and I already know what’s in them.

I swing my legs out of my bed and pick a path across my floor between a stack of Chronicles and a notebook I’d fight my whole clan to keep. I’m in my gray sweatpants and nothing else, and the cave air sits wrong on my skin, too cool on one step and too warm on the next.

I rub my nose on the way to my window. The itch doesn’t move.

Shadow Wolf Creek spreads out below the mountain, and the morning sun is already working on Main Street. My town is beautiful. I’ve watched it from this window my whole life, and the view hasn’t worn off yet.

I sneeze again, and smoke rolls against my window glass. I shrug at my own reflection in it. If dragons caught colds, I’d have run that story already.

Pancake smell drifts up the corridor from the family kitchen, and coffee rides underneath it. I don’t drink coffee. The pot is for my clan sisters, and my brothers keep it full.

I dig a shirt out of the clean pile on my reading chair, which is not to be confused with any other pile in my room.

I take the long way around my floor to my bathroom, which is the one tidy territory I keep. I run the water hot and wash my face. My gums feel warm around my canines when I brush, and thin smoke keeps leaking off the points of my ears in my mirror.

Whatever this is, it can wait until after breakfast.

The stairs down from my room are carved out of the mountain, and I jog down them. The rest of my family’s condo is immaculate. The floors shine, my sisters keep fresh flowers on the hall table, and every painting hangs straight with its own little light over the frame. The only mess in this house is behind my door.

Both of my brothers are already in the kitchen. Dorian stands at the stove in his pressed shirt, adding to a stack of pancakes taller than the occasion calls for. My middle brother is the biggest, and he feeds this whole family.

Malachi sits at the table with his tablet propped against the fruit bowl. My oldest brother is the clan Alpha, and he moves the clan’s money around the world from that tablet.

I grab a plate and pull three off the top. I sit down across from Malachi.

“Where are my sisters?” I ask, drowning my pancakes in syrup.

“In town.” Malachi swipes his tablet without looking up. “Another shopping trip.”

These two are all the family I have. The clan that raised us was executed by humans in the land we came from. My brothers and I got out. Malachi was barely grown then, and I was small enough to ride his back when my wings gave out.

He flew us toward a rumor about safe land in the mountains where shifters could live out loud. The rumor turned out to be Shadow Wolf Creek. The town was brand-new and half-built, and it was already the best thing I’d ever seen. We’ve been here ever since.

Malachi taught me how to be a dragon.

I sneeze between bites, and a puff of smoke rolls across my plate.

Both of my brothers raise an eyebrow at me in unison.

“You coming down with something?” Dorian asks. He slides the last pancake onto the stack and cuts the burner.

“I don’t know.” I cut into my stack and keep eating.