Ari turned to face us and no doubt saw a lot of curious faces. Drakes normally didn’t change in public and I doubted any of our Coven had ever seen what we were about to witness. Of course, he had changed before when he saved me from the Guardian, but at that time, I had been preoccupied with not getting eaten and hadn’t seen anything but the giant reptilian head rising up before me with its long, sharp curving teeth…oh dear.
Don’t think like that—don’t think of it! I ordered myself fiercely. I couldn’t judge Ari’s Drake by my one bad experience with the Guardian and I couldn’t allow my fear of fire to color our first meeting either. This was really important—more important, potentially, that meeting his family.
Because if his mother and father didn’t like me…well, who was I kidding? They most definitely were not going to like me. But the point was, if they didn’t like me, I could live with it. But if Ari’s Drake and I didn’t get along, well—it was like not getting along with Ari himself. They were two halves of the same whole and if I couldn’t get along with one of them, we were going to have trouble.
“I will shift here,” Ari said.
And without ceremony, he started stripping.
We all just stood there, watching as he took off his Nocturne Academy blazer and tie as well as his white cotton shirt, baring his muscular chest. But when he started taking off his trousers, Avery cleared his throat.
“Look, it’s not like you’re not fulfilling a personal fantasy to see a muscular Drake in his skivvies, Ari,” he remarked. “But there are ladies present. Just exactly how much are you going to take off?”
“I will leave my underthings on,” Avery remarked, nodding down at the black boxer-briefs he was still wearing. He had taken off everything else, including his shoes and socks, and folded it all into a neat pile which he set to one side.
“Every time I shift, my much larger Drake form destroys any smaller, human clothing I might be wearing,” he explained. “And since I may need to shift back and speak to Kaitlyn after she meets my Drake, it’s better to keep what I’m wearing intact.”
“Makes sense,” Griffin remarked and we all nodded, though I couldn’t help feeling intimidated by the sight of Ari’s bronze body gilded by the silver moonlight. He looked like a perfect specimen of a man to me—like a statue of a Greek God. I wondered all over again, how someone who looked like him could possibly want someone who looked like me.
And yet, here we were, getting ready to watch him shift because he hoped he could convince me to come with him so I could meet his parents.
It was unreal.
“You had better all stand back a bit,” Ari remarked, looking at us with a frown. “My Drake has considerably more mass and takes up much more space than I do.”
We all took several hasty steps back and I felt Megan reaching for my hand on one side while Avery did the same on the other.
I grasped my Coven-mates’ hands, grateful for their support. We were all holding hands now and standing in a line as we watched Ari in the moonlight. I wondered what we were about to see and couldn’t help thinking of the hideous way Pedro Sanchez’s face and mouth had distorted when he had done what Ari called “a partial shift” right here on the athletic field. He had looked like he was mutating—like he was turning into a monster.
Was that what I was about to see happening to Ari?
I couldn’t help shivering as I tried to steel myself for such an awful sight.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t like that with Ari at all. In fact, it was completely different.
As I watched Ari, I first saw a shimmering in the air around him. I saw a look of intense concentration coming over his face. And then…then he simply wasn’t there anymore.
In his place was a dragon as big as a barn with eyes as wide and golden as the moon itself.
63
Kaitlyn
I stared at the huge Drake in surprise. Either Ari changed in a different way than I had previously seen with Sanchez, or he had changed so fast that my eyes hadn’t been able to see the shift at all.
It didn’t matter which had happened, the result was the same—a giant creature bigger than an elephant, no, bigger than three elephants put together—was now standing in front of me.
But, no—not standing, I saw as I looked at it with my heart pounding. The Drake was sitting in front of us—sitting very much like a cat with its haunches drawn up to its sides, its front paws tucked under it, and its long tail curled around its legs. Its sail-like wings were furled tight against its massive sides, making it look surprisingly compact.
I thought there was something very cat-like about it, except for its long neck, which reminded me a little of a giraffe’s. It’s head—which was shaped more like a horse’s than a crocodile’s—towered several stories above us in the sky.
“Oh,” Megan breathed beside me. “I thought it was going to look like a T-rex or a snake.”
“Or maybe an iguana or something,” Emma breathed.
But in fact, Ari’s Drake didn’t look like any of those things, I thought. He didn’t look like a clumsy, flying dinosaur or a snake with wings or anything reptilian at all, really. He just looked like…himself.
And with that, I realized I was thinking of the Drake as a “he” rather than an “it.” I wondered how that had happened.
“I have never seen a Drake in his beast form up close.” Griffin’s voice was low and awed. “Truly he is an awe-inspiring sight.”
“And I thought he looked magnificent half-naked in
