Her eyes were skeptical, but she didn’t question him. Not that she wouldn’t do it later, but he reckoned she wanted to save the young dragon-shifter as much as he did and didn’t want to waste time arguing.
The brief flash of hatred that had coursed through him at the news of Miles’ capture faded. Melanie Hall would never be like the barbarous poachers who hunted his kind. Her heart was too soft for betrayal or deceit.
And for the first time, he started to realize how much of a bastard he’d been to the big-hearted woman in his arms.
Guilt was a distraction, so he pushed it aside. He needed his brain to focus on the upcoming take down and rescue operation. He could make it up to his female later.
He made his way through the trees, careful not to allow Melanie to get scratched by any of the branches. Within two minutes, they were back on the open landscape of the area. He set her down and said, “Stay here. I need more room to shift.”
As he walked away from her, he started to feel something he hadn’t felt in a long time—nerves. Tristan was nervous.
So far, Melanie Hall had been understanding about the dragon-shifters and their ways, but could she handle him changing into a dragon? Some humans found dragons beautiful, but a much larger portion saw them as monsters.
She won’t be afraid. She is strong.
He decided to listen to his dragon. Once he was about ten feet away from Melanie, he stopped and turned around to face her. Her gaze was curious and a touch impatient, which was a hell of a lot better than scared or nervous.
Hurry, his dragon urged.
Right. The teenager. They needed to save the young. Delaying his shift wasn’t going to help anyone or change the way Melanie would look at him after this.
Tristan closed his eyes and let his dragon into the forefront of his mind. As he imagined his body merging with his dragon’s, a low hum of pain sizzled through his bones, signaling he was about to shift.
It was time to see what his human was made of.
~~~
Melanie watched Tristan walk away from her and it took everything she had not to run after him and jump back into his strong, muscled arms. Given the chance, she could revel in his heat while breathing in his spicy male scent for days and still not get enough.
Her dragonman’s touch was becoming addictive, and she didn’t think it was just because he was the father of her unborn child. No, she knew it was because she was growing to love it.
But to act on her impulse would be selfish. She wasn’t about to cost a teenage dragon-shifter his life.
Instead, she contented herself by lifting the collar of Tristan’s shirt she now wore to her nose and inhaling deeply. If his scent wasn’t enough to make her feel good, then his shirt, which dwarfed her despite the extra padding she carried on her hips and ass, did. It reminded Mel of how Tristan made her feel small.
How he made her feel desired and feminine.
Before her thoughts could keep wandering down that path, Tristan stopped about ten feet away and faced her. His eyes were unreadable and she wished she knew why.
But then he closed his eyes and she stopped fingering his shirt to watch as his hands turned into claws with talons, his arms elongated, his nose turned into a snout, and wings sprouted from his back. His skin gradually turned black as scales appeared to form his dragon’s hide. In less time than it took to say Mississippi five times, he was a fifteen-foot tall dragon with shimmering black scales and piercing brown eyes.
Slitted eyes that were looking straight at her.
For a second, her heart rate ticked up. Seeing a dragon up close was a little more intimidating than she’d imagined. As the dragon opened his jaw a little, she could see his long, sharp teeth.
Teeth that could shatter her arm in the blink of an eye.
But as the dragon continued to stare at her, she realized she’d seen those eyes before, whenever Tristan’s dragon-half had been in control.
And the dragon’s eyes weren’t fierce or threatening. She might not be a dragon body language expert, but if she were to hazard a guess, she would say Tristan in dragon-form looked uncertain.
No doubt, it was because of her.
The fact that her strong, alpha dragonman was vulnerable right now went straight to her heart. She needed to erase his doubts and convince him of how beautiful he was with the sun glinting off his scales and half-raised wings. Someday, she hoped he would allow her to touch those wings and see if they were as smooth as they looked.
Confident her dragon wouldn’t hurt her, Melanie took one step and then another, giving Tristan plenty of time to jump and fly away if he felt he was a danger to her. She may not know everything about him, but she knew deep in her bones that Tristan MacLeod would never willingly harm her. Even if not for her sake, then at least for the sake of their child.