Draygon Inferno | Book 2 | ✔️

Chapter Twenty

          Siobhan watched Cion nibbling on his hay, waiting for the moon to reach its peak. His mane shifted with the subtle bounce of his head, lips moving with the mashing of the hay. He looked at her when she lifted the chicken leg to her lips and bit into the moist skin.

"Don't give me that look. You'll be able to have chicken too when you shift."

He neighed and shook his head. One hoof stomped against the ground before he went back to eating his hay. Siobhan cast her eyes to the moon seeping through the dead branches of the Drakewood trees. Any time now she'd have her brother back, even if it was only for an hour. It was an hour she desperately needed. Cion's muscles rolled under his hide when he cantered in place, his tail swept back and forth, shuffling the hay behind him. His head arched back, ears shrinking into the side of his head. The mane darkened and shriveled in closer until it was nothing more than his usual hair stubble and braid.

Tiny breaks in his bones snapped through the silence, but it wasn't enough for Siobhan to take her eyes off her brother over taking the form of the horse. When his hands snapped into place of his hooves, he dropped to his knees, allowing the rest of his body to bend and contort into his torso. Siobhan tossed him a blanket to cover up when the shift finished. She'd remember seeing the tattered pants in her saddle bag, but she always assumed they were Wrens. Never once did she guess the horses back she rode on was actually her brother and those mangled pants were his.

"Does it hurt?"

Cion shrugged, wrapping the blank tight around his naked body. "You get used to it after a while like anyone born a shifter. And I didn't always take advantage of the shifting hour. It's not like a shifter where they have to change regularly or they feel like their body is going to eat them alive. Before Esa'Drago I hadn't shifted in months."

"Why not? Why didn't you change to tell me you were okay? I'm so sick of everyone playing these games with my head!" Siobhan bit on her lip. Shouting at Cion wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to hug her brother, tuck him in the way she used to, braid his hair—anything but shout at him.

"I had hoped you'd never need to know about me being Wyx." He sat beside her, leaning his head on her shoulder. Gone were the days when he was a tiny boy able to fit snug in her lap. Now he was a man with whiskers speckling his once baby face. "Lady Lenore snuck the potion into your bag right before she gave me to you. Said I should give it to you if the time came you needed it. I knew what it was without her telling me because I can never forget the potion that saved my life. When you ran off from Bob and I, I grabbed his reins with my mouth and followed until I could shift. Then I waited in the shadows to see what happened."

"The potion used on you and my mother . . . it's not a Changeling potion?"

"No. The Changeling potion was the basis for it, but they aren't the same. I guess the witches had been working on a permanent solution to the Changeling potions because of the demand for it. From what I understand your mother was the first to try it because there simply was no time to test it further. It could've killed just as easily as it changed her. It was through her the witches discovered the potion could be reversed for an hour each day when the moon is at its highest point."

"Why horses? Wouldn't it have made more sense to turn into a person instead?"

Cion shrugged. "We don't get to pick our appearance, it simply happens. One of the flaws and the reason the hags aren't selling it yet. For some reason we became a horse to aid you. Jaeda has managed to hold onto their more dragon-like appearance, and I'm jealous of that. There was another who took it after me that became a bug. It was unfortunate when Lady Nelly sat on him."

Siobhan offered him her chicken leg, Cion shook his head.

"Regular food hasn't appealed to me since becoming a horse." He laughed. "Goddess, is this as strange to you as it is to me?"