Do humans know we exist? Sure. Humans always have—thus the dragon stories they tell. But knowing dragons exist, believing that there are actually dragon shape shifters, and being convinced that your neighbor is one of them are entirely different things.
That’s probably a good thing.
The Covenant came about pretty recently. During the Dragon’s Tail Wars, some Pyr decided they wanted to be more active and visible. My dad, though, remembers when we were hunted almost to extinction. The Covenant is a compromise between putting it all out there and living in secret. So humans might see Sloane on the news, appearing at the scene of natural disasters to help—he’s the tourmaline dragon—or Brandt, the orange dragon, making another daring rescue, but they don’t know their names or where they live in their human lives.
We teenage Pyr had to pledge to the Covenant after Nick tried to impress the twin girls living next door, and his dad caught him.
I still thought it was funny that they hadn’t been impressed.
I, in contrast, was awed by Nick in dragon form.
The fact is that most humans don’t believe they could personally know a dragon shape shifter. Those twins thought Nick had pulled some kind of illusion to make himself look cooler than he was.
So, in a way, we might as well be a myth.
Which is funny, if you think about it.
The trick is that the dragon business is all theoretical when it comes to me. I’m the daughter of a dragon shape shifter, so I should also be a dragon shape shifter. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Except it’s not happening. Nothing special has happened to me. I can’t do it and I don’t know why—much less what I can do to hurry things along.
Dragons are by nature patient. That’s what my dad says. He should know, seeing as he is about twelve hundred years old. That’s supposed to reassure me, but it doesn’t.
Because dragons are also passionate and inclined to anger. I know that from spending my life around all those dragon shape shifters who are my extended family. And the fact that my dragon abilities were AWOL—despite my patience—was seriously pissing me off.
The Pyr are all guys—men and their sons—except for me. The story is that there’s only one female dragon at a time, and that she’s the Wyvern and has special powers.
Yours truly—I’m supposed to be the Wyvern.
The issue with there being only one female dragon shape shifter at a time is that the last one died before I was born. And it’s not like anyone has her diary. Zero references for me. Zero advice.
Zero anything.
Just an expectation from my family and friends that I’ll become the font of all dragonesque knowledge and lead the next generation to wherever the heck we’re going.
Sooner would be better.
No pressure, right?
My dad says I was a prodigy, that I was already showing special powers before I could walk. Then I started to talk and all the Wyvern goodness went away. Poof. Instead of being special and a prodigy, I was just a normal kid.
I’m still waiting for the good stuff to come back.
No sign of it yet.
Some incremental progress would be encouraging. It’s one thing to be a disappointment to everyone you care about, and quite another to just sit back and accept that inadequacy. In fact, I was starting to think that those dragons who believed I wasn’t really the Wyvern might have it right.
Thus Meagan’s session.
An act of desperation.
Because the one thing I did know was that the other dragon teenagers like Nick had come into their powers with puberty. Their voices cracked and bingo, they were shifting shape like old pros. So being a late bloomer has bigger repercussions for me. Meagan thought we were doing the ritual for my period to start. She didn’t need to know I was after a little bit more than that.
Instead I got a guy mocking me in my own bedroom at the crack of dawn.
Like I said, it wasn’t the best way to start the day.
Deborah Cooke, Blazing the Trail: The Dragon Diaries
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