Ash POV

The journey wasn't very long, fourty-give minutes at the most.

Cade said it was taking longer than it should, the hunters had been closer to the castle than they should be. Almost across the protective wall.

The protective wall that Cade crashed into six-hundred feet in the air.

Smart, I'm sure.

The crimson Dragon that was in the cave with me a week ago, as Cade told me, flies on without a care in the world as we tumble through the air, spiralling to the ground, fast.

My brother was knocked out cold, the twat hitting the wall head on.

As he was tumbling through the air to hit the trees below, my fingers had slipped from his body, no longer gripping scales as hard as rock, but the nothingness of the air that whipped around my head, filling my ears with their roaring.

Oh my God, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, ohmy gosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh.

I escape that hellhole only to die falling from a Dragon's back from a great height. And that Dragon was my imbecile of a brother that was stupid enough to crash into a magickal barrier that just so happened to be invisible and only seemed to let certain creatures through. Maybe it wasn't his fault after all. He better live so I could scold him. I better be alive. We both better be alive.

As my limbs twisted around my head as we fell, an unfamiliar feeling rushed through my veins.

Adrenaline, I suppose. My fight or flight reactions were kicking in, the energy pumping through my body.

I guess my mind and being decide that want to fly.

I hear the crunching sounds of my bones before I feel it. The cracking, crunching and popping begins at my toes as my nails extend and grow, turning black and enlongating as they disintegrate my boots due to the heat I which my body has suddenly become, making my skimn crack into small sections of pure gold. I watch the golden scales crawl rapidly up my legs, covering my jeans and breaking my ankles as they go, all while I scream my lungs out as I have been the last five seconds since we had crashed into the barrier.

I was faintly aware that the bright red crimson Dragon had heard me, and was now whipping around and flying towards us from two-hundred metres away, panic evident in his eyes even from the distance between us, due to my now sharpening senses.

The armour was following the outline of my body, coating my skin before they broke my bones straight afterwards, extending them and the muscles before popping them back into a completely different position from what they were originally.

As the transformation reached my abdomen, I could feel churning and stretchings in my guts and chest as they acclimatised to the size of my impulsively growing and changing anatomy.

The burning swords reappeared in my shoulder blades from the pain of shifting before. Just like the torture from before. In the midst of my arms lengthening and thickening while the talons branchout of my fingernails, tearing at the air that I was still plummeting through, the wings sprouted from my shoulder, curling themselves around my writhing body as we plunge to the floor.

We had been for hours, it may seem, as everything but what was happening to my form was in slow motion, a golden haze seemed to be carrying me in the process of the pain that was slashing through my body, making the air feel calm, even though my receding hair was whipping wildly around my head as my face felt as though it was becoming deformed at an accelerated speed.

A powerful entity surges forward to the forefront of my mind as the last many pieces of cartilage replaced themselves with greater, larger and seemingly more graceful versions of themselves.

I am shoved to the back of my own mind that I was no longer the controller of. This strange being that has barged its way to the front row seat has me trapped. As though I were a criminal, I felt bars encasing my influence of my own body, but I still have a perfect vision of what was happening, I could still feel the receding pain that thumped  in time with my mountainous beating hearts.

That's right, hearts. I could feel to unsycronised thrummings in my wide chest.

Thrum thrum, thrum thrum, thrum thrum.

The burning red Dragon was moving faster towards us as my view cleared of the golden barricades, and time had sped up again as the now menacing soaked leaf covered ground rapidly came to meet my face.

Fifteen metres before I slammed into the dirt and rotting leaves, extravagant, gleaming wings unfurled from behind me, fan out to the the wingspan of a full grown ash tree. The action was not in my control.

My long, agile body twisted as it shot into the air, sharp tail barely scratching the terrain now long below us. Us. I guess I accepted this thing, and decided I wasn't going insane after all.

It let out a low, unnatural, guttural growl at that.

Woah, shouldn't have though that. Even though my thoughts are meant to be private! And this is meant to be my body! But nevermind that! If you want it, barge in and take it, why don't ya?!

I yell this out in my mind, knowing whatever that thing was could hear it.

I probably sounded like a madwoman.

The senses overwhelm me as I feel the air particles rush inbetween every scale on my body, the footsteps of a fly on a leaf on a tree below us. The never ending forest was always moving, animals, plants and insects alike each having a unique sound.

I could tell the difference between an oak, a willow and an ash tree just by hearing the wind curl around their leaves and branches.

This was amazing. Effortless. Partly because I wasn't in control of my body. But eh. I didn't care anymore, as long as I could keep feeling these amazing senses that humans couldn't even dream of.

The sights. I could see the sea over the tree-tops, even through the mist that has obscured my vision so much in my other, constraining form.

I could taste every molecule in the air on my forked tounge as I open my mouth to roar into the wind that embraces my body that was in the air against the odds.

The smells, oh the smells. I had no idea that air could smell so sweet and good in this day and age, with all the pollution in the atmosphere. I could only imagine what it would have smelled of a million years ago, when forests encased this island from the north to the south, when the air was free of the destruction caused by fossil fuels.

The fresh rain in the air and on the greenery of the remote forest. The salt and the sand of the sea miles away.

That smokey, woody smell with a hint of nutmeg that remimded me of Christmas that seems to surround me completely, overwhelm me completely as I felt pulled toward it, seeking it out, trying desperately to find it.

We flew lower, following it to where I had shifted into a magnificent beast you only heard of in fairytales.

There, staring right at us, was the same male Dragon.

What was his name? We didn't even know his name.

I just knew that he was the blonde boy that had started this all.

But I couldn't hate him. Not as an unfamiliar, but completely welcome feeling encompassed me as I slammed into his larger body as we tumbled through the long grass in the wide clearing, nipping each other as my Dragon whispers two words into my mind as she hands over the reins of my body back over to me. Finally.

Mate. Finally.