Free Amethyst Bound by L. Shannon

men for a snack, so now would be a good time to hit the road…or rather the wind. “Ben, climb on or be carried by claw.”
    “Climbing,” he called out mentally as he grabbed his backpack and used one of my neck ridges to swing up over my shoulder.
    Even as I felt him settle firmly between two ridges, I spun about to make our escape. With a leap and a single downstroke of my wings we were in the air and leaving the hotel behind.
    “We need to regroup.” Amethyst offered the advice while steadying my wobbly launch.
    She was right. We needed another place to stash ourselves, at least until we could all get a grasp on our new situations. I wasn’t about to abandon Ben to a bunch of killers, but he needed a chance to decide for sure this was what he wanted.
    “I’ll take us to where I was staying. It’s not all that comfy but it’s also not traceable.” Neither Amethyst nor Ben commented so I swept us back toward the mountain near the temple, to the small shack I had commandeered for the few days I’d needed to plan out the recovery job.
    And how had a relatively simple recovery job gotten so crazy? Sooner or later I was going to have to deal with the drastic new change in my life. Benjamin wasn’t the only one who hadn’t signed on for this. I had questions that needed answered. Starting with, “Amethyst, is this bonding permanent?”
    “Yes.”

    L. Shannon
    65
    There had been a tiny hesitation in her answer, but everything we shared between us made it sound like the truth. So, at least for now, I had to accept that I was bound to the spirit of a dragon, and that fact wasn’t about to change any time soon.
    Would there be benefits? What besides my job and hard-won independence would it cost me? I didn’t ask Amethyst. Privately, I could see some benefit. Maybe, just maybe, I would finally feel safe. All too often growing up, and even as an adult, I’d felt like a lamb among the wolves. Oh, I might have been wearing a wolf skin, but it didn’t make me feel safe. With Amethyst, would I be able to give up that engrained victim status?
    Or was she just another wolf looking for dinner? If we were going to be bound together forever, I wanted to trust her. More than that, I needed to trust her. The brief glimpse into her mind had revealed someone just as bare and fragile as me. Her hurt had called to mine. Someone she’d trusted had betrayed her too.
    Ben was another matter. Even if he’d been cast out and ridiculed by his fellow professionals, he’d never understand what it felt like to be…a girl. Simply being male made him dangerous. He might not be a threat to me physically, especially now that I was a dragon, but the drama back at the hotel had shown very clearly that he could hurt me.
    It didn’t take long to reach the little hut. Just to be on the safe side, I circled before landing. “Looks clear.” I let Davis climb off before shifting back to human form and once more being naked as a jaybird. Sheesh. I’d have to figure out some way around this little problem or I was bound to continually embarrass myself.
    “Whoops. Can I borrow your shirt again?” 66
    Amethyst Bound
    He frowned, which did my vanity no good. “I didn’t bring a spare, but you can have this one if you don’t have any other clothes here.”
    “I don’t. I didn’t plan to come back here. Everything I had was stashed outside the temple so I could head straight out after recovering the box.”
    “Oh.” He slipped off his shirt and handed it over. “I…
    Thank you for saving my ass. I think those guys would have killed me to find out where you were.”
    “No problem.” I wasn’t about to let him be hurt for something that wasn’t his fault, and I wasn’t comfortable making a big deal of it either. He’d thanked me. I’d accepted. End of story.
    “And I’m sorry I was considering bailing on you.
    Neither one of us asked for this, and it wasn’t fair to blame you.”
    “That’s fine.” I went inside the hut to