Free Sailing Deep by Noah Harris Page A

He seemed to absorb the light. He then knelt down on one knee; arms held out and up; his head bent toward the ground. The hum of power seemed to swirl violently around him until it appeared to manifest in a swirl of black smoke. It surrounded the man’s body, and then everything seemed to happen so fast. The smoke suddenly spread along his arms, looking nearly like wings, and then he threw his arms down at the same moment he leaped into the air. He launched himself high, his body soaring upward like a dark arrow into the sky. As he did so, half obscured by shadows, the body of a man transformed into that of a dragon.
                  He spiraled upward until the transformation was complete, then he cast his wings wide, stopping his sudden upward climb and hanging suspended in the air. The sight took Dylan’s breath away. He never in his life thought he’d see a dragon. The creature’s large black body was silhouetted against the moonlight. The entire field seemed to be breathless in the wake of the show. No one dared to move, and no one dared to speak.
                  Then the dragon threw back its head and let loose an earth shattering roar. With a couple of careful wing maneuvers, the dragon began languid circles around the field, above his pack.
                  As if on cue, the pack cheered. Their cries were cut off abruptly as everyone seemed to step away from each other and fall to all fours, shifting into their second forms.
                  Blake stepped away from him, and Dylan glanced at the other man, momentarily surprised at the sudden missing body heat. Blake was smiling at him, his eyes alight with something that made a shiver run down his spine. He briefly glanced around as Blake fell to all fours to begin his shift. Dylan had known the Shadow Pack consisted of shifters from all backgrounds, as was clearly evidenced by their dragon shifter Alpha. But he hadn’t really realized the extent of that until he looked around and saw such a wide range of animals.
                  Though he didn’t really consider the shifters on his SEAL team to be a pack, they were, for all intents and purposes, a minor pack. They essentially lived together, worked together, trusted each other, and shifted together. And they came from several shifter backgrounds. Still, it didn’t prepare him for this. He saw bears, wolves, foxes, coyotes, tigers, panthers, and nearly any sort of animal he had even remotely heard of in the shifter community.
                  It occurred to him then that he didn’t know what type of shifter Blake was. He didn’t have much time to think about it before his own shift was upon him. Although shifting the day after the full moon wasn’t a forced shift, it was one that was hard to resist. It was even harder to resist when surrounded by the pack. It was as if the call of the dragon, and the aura of power that surrounded him, forced Dylan to his knees and urged his inner wolf to the surface. It felt strong as if it was the full moon that was calling him to his beast form.
                  He clenched his jaw and his back arched, his fingers and toes digging into the damp earth as he closed his eyes. The beast took him swiftly, and when he opened his eyes, his senses were suddenly overloaded. Last night, this land had been filled with new sounds, smells, and sights that delighted his senses and pleased the wolf; now, they were still new, but there are other scents as well. The smell of the earth and the natural foliage of this place. The scent of the native animals and the crisp, clean air without pollution. The slight tinge of salt in the distance from the wind rolling off the ocean.
                  But over all the other scents were the scents of the other shifters. He didn’t know how many but his brain raced in the overwhelming bouquet of shifters. He smelled their breed, their excitement, their lust. He