Chapter 1: Lavinia (Edited)
To say that today is a good day might be stretching the truth a bit. Today is my 20th birthday, but let's not get ahead of ourselves when you don't even know who I am. Let's fix that, shall we?
My name is Lavinia Stone. I am, apparently, a Dragon shifter. There hasn't been a Dragon shifter in centuries, according to my parents. My family are all Lion Shifters. I'm the only Dragon. I knew that I was adopted, but what I didn't know until today was that I hatched from an egg that my parents, Rose and Daniel, found while out running in their lion forms with my siblings, Kate and Nathan.
Well, apparently it was actually Kate and Nathan that found me, since mom and dad were keeping an eye out for any rogue shifters (rogue shifters are people who were expelled from a pack for some sort of crime) while they were by the borders of the pack at the lake. The lake's name is Lake Silver Moon. Kate and Nate, Nathan prefers to be called Nate, found a little cave behind the waterfall where my egg was hidden. No one ever knew I was there. Kate had yelled at her parents once they found the cave and took me back to their house, thinking that my egg was actually a really cool looking rock. A few days later, after my egg had warmed up from being inside a house where it was warm constantly, I hatched. Imagine the surprised looks on their faces when a baby came out and just stared at them for two minutes before crying.
They couldn't find my birth parents. So they kept me. They kept that fact that I hatched from an egg a secret all these years, even from our Alpha. We never knew what kind of shifter I was. Each year on my hatching day, we would go out to the lake where they found me and celebrate and wait to see what I would shift into. Every year it was the same. I never shifted. Since we didn't know what type of egg I hatched from, we couldn't figure out what kind of shifter I was, so we could do research so we would know what to expect. We apparently weren't the only ones waiting to find out. Our Alpha must have followed us or had someone follow us after I turned 16.
Once a shifter turns 16 years old, they are finally able to shift. Rather, it would be a wolf, lion, bear, mermaid, or tiger. Since I was the only one in our pack to not shift at 16, he apparently had someone follow us every year out to the lake to find out which shifter I was.
Since I wasn't expecting to shift this year, I'm thinking that it will just be like every other year. I was shocked, to say the least, when I felt tingles all over my body as my body started to expand and elongate to accommodate my Dragon. Everyone has told me that the first shift is painful and can last an hour or more. That wasn't my experience. It didn't hurt at all. It just felt tingly and was over in 10 minutes. During my shift, I heard from my Dragon for the first time. Her name is
Diamond. She said that she had been with me since before I hatched but couldn't reach me to talk to me.
It turns out that dragons pass on their knowledge to their young before they hatch but only have access to that knowledge once they shift for the first time. My birth parents died 100 years ago. I've been dormant in my egg until I felt some (a family) worthy of calling my own. Apparently Diamond was able to keep us alive in our egg until Rose, Daniel, Kate and Nate found us in the cave. My birth parents put me in that cave to keep me safe from the hunters that were after us.
All the knowledge I now have was passed to me from Diamond within 10 minutes of my first shift. I now have to figure out how to fly according to Diamond to solidify our bond. How the hell am I supposed to do that? My family are Lion shifters. Not bird shifters! We don't have any bird shifters in our pack!
"Horde" Diamond tells me.
"What? "What are you talking about?" I asked her.
"Dragons live in Hordes. Not packs. Also, our family is our Den. No one messes with our Den.
"You didn't pay that much attention during our shift, did you?" She asked me.
"I paid attention. This is all new to me. I wasn't expecting to be a dragon. "I didn't even know that I had hatched until today, instead of being born like others in our Horde," I told her.
All of a sudden, the most intoxicating smell blew my way in the breeze. It smells of my cave and citrus and the woods. Did I forget to mention that I go to the cave that my family found me in whenever I get the chance? Especially to escape from the Alpha's son Devlin. I don't know what is wrong with me, but he hates me. He's always finding ways to torment me. I think he wants me to leave the pack, but I won't. My family is here. His tormenting has only made me stronger. Not that he could ever beat me in a fight anyway.
"That's because we are stronger than him. Dragons are the strongest of the shifters. You clearly didn't pay close attention to the knowledge our parents shared with us. You, (we) are the last Dragon, but not just any Dragon. We are the Last Dragon Princess. "Well, Dragon Queen, since mom and dad are gone," Diamond told me.
"Wait! "What do you mean by "the last dragon princess"?!" I asked her.
"Exactly what I just said. "We are the last of our kind. "Our parents were the king and queen of the dragons," she replies.
I'm shocked yet again. "Is there anything else that I missed?"
"Oh yeah, our mate is hiding behind a tree, and you're not going to like who it is," she responds with a smirk. "But before we deal with him, let's go flying. I'll take over from here since you seem to be in shock. BTW, our mate is Devlin. "Should have just been named Devil," she laughs as she takes off from the ground after letting our parents know that we are going flying for an hour.
"Our mate is Devlin? Are you kidding me? Why does it have to be HIM?" I asked her. I get no response to that, probably because she doesn't have the answer either.
