An excerpt from BLAZING THE TRAIL
©2011 Deborah A. Cooke
Chapter One
February 11, 2025
It was Tuesday, the day that stretches so long that you start to think the weekend will never ever come, and I was actually hoping the weekend wouldn’t ever arrive. I’d avoided my locker all day, ducking the inevitable, but when the last bell rang, I ran out of excuses.
- It was snowing like crazy outside.
- I needed my coat.
- I had to go to my locker before I could go home.
And Derek would pounce on me and Meagan would be there with Jessica, listening to the whole thing, and the day would end even more badly than Tuesdays usually ended.
I dragged my feet down the corridor, trying the delay the inevitable. Suzanne sailed past me with her cronies and snarled her favorite greeting – that would be “Freak!” – and they all laughed their mean girls’ laugh. My dread was enough that I didn’t even care about Ms. Popularity and her perspective.
You would think that my outlook would be more positive. A bunch of great things had happened in the fall – some due to the efforts of yours truly – and it had been quiet in the realm of dragon shape shifters ever since. We’d kicked the proverbial butts of the Mages when they’d tried to destroy us, we’d formed alliances with the wolf shifters and the cat shifters and I’d been given the blessing of the previous Wyverns as the new Wyvern. Kohana, the Thunderbird shifter, had stolen the NightBlade from the Mages, thereby rendering them pretty much impotent, and we had a plan to help him destroy it on the next solar eclipse, coming to a sky near you in April. All we had to do was wait for the time to be right to completely consolidate our victory – forever.
Meagan had discovered that she had spellsinger powers and was learning to use them. I’d also had the most awesome sixteenth birthday party ever at the end of all that drama. My parents had gotten back together and had even gone away on some romantic vacation, leaving me to stay with my pal Meagan. Things were good. You’d think that a dragon girl would be able to discern the glimmer of gold in her hoard of possibilities.
But no. All I could think about – and dread – was the Valentine’s Day dance this coming Friday night.
Derek had asked me to go with him. This wasn’t a huge surprise. We’d gone to a few movies and hung out together over the past couple of months. He wasn’t much of a talker but it was kind of comfortable being with him. We’d kissed twice more. I knew he wanted more than that, but I wasn’t sure.
Inviting me to the Valentine’s Day dance was an escalation.
I’d been ducking him, avoiding him, not giving him an answer. It was serious finkdom on my part, but I just didn’t know what to do.
The thing is I like Derek. I even like him a lot. He’s sweet and thoughtful and funny once in a while. He’s protective of me and pretty quiet, a bit intense. Plus he’s a wolf shifter, so he knows a bit about the challenge of having two lives and keeping one part of your life secret from the other. We have the shifter thing in common and that makes it easy to be with him. I think it’s wicked that he has the gift of foresight, that he can smell the future a couple of minutes before it happens. He calls it his early warning system. I want some of that, but so far my Wyvern ability to see the future is being coy.
The problem is that I don’t think I like Derek as much as he likes me.
And that worries me.
Does it matter? I think it does.
Derek is probably the smart choice. He’s probably one guy I could and should go for. He’s the one chance that could work.
Of course, I have this habit of falling hard for guys who don’t fall for me. I did it once with Nick, another dragon shifter and one of my buddies, and I’m pretty sure I’ve done it again.
For Jared. Who is older, elusive, hot, a rebel and a member of a rock band, who rides a motorcycle, is never around when I want to talk to him, and possibly knows more about dragons than I do. He challenges me and dares me and makes me tingle right down to my toes – and that happened even before I scored my very first kiss, from him. He jumbles me up and confuses me – and just the mention of his name makes my dad breathe fire and lock the doors.
I think I could have forgotten Jared – or at least forgotten the possibility of seeing him again – when he sent me the only copy in existence of a book about dragon shifters. He had it and at first he said he wouldn’t give it to me, so that I’d need to contact him regularly. He called me dragon girl then and his eyes were seventy million shades of green, his grip warm and tight on my hand. My heart did somersaults all over my chest.
Then he sent me the book last fall. What was I supposed to think? I thought he was done and gone and that was that.
I was still trying to reconcile myself to the idea of him being out of my life forever when he called out of the blue – then got the tattoo I wanted, the one my mom had forbidden me to get on my back, on his back for my birthday. I didn’t sleep for three nights.
I’ve spent way too much time checking out the pictures he sent me of the finished tattoo on his gorgeous muscles.
Plus I still owe him a ride.
So, should I hold to the dream, as crazy and unlikely as it sounds? Or should I accept that Derek is my kind of guy and agree to go to the dance with him? I don’t want to be mean to Derek – but maybe love takes time to grow. Or maybe my instincts are right. Or maybe I’m just always going to yearn for guys that don’t want me. Maybe that’s part of what I like about them.
How twisted would that be? I like to think I’m more emotionally balanced than that.
Maybe Jared just likes the idea of having fan girls, of having me hanging on the line, waiting on him.
That really isn’t my style.
At least, it shouldn’t be.
I rounded the last corner and saw exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. Derek was leaning beside my locker, waiting on me. Meagan was at her locker, sorting her books, waiting on me.
Derek’s dark hair is straight and still a bit too long. It hangs over his eyes, but still doesn’t disguise their intense pale blue. They are wolflike, in their color and intensity. I swear he has x-ray vision. He was wearing his usual dark clothes, a combo that the eye slides over easily and lets him blend into the shadows. He’s so quiet that he could be made of shadow.
Of course, he wasn’t surprised to see me coming or from which direction. His gaze locked on me as soon as I turned the corner, his intensity making my mouth go dry.
I’d have to give him an answer before I left today. But what would it be? Heart or mind? I had a feeling that there would be big repercussions from my choice, but of course, I couldn’t even guess what they might be. My Wyvern powers could have helped me out here, but no. I was on my own.
No pressure.
“Hey,” Derek said, a guy of as few words as ever. His voice is low and grumbly, kind of like a growl. Sometimes it makes me shiver. “How was art class?”
“Best class of the day,” I said with a smile. “Makes the rest tolerable.”
Meagan laughed as I got to my locker, tapping her messenger to pull up a new message. She was laughing a lot more than she used to and no wonder – she’d finally gotten her braces off and sooner than expected. We’d both been thinking it would still be years, but she’d gone for her appointment in January and the orthodontist had said it was time to remove the top ones. Her teeth looked awesome and she was attracting a lot more attention. People saw her now, instead of her mouthful of metal. She is really cute and I’m happy for her.
In fact, I had an idea that I knew would make her happy if I could make it happen.
“It’s Jared again,” she said with excitement, scrolling through the new message.
“Again?” I asked as I opened my locker. I gave Derek a smile and tried to keep my tone neutral in referring to Mr. Incredibly Hot.
Derek didn’t smile back.
He watched me closely. I knew what he wanted and that the moment of reckoning had arrived.
I dodged it just a little bit longer.
I nudged Meagan. “You two have something going on?” I teased, acting as if I did not care.
Meagan laughed again. “He’s sending me all these tips about spellsinging. It’s amazing. I’m learning so much.”
“Oh, so you hear from him often.”
“Yeah! Like every second day. He’s in Des Moines this week.”
My heart stopped. Des Moines was comparatively close.
But he hadn’t called me.
Meagan held up her messenger to show the image of some club on its screen. “That’s where the band is playing tonight. They’re sold out!”
“Great,” I said, barely glancing at it. I felt a simmer begin deep in my heart.
She heard from him every second day?
And I hadn’t had one “hello” since November?
I was so out of his life that he hadn’t even told me that he was back with his band.
Even I know enough about guys to understand the implications of that. Jared had been messing with me. He was over. He hadn’t gotten in touch, because he didn’t want to get in touch, because he did not care.
Just thinking that made me wince, but there was no point in avoiding the truth.
I shrugged into my coat and met Derek’s gaze. He was cautious, uncertain what I would do. “You still want to go to the dance Friday?” I asked him, my tone a little more challenging than was necessary.
He straightened. “Only with you.” He smiled crookedly and I was struck by just how cute he is. “I thought you weren’t sure.”
“I’m sure. Let’s go.”
His smile broadened then and I saw how much I’d pleased him. It is kind of amazing to be able to have that effect on someone. Would it work the other way by Friday? Or after that? “I’ll pick you up at seven, talk to your dad and stuff.” He was big on the protocol of talking to my dad. Maybe it’s a pack thing. A wolf thing. A question of respecting the hierarchy. Either way, my dad likes Derek a bunch.
Probably as much as he dislikes the idea of Jared.
“They went to the Caribbean today. I’m staying at Meagan’s this weekend.”
Derek nodded. “Okay. I’ll pick you up there.” He glanced at Meagan. “You coming to the dance, Meagan?”
She pouted. “I don’t have a date and I don’t want to go stag. I’ve done it enough and this year, I really want to go with a guy.”
“She’s coming,” I said to Derek and Meagan didn’t look that surprised. There’s a casualty of her being a genius – it’s tough to surprise her.
“But…” she started to protest.
“She’s coming,” I insisted and slammed my locker. Derek looked between us, amused.
Meagan gave me a stern look. “You’re not going to fix me up. I won’t be a pity date.”
“No, you won’t be, but yes, I am going to fix you up.” I bumped shoulders with her, the way we always do, and smiled at her. “Trust me already. I have a plan and you’re going to like it.”
And I did.
I just had to make it work.
Once upon a time, about three months before this, Meagan had gotten her first glimpse of the Pyr. That’s the name for dragon shape shifters, or at least, our name for ourselves. That’s what I am – although I’m the only female dragon shape shifter in existence. There’s only one female Pyr at a time, and she’s the Wyvern. I’m the Wyvern. And being the Wyvern means having a bonus pack of extra powers, some of which I’m still trying to locate.
But my point is simply that all the other dragon shifters I know, all of my buddies and the dragons I grew up with, are all guys. And they are pretty hot guys. I think the dragon business works in a big way for guys: it seems to make them fill out and get buff more quickly than plain old human guys. So, any female with a speck of interest in the opposite sex would notice them, even when they’re in their human form.
In dragon form, they are breathtaking.
In November, Meagan had been targeted by the Mages because of her innate spellsinging talents. They thought they could turn her to the dark side, then maybe use her against me and my dragon pals. They weren’t counting on Meagan the genius figuring out their plan and deciding to go undercover to learn the real deal. It all culminated at a Halloween party at the house of an apprentice Mage – who goes to our school – named Trevor. Meagan had been crazy for Trevor forever, until she learned his nasty secret.
And until Garrett, one of my dragon buddies, came to the rescue. Garrett is garnet and gold in dragon form, his scales like jewels, and just about as magnificent as a dragon can be. It doesn’t hurt that he’s training to be the next Smith of our kind, so he spends a bunch of time at his dad’s blacksmith forge, learning his hereditary role and building some primo muscles.
I can razz Meagan about Jared because I know she’s totally nuts for Garrett.
The problem is that we’re in Chicago and Garrett lives in Traverse City. Since November, Meagan and Garrett haven’t seen each other. Rotten luck contributed to that – the Pyr got together at our place at Christmas but Meagan and her family were on vacation in California at the exact same time. She was devastated by that.
And I think Garrett was a bit bummed, too.
He’s got the same strong-silent-type, taciturn intensity as Derek.
So that night, when I was supposed to be doing my homework at the dining room table at Meagan’s house, I used my messenger under the table and invited Garrett to the Valentine’s Day dance. Meagan watched me from the other side of the table, flicking glances toward the kitchen where her mom was making dinner. Her mom is serious about no messaging until homework is done, and if she caught me, she’d confiscate my messenger pronto.
I closed my hands over it in an attempt to muffle the sound as it chimed to signal an incoming message. I peeked between my fingers and grinned.
Garrett was coming.
“That had better not be a messenger I hear,” Mrs. Jameson said from the kitchen. “We’re going to eat in twenty minutes and I want to see that English homework done.”
“Who?” Meagan mouthed.
I smiled as mysteriously as I could.
She wrinkled her nose at me, then glanced at her own messenger. It remained silent.
“Geek,” I mouthed back at her and she wadded up a sheet of paper to throw it at me. We have an old joke that we’re not geeky enough to message each other when we’re sitting in the same room. (Even though we sometimes do.)
“I am talking to you, Zoë Sorensson,” Mrs. Jameson added.
“Just finishing the last two questions, Mrs. Jameson,” I answered, apparently the most dutiful student alive. Just so you know, I have nobody fooled on that one.
“Meagan?”
“Done, Mom.” Meagan frowned and leaned closer to me, flicking another look at the kitchen. “Who?” she whispered.
“Wait for Friday,” I whispered and winked. “You’ll love it.”
Meagan sat back. Of course she knew. Her mouth fell open and she raised one hand to her lips. “No!” she mouthed, clearly wanting me to say “yes”.
It is so tedious to try to surprise a brilliant individual, you know. Impossible, maybe.
I tried to act like I didn’t understand her, but we’ve known each other way too long for that. I’d been hoping to make her wait for it, at least until we went to bed, but no luck. Meagan was too excited.
She scribbled a note and shoved it across the table at me, interrupting my consideration of math question number twenty-nine.
Her expression was expectant as I read it.
Actually, she was bouncing in her chair, vibrating with such excitement that I knew I’d done exactly the right thing.
For once.
“GARRETT!?!”
I nodded.
Meagan snatched the paper back and scribbled some more. I smiled when I saw what she’d written.
“OMG! What am I going to wear?”
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