His wheel chair needed some WD-40. Its wheel squeaked
annoyingly all the way into the clinic. He looked up to see the auburn scales
of the dragon wheeling him forward, the man he’d already promised his life to.
“You know I love you, Rex.”

The dragon looked down at him and smiled wanly. “I know,
love. I love you, too.”

The man he’d fallen in love with was a stout 5’8”, 190
pounds. With hair, black as night and a full face. His Hawaiian heritage
afforded him a decently dark complexion. Closer to brown than olive. His eyes
endless pools of black. They were always full of mirth and wonder. His mouth
almost always upturned into a smile. The man he was wheeling into the clinic
was still that man, though he didn’t look it. The countless months of
chemotherapy had taken their toll on his body. Most of his raven locks had
fallen out and what he was left with was a practically bald head. His dark
complexion had lightened a great deal. And his stocky 190 had gone down to
barely 120. He could barely walk and his eyes had sunken deep into his gaunt
face.

The doctors had given him a year at most and he was at
eleven months. The cancer had taken its toll on the human’s body. He loved the
man to the depths of his soul, but seeing him like this made his heart scream
in agony. Not because he loved him any less, but because of what his
deep-seated love meant for him if his human lover didn’t make it through the
procedure.

Dragons rarely had cancer befall them and when it did, the
cancer was never as vicious as the pancreatic cancer had been to this human
whom he wheeled through the GeniFur clinic’s automatic sliding glass doors.

The dragon sighed as the woman at the counter came around
and took Jeremy from him. She greeted the human warmly and as she asked him
questions about whom he was there to see, what procedure he was going to be
receiving and everything else the clinic needed to know, the Dragon flicked his
wings nervously before going to sit in the waiting room.

He sat for a few minutes before the question begged to be
asked. And to do so, he stood up and walked purposefully over to the nurses’
station-slash-reception desk thing they had set up. The collie female behind
the desk looked up from her computer screen and asked, “Yes? Can I help you
sir?”

The dragon paused, unsure if he was really asking this
question. Then he charged through his inhibition, his love battening down his
trepidation, “I was just wondering, I’m Jeremy Ka’aukai’s lifemate and I was
wondering if his procedure was definitely selected as non-transformative.”

“Ka’aukai…Ka’aukai…ah here he is. Human. Native Hawaiian.
Adenocarcinoma. Late stage II. Gene therapy considered last option. Patient
wants non-transformative procedure.” The collie read robotically.

“Uhm ok. Thank you.” He rounded on his heel and headed back
to the waiting room.

***

The wind under his wings felt wonderful. It had been the
first flight in almost a month for Scale. The monsoon season made his human
nervous. He didn’t want to ‘tempt Raiga’s wrath’.

The rush of the wind past his earsails prevented verbal
communication from the human on his back, and he thought it would be a good
opportunity to practice their innate telepathy. Feels wonderful, doesn’t it
Ver? The dragon asked his human.

The young man astride his back replied with positive emotion
flooding the channel of their psychic link. Aye, my friend. Aye, indeed.

They went through their aerial maneuvers with practiced ease
and came down quickly for the morning meal with Master Rayon.

The old man gave the dragon a steely glare when they touched
down. His dragon had died in the war and he wasn’t too keen on hatchlings.
Which Scale knew quite well that he was. He was nowhere near the fighter that
Brimgar had become and he was loath to admit that he wasn’t even the best
aerial fighter in their class. The male bonded to the female human that Verus
had desires for was considered the most talented flyer. It irked him to no end.

As soon as Master Rayon was about to open his mouth there
was a large boom in the distance. In the direction of the Hatchery. Then
another nearer. It came from the observatory. The next came from the human
students’ dormitories. The two humans looked at each other, the dragon knowing
that they had seconds to escape when the floor beneath them began to lif—

***

The human woke violently on the operating table. They had
just finished the procedure when The human practically jumped off the metal
table. The nurses jumped on him to keep him flat on the table and the
Anesthesiologist upped the dosage to keep him sedated. They had one final
injection to ensure that the procedure would actually cure the human.

***

Verus had just managed to hop on in time. The dragon took
off as the floor beneath them erupted in a plume of smoke and fire. Did you
see Master Rayon?

The dragon looked left and right; above and below. He still
couldn’t find the elder human. Then the young man on his back looked behind him
and he sent his mental picture to the dragon. Master Rayon sat atop something
the dragon couldn’t quite make sense of. It looked to be a platform with
something spinning below it. It seemed to follow the human’s commands
faithfully. With no apparent verbal or mental commands issued from the human
atop it. The dragon doubled back in order to face Master Rayon.

“What in the eighteen hells are you doing, Master Rayon.
What is that thing?”

“It is the future, you heathen. That beast you ride upon
will be the death of you. My discopter will be the path of the future. I’ve
been planning this since the day you two came to the academy all those months
ago. Every chance I got I placed a new bomb. A new mine. Anything to blow this
monstrous place into the deepest pits of the darkest of the hells.”

Why did he let us survive, then? Scale asked below
Verus, questioning the logic of the elder human.

“Ah Scale, ever the curious, rambunctious hatchling you are.
Did you ever realize that your sire was Brimgar. You are my last connection to
the one dragon the one beast I ever trusted. You remind me of him.”

He’s insane.

Verus gave the dragon a mental nod, pulling the sword from
his sheath, the ruby red of the blade shimmering in the early morning sun.
“You’ve attacked my home, killed my dragon’s kin and destroyed the future of an
entire species. How could you? Master, you taught me that a Rider’s solemn duty
was to protect all life. To use their power and intellect to protect the
balance of nature. Yet here I find that you planned the destruction—the
extinction—of an entire species of animal.”

“Ah yes. The duties of a Rider. Well in case you haven’t
noticed. I am not a Rider any longer.”

“No! Most certainly not.” Another voice came from below. An
orange dragon the size of three of scale floated up from the ruins of the
Academy, on its back sat the Headmaster. “Master Rayon I am astounded by how
far you’ve fallen.”

In a flash the elder human was under the dragon and in
another the dragon screamed in agony. Golden ichor spilled from below. Master
Rayon having used the one chink in the nearly impregnable beast’s orange hide.
At the same moment, the Headmaster seemingly collapsed. The both of them fell
to the burning academy from whence they came.

It was then that they saw it. A blade unlike any other. It
seemingly pulled the light from its surroundings. Such was its blackness. Its
form curved back on itself somewhat. So that it gave the appearance of a
sickle’s blade, but the cutting edge was on the wrong side. Its handguard was a
simple square piece of metal and it had the length of a bastard sword, yet it
was clearly meant to be used with two hands. Evident by the grip that Master
Rayon was using. The madman flew toward the two his discopter’s rotors creating
a massive sound. The next thing that Verus and Scale knew, Verus had a blade
deep in his gut and he was gushing blood.

Verus collapsed and soon after the shock of it all hit Scale
and he fainte—

***

When Jeremy Ka’aukai opened his eyes from his dream he did
so with a groan. A groan which sounded strangely at a lower tone than he was
used to hearing. And when he brought his hand up to his face to grasp at his aching
head, he noticed that his head shape was immensely different. Whereas before he
had a strong browline with a cliffside of a forehead, it seemed that the slope
of his forehead had decreased immensely. And as he brought his hand back, he
noticed something hard and bony beginning about midway up his head. He followed
these protrusions back to their terminus and found them to be horns.

Strange. He remembered requesting a nontransformative
procedure. The other thing that struck him was the scaly texture of his skin.
Whereas before his skin was smooth as the finest silk. Now he definitely felt
the sensation of hard chitinous scales under his hand. He brought his hand back
to look at it. Instead of the dark brown skin he had before, shiny black scales
greeted his eyes. Indeed, his hand’s shape was mostly the same yet the
fingernails were gone. They were replaced by golden claws. Each at least a half
an inch long and seemingly razor sharp.

Speaking of sharp. Jeremy noticed that his vision seemed
sharper. Almost as if he’d gone from a LQ to an HD stream. It was strange. His
depth perception seemed to be off a bit as well. Things seemed to be closer
than they had seemed before. It was like someone had put a magnifying glass in
front of his eyes permanently. That wasn’t the only change in his senses. He
smelled the bleach used to clean the floor and the saline dripping into his
veins. He could hear the conversations of the people out in the hallway. And it
seemed he had an innate understanding of where north was.

He shifted in his bed. There was sensation in something. An
appendage which did not compute to his still-human psyche. He looked over and
was greeted by the sight of a dragon’s wing. With scales the same shade as his
hand and a membrane which seemed to glow in the fluorescent white light from
the ceiling. The membranes were golden as well.

Finally facing facts, the former human called out, “Nurse!”

A slender polecat came around the corner. “Yes Mr.
Ka’aukai?”

“Could you bring me a mirror?”

The polecat brought a pink hand mirror over to him and when
he looked at the draconic visage looking back at him he dropped it onto the
bed. “Could I ask you to page the doctor?”

“Certainly.” The polecat smiled, “Right away.”

“Thank you.”

The nurse scurried away. An otter walked into the room not a
moment later, “Congratulations Mr. Kaaukai.”

“On WHAT!?”

The otter visibly flinched. Obviously, the lutrine wasn’t
expecting to be greeted with such hostility. “Mr. Kaaukai. I c…can ex…plain?”

“What! The fact you turned me into this without my
permission? The fact that despite the fact I put NON-Transformative in the
procedure box I’m yelling at you as a FUCKING DRAGON!”

“Sir, we used the non-transformative serum.”

“Bullshit!”

“Sir here’ s the exact syringe we used to give you the
treatment. Read the label for yourself if you don’ t believe me.”

The Dragon held out his hand. He read the words
[NON-TRANSFORMATIVE] and guffawed, “I’m supposed to believe that I just so
happened to be turned into a dragon when I go to get treated for—“

“Jeremy! Oh Jeremy, what have they done to you?” Rex popped
into the room at exactly that moment. Rushing over to the bed to give his
lifemate a hug.

“Nothing, if you believe them.”

“Honestly, sir, we’re at a loss ourselves. We triple checked
that this was the right serum. We even used another vial from the same batch on
another cancer patient here. They didn’t transform.”

“Yeah and my father’s a jackrabbit.” The former-human
replied.

“Jer let’s just get out of here.”

“Fine by me.”