PROLOGUE
Ever since birth, I have been ...different.
I have the ability to transform myself, at will, into a dragon.
I realize this sounds like a blessing, but the reality is the exact opposite. It's a curse. Everyone who knows about the dragon rejects and hates me, dooming me to a lifetime of distrust and solitude.
No, this is no blessing.
For all of my seventeen years, I have thought I was the only one of my kind and the only ones who truly understood me was the moon and night sky.
At least, until I met...Him.
CHAPTER ONE
"Melanie, there's something I've been meaning to tell you."
"What?" I ask, laughter in my voice, as I snuggle closer into my boyfriend's chest. He always loved cuddling and I was sure in a cuddly mood.
"I love you."
I was silent and still as his words sank in, and then pain entered my heart.
I'm going to have to do it. There's no way around it. I have to know if he truly does love me. I hope so. I'm not strong enough to handle another rejection.
"Melanie? Are you okay?"
"Come with me. There's something you have to see." I whispered, steeling my heart against the worst.
Without waiting for his reply, I walked to the edge of the forest and waited for him.
I led him into the dark forest and came to a small clearing soon. And in the dead center of the clearing was a beam of moonlight, the perfect spotlight.
"Wait here" I said, continuing into the clearing. As I neared the moonlight, I started unbuttoning my blouse, revealing the bathing suit he couldn't see yet.
"H-hey, now! Don't do that!" he yelled, his voice filled with a slight panic.
He thinks I want him to make love to me! I realized, and silently laughed at how far from the mark he was. I continued walking, slipping off my jeans as well.
I stepped into the light and tossed my closes aside and turned to face him.
"Before I show you, I must have your word you won't breathe a word to anyone." I said, looking him in the eye and using the 'I'm-not-budging-unless-you-do-what-I-want' voice I do so well.
"You have my word." Josh replied, his voice telling me he was a little freaked about what was coming. Just as how the others reacted at first.
Satisfied, I started the transformation.
The first change was my height. I sprouted up to stand fifteen feet tall. At the same time, my skin hardened, cracked and turned Emerald green. My face stretched forward, my eyes sliding to the sides of my head, and I grew a tail and a pair of wings. My fingernails hardened, pointed, grew seven feet longer and turned to the color of silver. My hair became spiked scales along the ridge of my neck and followed my spine all the way down to the tip of my tail. My arms and legs changed, the legs getting far too big for my shoes. Those nails hardened, grew and changed color as well, but the femurs snapped and changed shape. In fact, all of my bones snapped and changed. My organs moved around, grew and changed themselves to suit the functions they would have to take on to keep me alive.
