But you know . . . some dragons don’t need their wings. Or tail. Or right front claw.

Rhona walked up to Brannie, pulling her out of her thoughts. “I have something special for you, cousin.”

Brannie sat up straight and didn’t bother to hide her grin. “A halberd? To replace the one I lost.”

Rhona held out her hand and Brannie stared at it. “Oh . . . how nice,” she lied. “A stick.”

Rhona glared at her. “It’s not a stick.”

“Really? Because it looks like a stick.” The glare became worse, so Brannie took the metal stick from her cousin and held it under her cousin’s nose and demanded. “What do you see, Rhona? Because all I see is a bloody stick!”

“Perhaps,” Aidan decided to interject, “it’s a stick that turns into an actual weapon with a thought. I believe you have a spear like that, Rhona. Yes?”

“It’s a spear?”

Rhona grinned. “It’s whatever you want.”

“Gold?”

Her cousin’s glare instantly returned.

“Bread?” Brannie tried again. Of course, now she was just being an ass. “Wine!”

“No, ya irritating cow!” Rhona let out a frustrated breath. She used to make that same sound whenever she had to train Brannie and Izzy back in those early days. When they were just privates with dreams of being more. It was, as Rhona had told them more than once at the time, one of her least favorite things to do in the “universe.”

She’d actually said “universe” not just “the world.”

“Think of your favorite weapon and see what happens,” she finally told Brannie.

Of course, Brannie liked lots of weapons. But her favorite? Well . . . that would be the halberd, wouldn’t it? But she did love swords. Short swords. And she did love axes . . . and hammers! Gods, she adored hammers!

“You are overthinking this, Branwen the Awful!” Rhona yelled in the same voice she’d used when she’d been training Brannie. “Make a decision!”

Startled, Brannie thought halberd! because she wanted to use it to strike down her bellowing cousin.

And the metal stick in her hand immediately began to grow. It lengthened and thickened right in her palm. The tip turned into a spearhead and from the right side of the tip grew an ax head.

Brannie immediately stood, her mouth open. She’d never seen anything so beautiful before.

“It automatically knows if you’re in human form or dragon and will adjust accordingly,” she heard her cousin explain, but Brannie was barely paying attention anymore.

She thought about a hammer and watched her halberd turn into a war hammer with an oversized head. Then it turned into a gladius. Then a spear. Then a bow. Then a long sword. Then back into a halberd.

That’s when she squealed.

* * *