And here we go. Hopefully you guys enjoy it! I wanted to include it, but couldn't figure out how, so maybe listen to Hozier's "Arsonist's Lullaby" on your own time?

Thanks to Phoebe Miller for beta reading and helping me with this arc! I really struggled with it.

Fact #121: "The vast majority of people toss around the term 'feral' without really understanding what it means when it applies to dragons. A feral dragon is not the same as a feral dog, yet it is similar enough to cause confusion. Do I know what it means? No. As far as I've traveled and as many people as I've seen, I still haven't the foggiest of a solid definition of what it means to be feral. However, I will say that I met a man in Japan whose face had weathered with the passing of years, voice had softened and faded, eyes had gone milky with blindness, who told me that to witness a dragon go feral was a mesmerizing sight."

Woodward, J. (2007) The Minds of Dragons. London: Penguin.

Part III

The world all around him was in flames. Pillars of smoke climbed above him, the breeze pushing individual columns into a curtain of haze that stood stark against the azure sky. The trees and undergrowth crackled in pain, the orange tongues chewing on their wood hissing with great malice and hunger. Grass withered to ash in the wake of the growing beast. Birds attempted to escape its jaws, their feathers singeing in the rolling heat.

Stray wisps curled over his scales. Black scales turned even blacker, his orange and gold accents glowed in the center of the fire, clear nictitating membranes slid across his eyes.

With calculated and practiced movements, Duncan bounded through the burning forest, pushing off the ground and leaping, his single wing holding him aloft for the briefest of moments before he hit the ground again. Sparks exploded after each impact like a hammer striking a hot piece of metal.

This. This was the chaos he lived for. To be in the middle of the raging beast. To feel its wrath as it consumed without impartiality.

He was a specter, a visage in the rippling heat as he pulled free of the fire, embers trailing off him as if he had swept the stars out of the heavens and cast them on the earth. They alighted on the tips of grass blades and sprung up new flames, ushering the beast onwards.

This time it would all burn.

Flashbacks of buildings burning and the scent of singed hair and flesh invaded Danny's present as he watched the firefighters race to contain the flames.

At least Oahu had been wet and rainy when the Wyvern had attacked last time. The fire couldn't get a good foothold.

Wyoming was not Oahu. While not as dry as it had been in past years, or so he'd been told, it was still a big tinderbox. He could see with his own eyes how quickly the fire was spreading. It stretched out low to the ground at first, smoke heaving off its back as it ate up the golden grass, until it eventually lifted itself into the trees and went from branch to branch. Always hungry, never satisfied.

"You okay, brah?" Chin asked.

Danny wiped his sweating palms on his jeans. Longmire and one of his deputies had hauled them out to where Mathias had spotted the growing conflagration, and now they stood on the dirt road half a mile east of it. The rising smoke choked out the sunlight and tainted the air, making it acrid and bitter.

Gaze still on the fire, he asked, "Do you ever think that if you had done something different with a case, anything different, big or small, your entire future would have taken a different path?"

Chin nodded, crossing his arms and leaning against Vic's truck. "I don't know a cop who doesn't."

"It used to be me just worrying about these what-ifs, you know?" He glanced over at his teammate. "What if that bullet had been further to the left, what if I hadn't seen that semi during a pursuit, what if I hadn't listened to my partner, yada yada yada."

"You'll worry yourself sick doing that," Chin said, though it wasn't accusatory nor humorous. It was a mere statement of fact coming from a man who had visited that road before.

Danny, on the other hand, had an address on that road. He waved a hand at the intensifying black smudge on the horizon. "I just keep thinking, what if Kono had managed to actually take him down with the sniper rifle? Or what if Mauna's stunt had taken his head off instead of his wing?"

"Or what if you hadn't been able to rescue Steve? Or what if Mauna's plan had failed entirely and he had set the hospital on fire?" Chin pushed off the truck and set a hand on his shoulder. A firm and comforting presence. "Danny, we all did what we could. Sometimes we don't think it's enough, and bad things just happen."

He sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Murphy's Law has a hold of us pretty good, huh?"

"And yet, we haven't died," Chin said with a small grin.

Longmire came striding back through the grass towards them. Steve was busily talking to Henry, apparently having better luck getting through to him than he'd had with the Sheriff.

Vic and Kono pulled away from the map they'd been discussing on the hood of the truck.

"Mathias traced the tracks back up the road and found Whitley's body," Longmire said. "Still no sign of Lopez or Grainger."

Vic nodded toward the blazing trees. "Think they got cooked?"

"Dunno. Have to wait until they get the flames under control," Longmire said. He faced Steve and Henry. "According to you, shouldn't your dragon be hanging around waiting for first responders?"

Steve shook his head. "No. If there's one thing this guy knows how to do, it's adapt."

"Might want to keep an eye on your town, Sheriff," Kono said. "He hits where there's more people."

"I thought you guys said he was headed south towards Denver? Durant is the exact opposite direction from here," Vic said, pointing first the direction they'd come from and then the complete other way.

"Might've gotten sidetracked," Danny said and waved a hand at the tower of smoke climbing higher into the sky. "Remembered how much fun he had destroying things."

Longmire remained quiet for a moment. The silent way he sharply analyzed the situation reminded Danny a bit of his partner.

"Henry?" Longmire finally asked.

Henry nodded. He apparently had no qualms about understanding what specifically the Sheriff was asking. "I do believe the Commander and I have a plan."

"Oy vey." Danny massaged his forehead. "And what, pray tell, kind of plan have you concocted this time? Hopefully one not including an elevator?"

"That was Mauna's plan, not mine," Steve objected. "This one is simpler."

When the pair of them started to explain their plan, Vic's phone rang. She covered one ear with her hand and pressed the phone against the other. Danny kept an eye on her out of his peripheral while the others talked of bait and decoys. His stomach was already churning at the thought.

"Walt," Vic interrupted.

He looked at her.

"Ruby said she just got a dropped call from the gas station three miles north of here," she said. "Might not be anything…"

"Or it might be a good lead on where Hughes is heading," Henry said.

Longmire headed for his truck. "This plan of yours will still work out there at Bart's."

Danny didn't get his hopes up.

The heat consumed his mind, his thoughts blazing embers swarming through his head. His veins burned. Hot. Liquid fire.

Blood dripped from his jaws. Warm. Sticky. Dripping, dripping to the ground beneath his bowed head. Drip. Drop. Drop. Drip. Drop. Rosettes splattering on the wooden floorboards. Mesmerizing patterns.

The two men had run from him. Had incited the beast to give chase. If the flaming monster he'd given birth to hadn't sunk its claws into them, he would finish the job. Use his own tempered talons and bony teeth. Show them true fear.

Show all of them true fear.

If they wanted to believe in monsters, he would become one. He was one. He would always be one. Ever since that night in the woods all those years ago, when the creature had given him something other than grief and pain and depression, he'd been the monster. The specter. The haunting mirage emerging from walls of fire.

Fire. Death. Fear. Hunger. Anger.

Pain.

Duncan barely heard the engine over the sound of his own heaving breaths.

He lifted his head, glancing out of the windows of the deathly still gas station.

Hidden behind shelves of snacks, the maimed bodies safely behind him out of immediate sight, he watched. Watching. Waiting. Unblinking. Unflinching.

An old, beat up Ford Bronco drove by the station. It slowed. Slowed, but didn't stop.

It moved on.

He blew out a breath flecked with ash. Blinked. Wondered. Wondered if his antics had drawn in others. Had drawn in law enforcement. Wondered if the frantic scrabbling at the phone by the cashier had gotten a call out.

Too full of adrenaline, too hyped on the chaos, too paranoid, he didn't pass off his gut instinct.

Slowly, extremely quiet for a mangled beast of his size, he turned and headed out back towards the garage.

He sensed a shift in the winds.

What Danny appreciated about Henry was his ability to remain calm. He couldn't sense his tension like he could Steve's whenever they were about to put a plan into action.

"You were rather adamant that it be you and not the Commander," Henry said in a low voice.

"Yeah, well, the last time we looked for this guy in an enclosed space, Steve almost got barbequed," Danny hissed.

He checked his gun again. Safety was off, his precious few Dragon Slayer Rounds were loaded. He was going to take a page out of Captain Grover's book and aim for the face. Preferably an eye or nostril.

"You think this will work? Because when it comes to this guy, none of our plans ever work," Danny said.

"If he's as angry and wild as you say he is, his focus should be on the two of us and not your friends with the rifles," Henry said.

Danny eyed the mechanic shop attached to the gas station with dread. "This isn't going to end well."

The words had scarcely left his mouth when the panels of the shop exploded outwards in a roar of gas and fire.

Henry hit the ground skidding, the wind thoroughly knocked out of him. He shielded his eyes from the smoke and heat, coughing as he sucked in a breath. He could feel the fresh chips in his scales from the shrapnel that might've pierced him.

He shot a glance to his right. He couldn't see the Detective.

A shadow loomed over him.

"Are you a cop?" A growl lay under the deep and refined voice.

Henry scooted out from under the Wyvern. "No, but I'm not fond of you setting fire to my land."

Black scales blurred in the waves of heat undulating from the exploded building behind the beast. He could see the reputation had been earned. This was a terrifying man gone feral.

A bullet zinged overhead. It grazed the ridge of spiky scales down the Wyvern's spine.

"But those are cops," the beast rumbled.

Dismayed that the so-called snipers had botched the shot, Henry looked over his shoulder at the hill where they had been perched. His heart skipped a beat.

There was a wall of fire digging its claws into the trees, snorting smoke and crawling higher and higher until the flickers of flame could jump between branches. Their view was blocked. They'd probably been forced to scatter and flee.

Another bullet spent up a puff of dirt too close for comfort. Someone was shooting and he was going to get shot instead of the Wyvern at this rate.

The Wyvern lunged and pinned him to the ground with icepick talons on his hindfoot. Henry squirmed. The scales were hot to the touch, the talons hot enough to cause blistering.

"In all their fury, how long will it be until they realize they've lost this brave soul?" the creature asked.

Henry winced as the jaws parted to reveal a purple mouth with fringes of acid green. A torrent of fire directly to the face was not how he saw himself leaving this plane of existence.

The jet of flame missed by a heart stopping three feet.

The talons released him and without wasting a second, he leapt to his feet and stumbled away. Eyes watering from the smoke and the heat, he could hardly see the two tangled beasts as they disappeared into the heart of the inferno.

The flames of Hell had nothing on this. It was hot, even through his dense scales it was hot. Shocks of color shot through the flames as they ate up various chemicals in the shop, bursts of sparks showered him like fireworks, and he was wary another welding setup exploding, but his eyes sought only one thing.

The black shadow lurking in the flames.

He'd managed to knock Hughes off of Henry before he could cook him. Tackling him back into the densest part of the flames, he hadn't been prepared for the white hot torrent of fire to catch him upside the face.

Eyes stinging, heart thundering, brain working in overtime to figure out how to survive in a fire, Danny swiveled around in mounting panic. He was registering the heat, knew it was unbearably hot, yet he had to remain calm. His skin wasn't burning, he wasn't in pain, his scales were doing their job as was his natural venting system. He could handle the fire. He was literally born to handle it.

It was the suspense of not knowing where the Wyvern, the master of fire and terror, had gone.

All signs of a clear sunny day were gone. The towering pillar of smoke erased the blue sky and brought an unnatural dark pall over the glowing fire. On the other end of the spectrum, the fire created a nearly blinding brightness. Flames curled over his wings, danced on the ground around him, tried to surround him and hold him prisoner.

Easy, Danny, easy, he reminded himself.

He needed to get out of the thick of it. Hughes may have already fled, or if he hadn't, they could block his exit a safe distance from the burning buildings and trees.

A weight dropped on his back.

"I see the one with canyon wings has returned," the familiar voice said.

Danny cringed. Icepick talons dug into his wing joints, piercing membrane and bruising muscle.

"And I see you're still a nutcase!" he yelled and flung both wings upward.

Tornados of fire spun away from his wing tips.

The flames flattened briefly in the downdraft as they came down with equal power.

Running on instinct, letting it take the reins, Danny pushed himself into the air. It was more of a suspended buck than a takeoff. Hughes shoved off of him, landing in front.

Danny tucked his head and bulled into him, hooking his nose horn under his belly plates and lifting up.

Hughes snarled. He dug the two freakishly long wing talons into his crest of neck scales and kicked at the underside of his jaw and throat with his hind talons.

The sudden shifting of weight, all of the Wyvern's heft going from the ground to resting on his front half entirely, tripped him up. His front legs buckled and they went tumbling end over end.

Danny planted a front foot in the gravel to push himself upright. The flames were behind him now instead of all around.

Jaws sank into the leading edge of one of his wings and yanked it open.

He craned his head around, watching in slow motion as Hughes raised his talons to rake through the membrane and shatter bones.

Mottled teal scales flew overhead and hit the Wyvern head on.

He bit back a yell as the jaws were jerked off his wing. He didn't have time to worry. He had to get up. Steve wasn't as well protected against this guy as he was.

That ever present torrent of fire erupted, forcing Steve to jump out of the way lest he get burned again.

Danny took the brunt of it. Tongues of fire skittered over his burnt umber and cinnamon scales, leaving black trails. With his massive claws, he smashed Hughes' head to the ground, the fire disappearing as his mouth snapped shut. A huff of smoke and a thin sprig of fire sprang from his nostrils.

"It's over, Hughes! Surrender," Steve barked at him, coughing from the heavy haze of smoke blowing over them.

"I did, a long time ago! And the beast has been in charge since," Hughes roared.

He threw gravel and dirt at Danny's face, kicking himself free in his one moment of surprise.

He scratched Steve's neck and chest, bloodied Danny's nose, and bounded out of their reach.

Raising himself tall on his hindlegs, single wing spreading like a shadowy hand, chest swelling with air for a final breath of death, he crumpled.

Danny stared, stunned.

It took him a few seconds to realize he'd heard multiple shots amongst the crackle and groan of the fire behind them.

Hughes twisted his head to look up at them with a fiery eye. Danny couldn't even tell where the blood was coming from with his dark scales, could only see it leaking from his mouth and nose and see the gravel turning crimson under him.

"The rains came," he murmured.

Danny glanced at Steve in confusion.

"The rains?" he asked.

But Hughes was looking beyond them. His eye dimmed. "The rains came late as ever to cool my charred veins."

The intensity of the emotion gave them pause.

"And finish what I'd started all those years ago." He sighed deeply.

The eye that had at one time been fierce and terrifying blinked away a tear and closed. Then the monster of the flames moved no more. He was just gone. Like a burning wick reaching its end.

"Danny, you okay?" Steve asked.

He nodded, his wing forgotten. He furrowed his brow ridges and gestured loosely to the still body. "Did he just thank us for killing him?"

Steve looked down at the Wyvern. "I've heard going feral isn't always a choice."

"No, it's not."

They looked up at Henry, full of smoke and ash, as he came around towards them followed by Longmire and Chin. The others must have still been up at their perches.

"E 'olu'olu, mo'o," Chin muttered to the Wyvern.

Steve gave him a funny look, but Danny didn't understand nor was he compelled to ask what it meant. All he wanted was a cold shower and to forget that this had ever happened. He didn't even have the energy to care that people outside their team were seeing him fully shifted, not that Longmire or Henry seemed bothered.

"I'll call the Warden, let him know," Chin said and walked away.

Longmire looked up at the blaze that was dying down around the buildings but steadily growing on the hillside. "Henry, get a hold of Ruby. We might need Cody's fire department, too."

Danny remained standing, staring at the body. He had once been a man. A husband. A father.

"Hey," Steve said.

When he didn't respond, Steve grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey, bud, what's going on?" he questioned. He started prodding at his wing. "Are you hurt?"

Danny folded the wing firmly against his side.

"Come on, man, what's wrong?" Steve pressed.

He swallowed. "If anything ever happened to Grace, do you think I would become him?"

Steve intercepted his line of sight. "No."

"Why not?" Danny paced away, one set of claws flinging to and fro. "All he did was love his family and when that got ripped away from him, he turned into a monster. You said it yourself, going feral isn't always a choice. What if Grace…what if…what if something happened to her and that was it? My mind snapped like his?"

Steve faced him, primeval face drawn into firm determination. "Danny, I know you. You would never become him."

"How do you know, Steven? Huh? How do you know?" he questioned. "It was like it wasn't even me fighting back there in the fire! I was starting to panic and then I just knew what to do all of the sudden."

"Those are your instincts, Danny. Your honed instincts. Your cop instincts. You knew you needed backup, so you got out to where you could get it," Steve said slowly.

Admitting inwardly his partner was probably right and he was blowing it out of proportion, he wiped his claws over his snout. Panicking in a fire and loosing his daughter, his reason for living, were two different things.

"Besides," Steve said, coming to stand next to him and bump his shoulder against his. "I would never let you go through that alone."

He nodded shakily, the events of the day catching up to him. "I want you to promise me something."

"Don't even, Danno."

"If I ever go feral like that–"

"Which you won't."

"–I want you to shoot me before I hurt somebody, okay?"

"Danny–"

"Promise me, Steven."

Steve searched his eyes, his own clouded with the terrible possibilities of accepting that weighty promise.

"I promise, Danno," he finally acquiesced. "But you better believe I'll go to Hell and back to knock some sense into you before I do."

Danny didn't doubt it.

Next week on "Dragons", the team tries to chill back on the island, but they have a hard time even doing that.

No joke, I did shed tears killing Duncan. Don't know if you've ever noticed, but Duncan is on the cover for this fic.

Please give me ideas, thoughts, or suggestions! I love to hear your guys' feedback and what you enjoy about this series, what you'd like to see from it, etc. Also, wanted to ask, do you guys frequent AO3? I'm thinking of cross posting here soon. I don't spend a lot of time on AO3 as much of the fics on there aren't for me, only really going there for specific fandoms that don't have a strong presence on FFnet.

Thanks for reading!