Shifters Forsaken: Shifter Romance Collection Bks 1-5

by Mia Taylor

  She heard the door slam open in her former home and raised voices bark, “Where’s that little bitch? Is this her family?”

  A murmur.

  “It is? It better be, snitch. Where are you hiding her, you filthy rats?” A pause. “Say, or I’ll kill the old man. Say!”

  Anya choked back her despair as she fled, scrambling through the night, avoiding the areas lit by torches. She also steered clear of a wyrm in his traditional form, towering above the huts. He had a long, serpentine neck, a bulky body, four legs with sharp claws, a twitching tail. Spikes protruded from his back. He thumped along the huts, evil yellow eyes glowing as he sniffed.

  “Smells like a fucking bog in here,” he growled, lips curling in disgust, displaying his fangs. “Disgusting little creatures.”

  Anya tore past the village, now running through the wheat fields. Someone spotted her.

  “We got a runner here! A runner!” The outcry began, like baying hounds, and now three full form wyrms stamped after her, their legs eating up the distance. Anya made it through the wheat field and into the woodland, her heart pounding, not wanting to think about what happened to her family. Please be alright. Please be alright. I know I’m not supposed to care but I do. Please…

  The stamps grew louder. She couldn’t outrun them. And she smelled too distinctive now – her only chance was to bury herself in something to hide her body and scent, and hope they passed her by.

  She yelped as she ran into a clearing and saw a man there, frozen in shock as she sped past. She didn’t look behind her. The stomps were getting nearer, but then she heard a distinctive, cultured voice say, “Oh, bother.”

  Now she glanced back to see the man running after her in the dark. She sobbed in terror as he seized her by the wrist, easily outstripping her speed.

  “Sorry about this,” he said, before transforming.

  Anya let out a piercing scream as talons encased her, and she heard the beat of wings around her as the monster carried her off the ground.

  Chapter Two

  First off, Anya had never imagined that you could get dragons with wings. Second, she never comprehended that dragons might actually try to help humans. When they landed again, a long distance from the plantation she’d spent her life on, he tried explaining to her that she was safe, not in more danger. He did this all in his dragon guise, which he referred to as drake form. Surely, she would have seen them flying in the air before. But for the life of her, she never recalled seeing any kind of dragon fly above before.

  They had parked on top of a grassy knoll, with the night sky above them, twinkling with stars. Lights from the cities seared the lowlands, but the plantations were all dark.

  “It’s okay, human,” the dragon was saying, “I promise you I’m not planning to eat you. I’m a drake. We’re actually supportive towards your kind.” His deep voice cut through the darkness, penetrating Anya’s brain. She examined her filth-caked arms, realizing she must look like some kind of primeval sludge monster. Not that it mattered in the end, except if the dragon preferred cleaner food to play with.

  “Why were you lurking in the woods?” She started with that. Not that she thought she had any chance of escape without him, but it did seem suspicious that he just happened to be there.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” he replied, flicking his long, red tail. He bared his fearsome teeth in a smile. Compared to the wyrms, Anya noticed he was smaller and more compact, though still much larger than a human. “I was planning to make it to the plantation owner’s house and murder them.”

  The statement confused Anya. “What?”

  “Once he’s dead,” the drake continued, acting as if he didn’t hear or see her shock, “or just before, the rest of my kind will arrive here to take the rest of you out, and place you in better homes. But unfortunately,” the dragon iterated, “it seems you were being chased for some reason. Too much attention right now, too many eyes watching the ground and the skies.” He didn’t seem irritated at having to cancel, however. Slowly, surely, it began to sink in. A drake had saved her. Some type of dragon she had no clue existed. “I’ll need to quickly intercept the launch point and tell the others to go to the plantation another time, but it’s not a problem.”

  All the words sunk in, accumulating in one, incredible idea. “You… really help humans?”

  He nodded, beaming in what he thought was a kindly way. It looked sinister and hungry to Anya.

  “Why?” Not that she minded or anything, but dragons didn’t have any reason to treat humans nicely. Especially when they considered them scum.

  “For a drake, the measure of our kind is not in how we treat our equals, but in how we treat our inferiors,” he responded. “Wyrms, unfortunately, don’t really see you as sentient beings. Drakes do. We have human forms for a reason.” The dragon paused for a moment, then wrinkled his nose. “You really smell, though. Sorry.”

  “I had to go through a privy to escape,” Anya replied, slightly wry, shivering as a breeze rippled over her skin.

  “May I ask why you needed to escape?”

  “For, um. Encouraging people not to be weak.”

  The dragon made a tch sound. “Yeah, that’ll do it. Don’t like our serfs thinking for themselves and all that. Well, my name’s Kalgrin.” He dipped his crimson head in her direction. “But you can call me Kal.”

  “Anya.” She pursed her lips, considering the new situation. “So, what now?”

  “Well, obviously, you can’t go back to your plantation. I’ll take you to my home. It’s in a drake-run town south of the main city. It’ll be a couple of hours’ flight. We can talk more later.”

  Reluctantly, Anya allowed herself to be picked up again and carried to Kalgrin’s place, far away from her plantation. Far away from her masters. She didn’t see much of the stars from inside Kalgrin’s talons, as he had wrapped her up as best as possible to shelter her from the cold. Instead, not knowing what else to do, she slept fitfully.

  She didn’t enjoy the dreams that came with sleep. Dreams of her whole family slaughtered, sightless eyes facing the ceiling, their hut trashed, as the wyrms continued looking for her, the dissenter, the one who dared envision a different future from the one they held. She saw the traitor as well, some nameless plantation worker who wanted extra bread on their table, and was prepared to fuck over the lives of everyone else to get that reward. The wyrms with their sinuous, wingless bodies loomed above the tiny human village, jaws snapping in the dark, eyes a bloody red as they searched.

  She woke up in a fever, as the jolt of impact signalled their arrival at Kalgrin’s town. Apparently, she’d missed the meeting with the other drakes, though Kalgrin assured her that he’d made contact.

  When she uncurled herself from his grip and stumbled out into a cobbled street, she saw a place with small buildings, neatly lined structures, and stone walls around the houses that reached five times as high as Kalgrin. Protecting the people inside. Or preventing them from escaping.

  From the few houses that had candles flickering in the dark, she saw curious faces. Human or drake? She couldn’t tell.

  She dripped filth onto the otherwise clean streets, and Kalgrin strode ahead of her, letting himself morph into his human form as they approached a small house up a slope, made out of reddish stone, visible with the street lights that decorated the lanes.

  “What are these?” Anya said, amazed, as she stared up at the glowing balls.

  “Gaslights,” Kalgrin answered. “Balls of gas lit up to give us what you see today. Connected by tubes that go underground. And here’s my house.”

  He turned to face Anya for a moment, and she caught clever blue eyes, a straight, angular face that gave him a thin jawline, and a charming smile that displayed pristine, sharp canines. He looked good. And then there was her, a thing yanked straight out of a bog. The kindly expression, the attractiveness of his features left her dumbfounded and embarrassed of the state she was in. Even though keeping herself ugly was the best survival
tactic anyone like her could ever have. He did wrinkle his nose at her scent, but otherwise didn’t seem completely repulsed.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up, too. I’m afraid I don’t have any clothes for women at my place, so please excuse me on that.” He turned a key in the lock and walked into his house, declaring he’d get the bucket of water filled up and ready for her to scrub.

  Walking into the place, it didn’t strike Anya as belonging to someone wealthy. She saw cracked stone walls, though Kalgrin turned on lights to illuminate the place, revealing a small sitting room with three armchairs, a straw mat, a hearth and a desk with papers on it – not that Anya could read such things. She saw a bottle of ink and a quill, a picture on the wall of a simplistic rendition of a mountain and fencing around it. She nodded at it, before being led to a small washroom.

  “It’s not much, but I don’t see the point of having a big home when I spend most of my time outside,” Kalgrin said. He gave Anya a wink, before handing her clothes, a scrubbing brush, and pointing to a small copper tap. “We can get a limited amount of hot water from this a day, about two buckets.” He indicated an iron-rimmed wooden bucket which went above Anya’s knees. “Take your time, use soap if you want some extra freshness, and I’ll get you something to eat. Bread and butter okay?”

  “It’s fine,” she said with a smile, though feeling awkward all the same. With the door closed in the small washroom, she observed the strange seat in the corner which, when opened, showed water swilling around the bottom. Oh. She’d heard about these. It was like a privy, right? You sat on it, did your business, and yanked the chain afterwards, washing the smell away.

  Far more sophisticated than what she was used to.

  Cleaning up took a short while. The first bucket of water fast became murky, but she used it until she’d scrubbed herself down once, daubed herself in soap, then exchanged it for a fresher pool.

  She then used cold water twice more, until she felt fully clean. Strange. She’d only been truly clean in her childhood, back when her mother was concerned about them catching illness through bad hygiene. She didn’t know much about diseases, only that diseases were attracted to dirt and bad hygiene.

  Underneath all those layers of dirt, when she looked at herself in the mirror, was a brown-eyed, dark-haired woman with an oval face, a smattering of freckles across her face, and a shy smile, though her teeth were stained a little yellow. She used to chew mint to freshen her breath and use dock paste to help clean them out, but she didn’t really get many opportunities to look after herself on the plantation.

  Being able to tidy up amounted to rewards and treats for them. So, this is the face that men want, Anya thought, not quite sure how or why. With her breasts unbound, they slumped just in front of her chest, and she had wide, child-bearing hips, as her mother liked to say. She wasn’t the tallest person around, either – most of the other serfs reached taller heights than her.

  Being clean, though, felt good. Smelling the fresh soap, with a hint of something fruity, not that Anya knew what type, pleased her. She looked at her dirty clothes, unwilling to touch them again. She wrapped a towel around herself and left the bathroom. She walked into the living room and asked if Kalgrin had anything for her to wear, like a large shirt she could use as a gown.

  He turned in his seat to regard her, having been ruffling his light brown hair, and his jaw actually dropped.

  “Well, fuck me,” he said. “Look who was hiding underneath all that dirt.”

  For some reason, the compliment made Anya blush, but also feel self-aware of the fact that she only had a towel separating her from Kalgrin’s blue-eyed gaze.

  “Well, it’s not like you can see much of me underneath several layers of shit, is it?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “I’m surprised you…” then he stopped, “no, that’s rude of me, I’m sorry.”

  “Surprised you what?”

  He licked his lips, drumming the side of his armchair. “I’m surprised you weren’t just a captive in the wyrm’s house. They like to take the pretty ones.”

  “I know,” Anya said, not offended at all. “I did everything I could to make myself ugly, and it worked. Most women try to do that. Some even stuff clothes down their pants to make it look like they have cocks.”

  “Smart,” Kalgrin said. “And dragons keep thinking you lot are incapable of doing anything for yourselves, but you find ways around the system. You may be battered, you may be beaten, but there’s still things you do.” He seemed rather pleased with the fact.

  “It doesn’t change, though. We’re too afraid.” Anya closed her eyes for a moment. The anger passed through her in a wave. “So, can I have a shirt?”

  “Oh! Yes. Of course. Follow me. I’ll show you to where you can sleep as well.”

  Kalgrin beckoned her over, and she paced towards a double bed, with clothes slung haphazardly over a chair.

  “I’ll be sleeping on the floor in the living room; I only have one bed. Now, let me see…” He began rummaging through a chest of drawers, pulling out a baggy shirt that looked like a tent. “Here. Do you want underwear, too? I have some shorts…” He took out some white shorts and tossed them her way. “The bread’s a bit stale, so I’m toasting it at the moment. Come into the living room in a few minutes.”

  Anya took the time to inspect her new room, bewildered at the kindness she received from the dragon. He just casually chatted to her and did these things for her without a second thought. Like it didn’t even occur to him that she was some kind of lesser being. Even when he’d seen her face-to-face without the dirt and grime of her disguise on, he’d simply admired her, then let her go on her way. Without ravaging her like dragons were supposed to do. Or, well, anyone who liked making women suffer. Still, that glimmer of interest from him meant her mother was right. She was attractive.

  Not that it mattered. It’d been easy to focus on washing herself, on her strange new accommodations, on the friendliness of Kalgrin – but less simple to remember about her mother on the plantation, her grandfather, her siblings.

  Thinking about them caused a cold sweat to break out, even as she pulled on the baggy shirt.

  She knew it to be ultimately fruitless, but still imagined all the same the worse kind of fates. Being stabbed, being burned, being beaten to death, her family being forced to reveal her location when none could say where she went, even if they no longer could resist the torment.

  And this dragon, this drake claimed he was going to kill the owner of the plantation. If they fought in their dragon forms, Anya didn’t know who would win. The huge wyrm that towered above everything, thrashing with that huge, serpentine tail, scratching with sharp, cruel claws? Or the drake, smaller, more mobile, with thicker scales and an inexplicable animosity towards its cousin?

  Protecting humans. Anya lay in Kalgrin’s bed then, feeling utterly overwhelmed. There was just so much she didn’t know. Her view of the world was limited to the stories upon the plantation, the cruelty of her masters, and a vague idea of the city. Nothing about other types of dragons, or if they liked or hated each other, or if humans lived in areas where they didn’t toil under the whip or suffer early deaths from abuse and apathy.

  The lack of knowledge in her head felt like a void.

  She fell asleep with that empty sensation, uncertain if her life really was going to improve, or whether she had moved into a new kind of nightmare. One where she was responsible for the deaths of her entire family. All because she dared to dream, and ignore advice.

  All because.

  Chapter Three

  Kalgrin observed from the outskirts of the plantation Anya had come from, his heart full of anger and pity. Such wretched humans. Scraping by on a meagre existence, with an idiot of a wyrm who didn’t understand that fear did fuck-all if you wanted reliable, happy workers. Beat the humans down, crush their souls into dust, and all you had was a miserable population with a growing sense of anger. That anger would one day boil over, and their masters’
heads would end up on spikes. Powerful dragon or not. Just like what happened in the past. When the dragons first came to power.

  No. That was not the way to do things. Humans needed love. Respect. A purpose that made them happy. But no matter how many times he and his drakes lobbied for better rights for humans in the big cities, the wyrms consistently outvoted them. They honestly believed that if the humans were given a better education and treated nicely, then they would revolt and society would collapse!

  Fools.

  In his human form, he bared his teeth, crouching as he watched the human workers toil in the fields. He felt their misery, their aching bones, the oppressive despair that permeated their movements. He watched the wyrm overseer pace around, cracking a whip, sometimes hitting someone for no reason that he saw.

  His thoughts flashed to Anya back home. An ugly duckling, transformed into a creature of astonishing beauty. A fire in her dark eyes, that boil of loathing from injustice. Her spirit remained. She had not been broken. Kalgrin wanted to keep her to himself. Usually they gave humans away to drakes who employed workers, or sometimes placed them in sanctuaries dedicated to humans, who had placed protections around their towns to stop the wyrms from stealing them. If only there were more drakes around…

  He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. Kill the owner, check in on Anya’s family. She’d been worried, unable to fully appreciate her newfound freedom with the fear for her family hovering over her head like an executioner’s axe. Understandable. She still didn’t know what to make of him, having been trained her whole life to believe dragons were superior to humans, and hated them.

  She always looked at him as if she expected a mask to fall off his face at any moment, revealing the monster inside. He still remembered the utter shock upon her face when she found out that his mother was pure human.