Shifters Forsaken: Shifter Romance Collection Bks 1-5

by Mia Taylor

  The workers packed up, and night soon fell over the wheat and cotton fields. Kalgrin made his move then, hand gripping the diamond-bladed sword – a weapon that killed all types of dragons, regardless of their forms. It slid through their scales like butter, or their human skins with embarrassing ease. He knew where the guards existed, and he knew the security had tightened on the serf village now as they watched out for the missing traitor, leaving less at the main house.

  Half an hour. That was all it took. First to reach the house, then to kill the two guards at the main entrance. One strolled out of sight for a moment to take a piss in the grass, and Kalgrin lunged at him then, swinging his diamond sword through the wyrm’s human form’s neck. He died without a sound, eyes frozen in surprise. When his companion came to check, that one died too, having spent his last moment gaping at a decapitated head.

  Sneaking into the house, full of luxuries, all built upon the suffering of others, again filled him with anger. He needed to be fast now – the other drakes would be arriving soon to herd all the humans away to their new homes. Many humans would be too confused and scared to move, too uncomprehending to realize they no longer needed to live the way they did.

  Encountering the owner and his wyrm wife ended in another two quick deaths. The wyrm, who had been eating and talking with his wife, managed to stand up and exclaim, “What the devil are you doing here?” just before Kalgrin made the fast, lashing strike towards the soft fool’s plump body. His wife screamed hysterically until her demise as well. That didn’t feel good, but he couldn’t risk survivors.

  He hunted around the house for any extras, and found some house servants trembling in their beds. He informed them that their masters were dead, and never again did they need to live in fear of being beaten. As usual on these types of missions, blank incomprehension lingered on the servants’ faces. So battered, so trodden down as they were, they simply didn’t believe him. Maybe even thought this was some cruel test.

  Well, they’d find out soon enough.

  When the other drakes arrived, Kalgrin went to greet the leader of the group, Leoch, who gave him an elaborate bow, blue eyes grim.

  “Was it hard for you, Kal?” Leoch watched with Kalgrin as the drakes wandered along the human village, spreading the news. More of them came out of their huts, staring in amazement at the winged drakes and witnessing the dead wyrms for themselves.

  “Easier than the last one. The lord there insisted on the kill order for his serfs. If he couldn’t have them, neither could we.”

  “Tragedy,” Leoch murmured, shaking his head. “Did you rehome the girl you saved yet?”

  “No. Not yet.” Kalgrin didn’t want to admit he intended to keep her if possible. “She wanted to know if her family was alright. She overheard the wyrms threatening to kill her grandfather if they didn’t give up her location, so I’m not looking forward to giving her bad news. You know what these bastards are like.”

  “That I do.” Leoch nodded, before patting Kalgrin on the back. “Good job, anyway. You go check on the girl’s family. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  Kalgrin thanked Leoch, then slowly walked through the village, heart heavy. He checked every rescued human, all of them staring with filthy faces, their new situations slowly dawning upon their minds.

  He mentally prepared himself for the worst. He knew how to shut himself off, to be cold and cruel, and forget that other people existed, that others had lives. Even the wyrms, who maybe didn’t all deserve to die. No room for weakness, here. Not whilst he needed to send a message to the political establishments of their country. Not as long as humans got treated as beasts, killed without mercy, hunted for sport and whipped for work. Not as long as they continued to ignore the growing murmurs of dissent, and tip the balance of power further into the hands of the greedy, vicious wyrms.

  Not as long as his own people were treated as barely worth the effort.

  No. Things needed to change. Being passive did nothing. Using reason got ignored. Only action, only blood and fear worked for these creatures.

  Nothing else.

  Chapter Four

  Walking through the streets of Tarn felt off to Anya. She saw humans and drakes chatting to one another, laughing, smiling. She saw humans running bars and drakes selling wares to humans. She even bloody well saw a drake selling flights to humans to other towns and cities, or doing it just for the joy of flying around.

  Everything struck her as bizarre and surreal. How was it all even possible? How could she walk down these cobbled lanes, dressed like a woman, without a layer of mud over her face, hair allowed to tumble to just above her shoulders?

  Not only that, but people smiled, and waved, and didn’t look as though they were about to collapse or starve to death. It pretty much felt like being dumped on an alien planet.

  Just because she could, she wandered into a shop selling beverages, and three women and two men greeted her.

  “Hey! Come over here! You’re the new girl, right?” The woman doing the beckoning looked around twenty or so years in age, the perfect picture of health, smiling with fabulous white teeth. It made Anya more self-conscious of her own yellow teeth, and she licked her tongue nervously over them.

  “My name’s Seon,” the woman declared, now flicking her jet-black hair dramatically over her shoulder. “What’s yours? And where did you come from?” She spoke rapidly, and it took Anya a few seconds to catch on.

  “Anya. From a plantation.”

  “Oh…” Seon grimaced. “Nasty, nasty places. My dad used to work on one, before he ran away. Married my mother in Tarn three years later. Happiest man I know now.”

  Her friends murmured in agreement, before introducing themselves as Harriet, Krissy, Jaljun, and Deza. All the names flicked past Anya, and she suspected she’d have to ask several more times before they sunk into memory. What interested her mildly was the fact that the two men were drakes, and partners to Seon’s friends.

  “You look like you’re about to explode. I take it you’re still not used to being treated with respect. Don’t worry. My dad was like that as well.” Seon placed a friendly hand on Anya’s wrist. “You’ll understand in time. You’re free. You’re not a prisoner anymore.”

  Maybe not – but until Anya received news about her family, her heart still remained upon the plantation. She thanked the friends, promised to meet them again, and made her excuses before departing, deciding she no longer wanted the attention, and wandered straight back to Kalgrin’s house. She couldn’t call it home yet.

  She didn’t know where home existed. Even with a week of interacting with the drake, she still felt out of place. His smiles, his kindness felt out of place. How did he not look at her with contempt or lust? How did he not just reach out and take her whenever he wanted, knowing there was fuck-all she could do against him?

  It continued to haunt her on the way back, and when she pushed in through the door, she almost yelped in surprise.

  Kendra and her grandpa sat on two of the three armchairs in the living room. She also spotted two of her unnamed siblings, chubby boys crawling on the floor. It was quite traditional to not name children unless you were absolutely sure they’d survive. She dubbed them in her head as Slow and Shouty, because one always did everything slow, and the other would scream if he didn’t get his milk.

  “Ma!” Anya slammed her hands over her mouth, heart palpitating wildly. “You’re okay! Ma! You’re… here?”

  “Oh, my beautiful daughter, my wonderful child!” Kendra gushed, getting out of the armchair and swaying over to her daughter to grip her in a huge hug. “You’re looking so well! Been so long since I saw you without your muck.” She kissed Anya on the cheek.

  Anya stared at her grandpa, who gave her a gap-toothed smile and a wave. Tears welled up. She had heard the guards threatening to kill him. Yet here he was. With a broken wrist, maybe – she fixed on that with a glint of anger, seeing the bundle of rags that held it together – but alive.

  �
�Where’s my two sisters?”

  “Fine, fine,” Kendra assured her. “They’re washing themselves now in Kalgrin’s bathroom. What a nice young man he is. Who would have thought you had nice dragons? Oh, I never knew. Never in all my years. But it’s true. They came, him and his dragons, all of them came, took us out of there. Couldn’t believe it. I’m still in shock now!”

  “Me, too,” Anya said with a wry smile, her heart impossibly light at the realization that everyone was okay. No one had died for her dreams.

  She grinned like an idiot when she saw Kalgrin walk into the room. “Right, so I’ve put the cauldron on now, I have a tomato soup brewing, and, oh. Hello. I see you’re back.”

  “Mm-hm.” Anya continued grinning at him. He tentatively copied it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m okay.” For a moment, something stuck in her throat, making it hard to speak. To express her happiness and sadness at the same time.

  To fully let it sink in that she was away from the shadow of that place, even though it upset her on a level that she wasn’t able to do it by herself.

  “I was worried I’d have to give you bad news,” Kalgrin admitted. “But everyone in your family survived. Pretty good outcome.”

  “What will happen to us now?” Anya detangled herself from Kendra’s arms, carefully avoided stepping on Slow, and gazed into the eyes of the dragon who’d rescued her entire family. Her entire plantation. Stolen her from a life of misery, a life that might have been cut short. But what awaited them now?

  At her question, Kalgrin’s smile lessened, and he broke eye contact with her. “We’ll be looking to place your family in one of the human fort towns to the north. They don’t allow any dragons in, but we have a deal to give them humans who suffered the most under the wyrms’ regime. That’s where we’ll send you as well. I just wanted you to see your family.”

  His words uplifted her spirit further, but the careful hesitation in his voice gave her pause.

  Kendra looked sharply between Kalgrin and Anya. Her eyes expanded slightly, and her wrinkled mouth pursed, resembling a prune. “Daughter mine,” she finally said, “I have something I want to talk with you about. Can we talk in private?” she asked Kalgrin, who nodded.

  “Of course. In fact, I’ll go out and buy some clothes. I don’t think you all can start wearing my shirts…”

  Kalgrin departed, leaving Anya with her mother, who wore a calculating squint.

  “What?” Anya recognized the look. Her mother was planning something. Something Anya no doubt wouldn’t like.

  “You realize Kalgrin likes you, Anya?”

  Anya hesitated. “Yes… though I don’t really understand it.”

  “Because you’re pretty,” Kendra said immediately. “Not just with body, but with spirit, too. You’ve not been bent and broken.” She stepped closer to her daughter. “He desires you. Probably doesn’t want you to leave.”

  Anya’s heart started strange convulsions. “You think he’ll imprison me?”

  “No. You’ll imprison yourself.” Kendra nodded at her daughter. “You should stay with this man. Sex him. Whatever it takes to keep him close.”

  Anya’s jaw dropped at her mother’s words. Her grandpa blinked, eyebrow raising.

  “Ma. He’s a dragon.”

  “He’ll take good care of you. Give you a better chance at life than any of us had before.” Kendra let out a sniff at this, and something glimmered in her dark eyes. A threat of tears. “Or are you saying that you think he ain’t a good catch? You seen that face?”

  “Ma. I don’t feel that way.” A lie. She did feel attracted to him. But… dragon. Plus, she didn’t know him, or know how to feel about it, given that she had spent most of her life covered in mud and avoiding men’s stares.

  “I don’t need to do that, Ma. I don’t need to look for someone to take care of me. I can’t do that. I want to take care of myself first.” Anya stood up to her mother, clenching her hands into fists. Her mother meant well, but she didn’t understand. How free could Anya be, if she tied herself to someone like Kalgrin for the sake of convenience and kindness? What was the point in being who she was, then? With these dreams?

  No point.

  Someone cleared their throat, and Anya gasped in horror as she saw Kalgrin standing there, looking rather sheepish. “Um,” he said, “I might have overheard some of what you were saying…”

  Kendra gave him a flinty look. “I said I wanted privacy.”

  “Yes, but we have rather good hearing…” Kalgrin held up his hands in a supplicating gesture. “I want to say this. It’s true I find Anya… pleasing to look at. But I’m not going to let you persuade her to stay here. However… if you do want to stay in Tarn, there is something you can do,” he said, now addressing Anya. “Something that I think will suit that spirit of yours.”

  “I’m listening,” Anya said, once she got over her initial embarrassment of having the drake overhear her mother basically trying to sell her off.

  How shit, to know they still kept the mentality of the plantations. To hold onto that desire of being rescued and being taken care of. Not that she blamed anyone, but Anya knew that if Kalgrin didn’t let her go, or her mother forced her to stay here, she’d eventually end up a similar vein of miserable as before, even if she no longer feared beatings or long, relentless work hours.

  “You can work with us. The humans we rescue – they don’t always want to listen to drakes. They’re still deathly afraid. We could do with someone like you helping them.”

  An interesting offer. “I’m not fully trusting, either. I don’t… I don’t know how to trust you. Even with… all this.” She indicated her family. “It’s all just too good to be true. I’m waiting for something bad to happen.”

  “I know.” He looked sad. “I see it.”

  They fell into brief silence as Anya digested his words. His sincerity. “How would this work?”

  The drake licked his lips. His blue eyes never left hers as he replied, “One step at a time. We’ll start with you rehabilitating the humans we have here. We can’t send them all to the same places – there’s not always enough room. Just reassure them they’re safe, that their lives will be different. And tell them we’re not the enemy. They’ll listen to you.” He paced up and down the room then. “And… I can get you a place at the inn until you’ve earned enough coin to live in a house of your own. We’ll pay you for your work.”

  She considered his offer. A life, going to some unknown place, some human fort with her mother and four younger siblings, her wizened grandpa. Not seeing Kalgrin again, or that smile. Not being able to understand who he was.

  Or a life helping other people in her position. People whose souls had been ground into nothing. With a person whose intentions still seemed so fantastical, so… noble.

  Yet, the thought of being placed in a position to help – to live in a place of her own, to earn coin instead of food scraps – that opened a whole new realm of possibility.

  A human able to make her own way in life.

  It wasn’t a choice for her, really. “I’d like that,” she said, giving Kalgrin a grateful smile. “I’d like that very much.”

  Chapter Five

  Slowly but surely, Anya adapted to her new life. Days passed into weeks. Her family left, gone to that fort town, and she stayed behind in Tarn. She lived in the inn for the first few weeks until getting enough pay to move into a small hovel of her own, three streets away from Kalgrin’s modest abode.

  Her job of helping rescued humans proved harder than expected, because the people she got handed were damaged goods. The younger ones maybe possessed more hope, but older ones simply had set views, unable to understand that life could be different, that they didn’t have to worry about keeping their voices down or expect punishment for every minor transgression.

  Honestly, it became exhausting, but at the same time, seeing the first spark of hope, no matter how rarely it came, made the whole process worthw
hile. And now, living in her small house, which she slowly stocked up with supplies, making it something that felt like a home, she had one person to thank for all this. Kalgrin.

  Everything she kept expecting him to do, he didn’t. When she thought Kalgrin would just absorb her into his life without any chance for protest from her, it didn’t happen. When she thought she might be forced to stay on with him – she got the option to work and live in her own place instead.

  Even the wyrms that visited Tarn – they ignored the humans who lived here, didn’t try anything funny with them, respecting the laws the locals had set up.

  Leaving them in peace, rather than dragging the humans kicking and screaming. Which Anya knew was down to the high drake presence in Tarn, and the distance Tarn was from the main, wyrm-controlled cities.

  Bloody Kalgrin. Despite her determination to not start falling for him, to keep her former vow of independence and to fan the dreams of those who had no dreams of their own – she found herself anticipating his visits. Talking to him about anything. What the drakes were doing, how her family was doing, if he’d like to help deliver a letter to them or let her ride him to visit.

  Making excuses to go over to his house for his cooking, just so she could see him smile and laugh in her presence, and admire her openly with his deep blue eyes, which seemed full of wisdom. She liked the way his light brown hair tumbled carelessly about his face, like a living mop. She even liked sometimes the awkward pauses between them in conversation as he stared, before trying to fill the empty space with words, to make her at ease, or to ask how her job was going.

  When she went to visit Seon and her friends in the local inns, Anya got interested stares from both humans and drakes. She ignored them all, her thoughts only on Kalgrin, wondering if she left it too late. If she should just come out with it, or whether she’d be compromising her principles if she did.

  She still had a long way to go, of course. She still knew so little about this world. Kalgrin and Seon helped in their own ways, but she wanted more. She wanted to see the world and the state it was in. Where humans suffered, where humans were free.