Wildfire Shifters: Collection 1

by Zoe Chant

  “Very little.” The knights tended to have little contact with the various branches of the sea dragon mystic arts. There was the rare knight who had talent in both sword and magic—Joe’s father, the Imperial Champion, was one of them—but Seven was far too low in rank to interact with such august personages. “I do know that they can use pools of water to view remote places.”

  “Far-seeing. That’s the easiest form of scrying.” The corner of his mouth hooked up. “It also happens to be one that I can’t do, ironically enough. I spent a year with them, you see. The Master-Seers were in utter despair by the end. Told my parents I had no talent at all.”

  “But…you just said that you can see the future.”

  “Yeah.” He spread his hands. “I don’t know how. I just do. It started when I was about fourteen or so. At first, I thought it was just nightmares. I’d wake up screaming…” He trailed off, swallowing. “Well, you’ve seen that for yourself. But then I started seeing the visions when I was awake. Reflected in puddles, pools, baths, anywhere there was water. It got to the point where I was scared to even pick up a drink. That’s when I asked to go to the Seers.”

  At fourteen, she’d started training as a knight. She wondered if he’d been entering the quiet, darkened halls of the Seers at the same time as she’d been picking up a sword for the first time.

  “Did you tell them what you were experiencing?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told. Not even my mom knows what I can do.”

  The Pearl Empress didn’t know? “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “At first, because I was scared I was going mad.” He let out a hollow laugh. “And then, because I was scared I wasn’t. I soon discovered from the Seers just how rare my so-called talent is. Normally it takes decades of dedicated study and practice for a Master-Seer to even glimpse the future. There are only a couple currently living who can do it at all. They’re treated like saints. The other Seers practically kiss the ground under their feet.”

  She frowned, not following. “Why would that be a reason not to tell people?”

  “Because I’m already the sea-damned Crown Prince!” His voice roughened, turning savage and bitter. “My entire life, I’ve been treated as a walking embodiment of the Pearl Throne. I have to be twice as large as life just to force people to see a person rather than a title. If sea shifters found out about my talent? No one would ever care about anything else. No one would ever see who I am rather than what I can do. No one would ever see me.”

  She thought of how hard she’d had to work to persuade the knights to accept her. How she’d always had to be twice as good as any other candidate, just to avoid being judged by her animal.

  “I understand,” she said softly.

  “Yeah.” He met her eyes. “I thought you might.”

  She longed to hold him, shielding him from the world with her own body. Her palms ached to stroke away the quiet, weary grief in his face. She wanted to reassure him with her touch that she saw him, not what he represented. That she would always, always see him.

  He looked away first. “Anyway. The Seers couldn’t help me. They only know how to train people to be more sensitive to visions. It never even occurred to them that I was there to learn how to make them stop.”

  “You can’t control them at all?”

  “Not really. I mean, I got a little better. These days, I mostly only see them when I’m asleep, or deliberately scrying in water. Occasionally one still leaps out at me unexpectedly, though. Those tend to be the really important ones.”

  “So it’s…like watching a movie? In the surface of the water?”

  “Not even a little bit.” His hands clenched together, so hard that his knuckles whitened. “I don’t just see things. I live them. As if I’m there. And I can’t choose what fate decides to show me. Sometimes it’s something that needs to happen. Sometimes it’s a warning, something that needs to not happen.” He made a slight, pained sound. “Sometimes it’s damned hard to tell the difference.”

  He’d been screaming her name… “You said you first started seeing visions in your sleep. You were having one tonight, weren’t you?”

  He said nothing for a long moment, staring down at his hands. Every muscle in his arms was rigid as iron.

  “If something’s really important, I see it over and over again,” he said at last. “There’s one vision that keeps coming back. Every night. It was the first one I ever had.”

  “About me?” she whispered.

  He nodded, stiffly, barely moving his head. “That stuff I was saying to the others earlier, about there being some kind of alpha demon? I wasn’t speculating. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it since I was fourteen. It’s just taken me until now to work out what I was seeing.”

  Her initial disbelief had utterly evaporated. She knew, down to the marrow of her bones, that he was telling the truth. She could feel his agony, as if an invisible thread connected their hearts.

  She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Tell me. Tell me about the vision, Joe. Please.”

  “I’m in chains.” His voice was barely audible. “A woman laughs, cold and triumphant. I’m…in a forest, I think. It’s hard to tell, because it’s night and the sky is full of smoke. I see a great evil rising above us. I see you step forward to shield me.”

  “And I…” She made herself say it. “I die?”

  He looked up at last. His eyes blazed with turquoise fire, fierce and feral.

  “It’s not going to happen.” Sea dragon harmonics shivered around the human words, singing utter determination. “In my vision, we’re mated. As long as we don’t mate, it can’t happen.”

  She stood up, abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. She could only pace a couple of steps in the small room. She was a shark in a tank, the walls pressing in on her.

  “That’s why you’ve been trying so hard to push me away,” she said, turning on her heel to face him again. “Because you thought it was the only way to keep me safe.”

  He’d leaned back in his chair, tucking his long legs out of the way to give her more room. “It is the only way to keep you safe.”

  “I don’t accept that,” she snapped. Her hand sought the hilt of her stunsword, as though she could beat destiny into submission. “You said that these reoccurring visions are warnings. This one is a warning about you. You’re the one who’s important, not me.”

  “Not to me.”

  She shook her head. “I am not the Heir to the Pearl Throne. If my death keeps you safe—”

  “It doesn’t.” He surged to his feet, fists clenching. “And even if it did, I would not let it happen. Seven, don’t even think about it. I will never let you sacrifice yourself for me. Never.”

  “I am your oath-sworn bodyguard. It is my duty and my honor.” She held up a hand as he started to retort. “But it seems that is irrelevant. If you perish in this vision as well, then the warning is clear. You can’t be here. We have to go back to Atlantis immediately.”

  “You think I haven’t thought of that?” Joe shot back. “Seven, I’ve seen what happens if I’m not here. My friends die. All of them. And the demon still rises.”

  “Then we must find a way to stop it.”

  “I’m trying. I’m not Netflix. I can’t select the future that I want to see and watch how it all unfolds. I just get glimpses. Fate hands me a puzzle piece or two, and expects me to work out the entire damn picture!”

  “Then let me help you decipher it.” She let go of her stunsword, taking one of his hands instead. “You do not have to bear this burden alone, Joe. Not anymore. Let me help.”

  His shoulders unknotted a little. He let out his breath, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

  “Bluebrook,” he said. “That’s the only other thing I’ve seen. The squad is going to get called out to a fire near a town named Bluebrook. I looked it up, it’s pretty close to here. There’s an ambush. It’s the woman who attacked me at the club. I
f I’m not with the squad at Bluebrook, then she takes Blaise as her sacrifice instead.” His expression went bleak. “And everyone else dies.”

  What was it like, to have to watch your loved ones perish—not just once but over and over again? Her heart ached for him. After all the things he’d seen, how could he still put on a smile, acting as if he hadn’t a care for the world?

  “And what happens if you—we—are there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I haven’t seen that. All I know is that I have to be there.”

  “Then I will be there too.” She gripped his hand, raising their joined fists like warriors swearing an oath-bond. “We will not let this happen, Joe. I swear on my honor. Let our enemy set her ambush at this Bluebrook. We are forewarned. We shall lay a trap for her, and catch her in her own snare. She cannot raise this alpha demon if she is in chains herself. Once she is captured, you will be safe.”

  Something new was dawning across his face. An expression that she realized she’d never seen there before.

  Hope.

  His hand clenched tight around her own, strong fingers engulfing hers. “And then we can mate.”

  Chapter 13

  They could mate. They could mate.

  Joe couldn’t stop grinning. He felt like bursting into song, but unfortunately swinging his crewmates into an impromptu dance number would have been overly odd even for him. He had to settle for whistling cheerfully, with the result that he’d already received sixteen sincere threats of death and/or dismemberment from various colleagues, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning yet.

  He didn’t care. It was all he could do not to hug every last one of them. He wanted to point Seven out to the whole world, crowing like a rooster: There, that’s my mate, right there! And she wants me! She wants me!

  At the moment, she was at the other end of the storage room, listening with utter attention as Edith explained the difference between MacCleod and Pulaski cutting tools. Seven stood poised and straight, as elegant in her loose-fitting firefighter gear as she had been in her armor.

  He just couldn’t keep his eyes off her. His mate. And there were no secrets between them now.

  He wished he could kick his past self. How had he been so asinine as to try to run from her? All this time trying to avoid fate, when he should have trusted her strength. If he’d been brave enough to be honest with her from the start, maybe they would already have been mated…

  No. He gave himself a mental shake. Even if he had told her years ago, it still wouldn’t have been safe to mate yet. The demon-woman was still at large. As long as she was free, Seven was at risk. The only way to be certain that his nightmare vision couldn’t come true was to not claim her.

  After Bluebrook, Joe reminded himself for the thousandth time. Bluebrook was the key to everything, his chance to end the threat for once and for all. He had to wait to claim his mate until after their enemy was safely neutralized.

  No! his dragon roared. His animal seethed with impatience, coiling in his soul. Now, win her now! Shake the sea with songs in her honor! Fill her lair with the rarest of treasures! Offer her the most delicious of delicacies!

  “Earth to Joe.” Blaise snapped her fingers by his ear. “What are you doing?”

  “Wrestling an overpowering urge to hunt down a tuna,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” He wrenched his gaze away from Seven, turning around. “Did you need something?”

  “Yeah, for you to have been ready five minutes ago.” Blaise was already fully kitted out in Nomex jacket and pants, her Pulaski slung across her shoulder. “Buck’s going to chew our asses out if we’re late for line-cutting practice. Are you actually going to put that jacket on, or just commune with its spirit?”

  He fumbled with his gear, pulling up his suspenders. “Sorry. Be with you in a sec. Got distracted.”

  “Uh huh.” Blaise leaned to one side, pointedly looking past him. “By your ‘just a bodyguard.’”

  “Don’t know what you mean.” He put on his most innocent expression. “She is my bodyguard.”

  Seven hadn’t been keen, but he’d convinced her that it was safest to continue to hide their true relationship from the crew. He knew his squadmates too well. If they got a hint of what was really going on, his friends would be trying to bang them together like a precocious kid with a pair of Barbie dolls.

  Explaining why he couldn’t claim his mate—couldn’t claim his mate yet—would have required a lot more explanations than Joe was willing to give. Much as he loved his friends, he couldn’t risk telling them the truth about his talent. With that many people knowing, sooner or later it would get back to the sea, and the Sea Council, and his parents.

  And that would be goodbye to his freedom. It was one thing to let a silly, somewhat embarrassing Crown Prince make himself scarce on land. A silly, somewhat embarrassing Crown Prince who could see the future? That would be an entirely different matter.

  He’d be lucky if they didn’t staple him to the Pearl Throne.

  “Uh-huh.” Blaise’s tone said she wasn’t buying his denial for a hot second. “You seem to be spending an awful lot of time staring at your bodyguard’s backside.”

  It was all he could do not to let his attention drift back in that direction now. “Well, you know me. Always an admirer of the female form.”

  “I’d report you to Buck for workplace harassment.” Blaise rolled her eyes. “Except I’d have to turn her in as well.”

  His dragon preened. He couldn’t help his grin widening. “Is she checking out my butt?”

  “She is checking out your butt right now.” Blaise smacked him on the arm. “Stop flexing.”

  “Sorry. Reflex.” He shrugged into his jacket. “Anyway, since when is my love life any of your business?”

  “Believe me, I wish it wasn’t.” Blaise wrinkled her nose. “But if you’re going to drag your drama to work, then it becomes all our business. I know you, Joe. You’ve never had a relationship that lasted longer than forty-eight hours.”

  This was, he felt, a little unfair. “Hey, there was that three-day jazz festival, remember? The all-girl trombone group?”

  Blaise looked like she was seriously considering setting fire to his hair. “Exactly my point. You don’t do serious, Joe. And that poor woman doesn’t look like she even knows what casual is. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Me neither. Which is exactly why I’m not sleeping with her.”

  Callum, who was putting on his own gear nearby, looked up sharply. “But—”

  The pegasus shifter fell silent again, mouth clamping shut. Blaise pounced on him like a hawk anyway.

  “Aha! I knew it. You are so busted, Joe.” Blaise advanced on Callum, boxing him into a corner. “Spill it, Cal. You sensed them sneaking into the same bedroom last night, didn’t you?”

  Callum looked down, round, and up at the ceiling. No escape was forthcoming. He caught Joe’s eye, mouth twisting in an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. Can’t turn it off.”

  Sometimes Joe suspected Callum had drawn an even shorter straw than himself when it came to special powers. At least he didn’t have his visions constantly.

  It had to be distracting, always having the exact position and type of every life form in a five-mile radius intruding on your consciousness. Joe was pretty sure that was why Cal didn’t talk much.

  Normally, the pegasus shifter was as tight-lipped about what he sensed as he was about everything. But all of them had difficulty keeping secrets from Blaise. Even when she was at her sweetest, you couldn’t help but be uncomfortably aware of the power that she could bring to bear on you. It was like having a nosy little sister with a pet assault tank.

  “It’s okay, Cal.” Joe turned back to Blaise. “For the record, Seven just came in to check I was okay. I was having a nightmare.”

  “He does have nightmares,” Callum confirmed. He looked hopefully at Blaise. “Can I go?”

  Bl
aise pursed her lips, but allowed the pegasus shifter to escape. “So you’re claiming nothing happened?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “And can you swear to me that nothing is going to happen?”

  “Ah, now, who can tell the future?” He struggled to keep his tone light, bantering. “Look, I promise I won’t do anything that could hurt the squad, okay?”

  Blaise narrowed her eyes at him. “And Seven?”

  “I will never hurt her.” Despite his best efforts, his dragon’s snarl echoed the words like distant thunder. “I couldn’t hurt her.”

  Blaise stared at him. “Are you sure she’s just your bodyguard?”

  Rory saved him, inadvertently. The griffin shifter leaned through the doorway, his raised voice ringing from the rafters of the storeroom. “Come on, guys, we were due at the field five minutes ago! What’s the holdup?”

  “Coming!” Edith yelled back. She passed a Pulaski to Seven. “Sorry, I could talk about this stuff all day.”

  “And I would gladly listen,” Seven said, sounding genuinely interested. “I did not realize there was so much strategy and tactics involved in firefighting. It strikes me as remarkably similar to the arts of war.”

  “I’d really like to hear about that, but it’ll have to wait until later.” Edith hefted her pack onto her back. “Joe, can you grab a water cooler? We’re going to need to refill our canteens, working in this heat.”

  He turned to the storeroom shelves, reaching up for one of the large plastic drums. “Sure. No problem.”

  He pulled the bottle forward, sliding it off the shelf. As he did so, a shaft of sunlight pierced through the transparent plastic, illuminating the water within.

  Cold chains around his wrists—

  Cool fingers closed on his forearm, pulling him out of the vision. He looked down into Seven’s questioning eyes.

  “My prince,” Seven murmured. “Do you need help with that?”

  He forced his lungs to work again. “No. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”