by Chase, Eva
I started to text back asking what she’d been up to when the plane took a sharper dip. My seat vibrated as the wheels hit the runway. Stones rattled against the jet’s undercarriage. It slowed to a halt almost immediately.
My gut knotted. We were here.
Sorry, I wrote to Kylie. I’ve got to go now. Shifter business. I’ll catch up with you more later.
Don’t worry about me! she replied with a line of hearts. As if I could help worrying.
But for now I was definitely more worried about what was waiting for us on the estate. Seatbelts clicked open all through the plane. We hustled out of our seats and down the steps.
The dry, hard-packed earth of the runway was lined with tall redwoods. Their tangy smell washed over me along with the chirping of an insect chorus.
A contingent of shifters I assumed were Nate’s kin had come out to meet us. They were definitely a varied bunch. A muddle of scents tickled my nose as we approached the group. My dragon senses identified them on instinct: black bear, stoat, mink, elk, armadillo, manatee.
Nervous energy wafted off them, easing slightly when they saw their alpha in our midst. Nate strode to the head of our group, his jaw set and his eyes dark. But his kin’s gazes drifted away from him to settle on me. A prickle traveled over my skin.
When I’d met some of West’s canine kin in one of their villages, and when I’d arrived at the avian estate, almost all of the shifters had been friendly. Not just friendly, actually—they’d seemed awed to be in my presence. Fawning over me, wanting to touch me and hear me speak. It’d been a little overwhelming.
I couldn’t say I missed the pressure of that kind of welcome. But this one... I wasn’t sure these shifters were even happy I was here. Their eyes seemed to evaluate me as I came to a stop beside my newly consummated mate. Nate rested a hand on my back in acknowledgement, but his attention was completely on his kin.
“You made it here quickly,” said the black bear shifter, a shorter but equally burly man who looked to be around forty. His short black hair stood up in a high buzz-cut. “It’s good to have you back.”
“We came as soon as we heard,” Nate said. “Anything new to report, Thomas?”
Thomas started to walk down a path that I assumed led farther into the estate. The rest of us followed. Alice fell into step between me and Aaron as if she were trying to maximize her chances of protecting both of us. Her sharp eyes roved the forest.
“The current count is nine kin with major injuries, four dead,” the black bear shifter said, his voice rough as he gave the numbers. “How many with scratches and bruises, we didn’t bother to count.”
Nate rubbed his mouth, grimacing. “Who did we lose?”
“The rogues were clearly targeting the wing where the advisors reside. They broke into Yvonne’s and Garret’s rooms first, before there’d even been much time to sound the alarm. And they had weapons—a few guns, the other ones knives... All of us put up as good a fight as we could, but Garret fell, and Yvonne’s mate. And two of the guards who intervened.”
“How did they get in?” Marco piped up. “I’ve seen the walls you’ve got around this compound. And I assume some of the guards were guarding those.”
Thomas’s voice dropped to almost a growl. He didn’t like anyone but his alpha questioning him, I got the impression. “We’re not sure yet how they got in. We do patrol the grounds carefully, especially after hearing about recent problems, but none of the guards saw the intruders until after they were already at the estate house.”
“I’m sure everyone here was doing their job with their full ability,” Nate said. “The rogues have been turning to tricks that no shifter should lower themselves to. What happened to the attackers?”
We emerged from the path into a tiled courtyard. Our feet rapped against the polished slabs of clay. A huge adobe mansion that I had to guess was the “estate house” Thomas had mentioned loomed at one end of the yard. Kneeling figures were scattered across its steps and in the hallway beyond its open, arched doorway.
“We killed most of them in the struggle,” Thomas said. “The way they came at us, with no concern for themselves—they almost forced us to. It was a bloody night, I can tell you that much.”
We came up to the steps, his last words rolling through my mind, and I realized what all those kneeling shifters were doing. They were scrubbing at the tiles and the walls with rags. Scrubbing at ruddy patches that dappled the clay and the pale brown adobe.
Blood. All that shifter blood spilled here last night...
Suddenly all the blood in my own body seemed to be rushing past my ears with the thudding of my heart. My vision swam.
There had been blood—blood everywhere. Blood splattering the walls painted in the delicate shade of yellow my mother had let my sisters and me pick out. Blood pooled under my wolf-father’s slumped form. Blood gushing from the bullet wounds in my oldest sister’s chest. The boom of more shots echoing down the hall. My mother’s hand so tight around mine the bones pinched. The frantic patter of my feet down the hardwood floor.
The smell of it. Thick and metallic, saturating the air, mingling with the harsh smoky scent of the guns. It had trickled down my throat and filled my stomach, until my gut twisted and heaved—
No, heaving was happening now. I stumbled and bent down, clutching my belly. My pulse rattled painfully. The memories kept streaming through my head, the horrible smell sixteen years gone clogging my nose.
Temperance, my oldest sister, the one who’d always encouraged me to climb higher, run faster, even when I faltered. She’d shoved me out of the way as the rogues had opened fire through the doorway. And Verity, just two years older than me—Mom had tried to grab us both. That was when my eagle shifter father had thrown himself at the rogue with the rifle, talons gouging and wings shielding us. The bullets of a pistol had torn right through him, and she—and she—
“Ren,” someone was saying. “Ren!” A strong arm had wrapped around my trembling back.
A sob caught in my throat. Nate’s musky peppery smell followed it, chasing away the phantom scents from my past. I grasped his shirt, clinging on to him as if he were the only thing keeping me in place. At that moment, maybe he was.
I wasn’t in the dragon shifter’s estate. I wasn’t five years old anymore. I focused on the clay tiles under my feet, the warm breeze, the quiet murmurs around us—
Shit. I shoved myself upright with a quick swipe at my eyes. Nate kept his arm around me, which was probably a good thing, because my legs wobbled for a second before I found my balance. Aaron was standing at my other side, Alice right in front of me. She touched my shoulder, her tone light but her eyes concerned.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, willing my voice to stay steady. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect— It just reminded me of the attack on my mother’s—on my estate. When I was a kid. When—” My throat started to close up. Better not to go into any more detail than that. From the look on Alice’s face, she already understood what I meant.
And beyond her, the delegation of Nate’s kin who’d come out to meet us, the shifters working at washing away the mess of last night’s attack, they were all watching me. Watching me make a total fool of myself. How the hell were they going to trust that I could deal with this threat when just seeing the aftermath sent me halfway to a breakdown? My hands clenched.
“I’m okay,” I said firmly, squaring my shoulders.
“Your memories were suppressed for so long, it’s understandable that you’re not used to handling the more traumatic ones,” Aaron said. I wondered how much that reassurance was for my benefit and how much for the other shifters.
“Well, I’ll just have to get used to handling them,” I said. “Right now we have to focus on the attack that happened here, and how we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Thomas made a soft coughing sound. He directed his gaze at his alpha. “On that topic... I said we had to kill most of the rogues in t
he assault. But we did manage to capture one—and to stop him before he could end his own life. We had to subdue him with a tranquilizer for the time being, but we can wake him up when you’re ready to question him.”
Chapter 3
West
We kin groups had plenty of differences between us. There was no denying that. But at the core, in some vital ways, we were the same. A shifter kin funeral looked and sounded like a shifter kin funeral whether the dead being honored were canine or feline or avian—or something else, like today.
All the shifters who lived on the estate had gathered around the massive pyre. The sharp smell of fresh sap nearly overwhelmed the stink of death. Four bodies lay there to be laid to rest. Their loved ones had come forward to talk about the lives of the fallen. Now Nate was moving from one body to the next, flames hissing on the end of the torch he carried. His low baritone voice swept through the clearing.
“Brother of my heart, kin to your alpha. Your light has snuffed out, but now you will burn brighter. As we let you go, we swear to rise up stronger for you.”
“We swear to rise up stronger,” a chorus of voices rang out around the pyre. I added mine to it. A few bodies down from me, Ren startled and managed to join in for the last few words.
Just one more thing our dragon shifter didn’t know about her own kind.
She’d missed the funeral for her own fathers and sisters. The massive one kin from all across the country had arrived for. I’d only been eleven, but I remembered starkly the sight of the alpha before me, the man who’d mentored me for the past three years, lying limp and vacant on the heap of firewood. The bullet hole marring his skin had looked so unnatural, like some horrible disease and not a proper battle wound.
The rogues were fucking unnatural, the way they slaughtered their own kind for their selfish reasons. I gritted my teeth, thinking about the one Nate’s guards had managed to capture. Wouldn’t I like to be sinking those teeth into him right now. If we hadn’t needed the information he could give us, I’d like to tear out his throat for what he’d done here. For what they’d done back then. For all of it, really.
“We swear to rise up stronger,” we repeated for the fourth time. Nate bowed his head. Then he tossed his torch onto the pyre.
The flames crackled, sweeping over the heap of woods and the bodies lying on it in a wave. Smoke billowed up. It prickled into my eyes and down my throat, coating my tongue. And the memory that rose up then wasn’t of my mentor.
How many bodies had we sent back to the light the day I’d said good-bye to my mother? Eight. Eight loyal kin felled. I’d had to order my people to build two pyres to hold them all. My throat had been hoarse by the time I’d finished the rounds. One of my advisors had offered to share the duty, seeing as I was fifteen and not yet fully of age, but I’d told him no. It’d been my battle. The deaths had been dealt because of my decisions.
I’d just had to believe we’d have seen more deaths if my decisions had been different.
Dad hadn’t believed that. Or maybe he hadn’t cared. The memory of his turned back, his shoulders stubbornly stiff, had stopped stinging over the years, even though he still hadn’t said a word to me since. I was his alpha, but I wasn’t his son anymore.
Today, it took a long time for the flames to burn down. We stood in silent witness the entire time, letting the smoke and the smell wash over us. Honoring to our dead.
Normally when the last flames flickered out amid the embers, we would see the ashes carried to their resting place and then be done. But when Nate stirred to move forward, Ren touched his arm. She stepped out from our ring toward the foot of the pyre.
Her face still looked a little paler than usual, making her dark eyes and hair gleam starkly in contrast. But I had to admire the strength with which she held herself, the steadiness of her posture. Whatever memories had rocked her when we’d arrived this morning, she’d wrestled them under control.
Her voice came out steady too—steady and clear.
“The rogues have gotten away with too much, for too long. I wish I could have been here sooner to fulfill my role as dragon shifter. But now that I am here, I swear to you that we will see justice for these deaths. And if I have my way, the rogues won’t shed one more drop of kin blood.”
She raised a fist in the air and snapped it back to her side. A solemn air still hung over the gathering, but several voices in the crowd rose up in agreement. “Not one more drop!”
I bit back a frown. I wished I could cheer too, but our dragon shifter wasn’t in any position to be giving her word on that matter. Her mother hadn’t been able to take on the rogues, and she’d been a dragon shifter with years of experience, who’d grown up into the role. The fact that Ren would even try to make that kind of promise just showed how much she still had to learn.
Maybe the times really had changed. Maybe there were things a dragon shifter couldn’t set right anymore, even with new powers and the four of us by her side.
Well, I hadn’t committed myself yet, as much as parts of me had wanted to. It wasn’t her fault she was so far behind, but that didn’t mean I had to sacrifice myself and my kin holding her up.
I told myself that, but at the same time the determination on her face tugged at my heart. That damned mate bond still nagging at me, stirring up my emotions. I had to keep a tighter leash on them. If one touch from her could sever all my self-control, how could I put my kin first?
* * *
Ren
The pungent scent of the fire’s smoke followed me down into the basement of Nate’s estate house. I rubbed at my bare arms and resisted the urge to clear my throat. Would that be some kind of sign of disrespect? There were so many shifter traditions and expectations I still didn’t know.
And from the way West had narrowed his eyes at me as we’d left the funeral clearing, he was keeping a careful tally of them.
Thankfully my other three alphas and Alice weren’t looking for excuses to dismiss me. We had a rogue to interrogate—one who hopefully knew more than the avian woman who’d attacked me on Aaron’s estate had. She’d been forced to cooperate. This one had joined the fight right alongside the others.
The guard who’d led us down to the short row of holding cells nodded to one room. On the other side of the door’s small window, a skinny man with scruffy light brown hair was slumped on a bench. His wrists and ankles were chained to opposite ends, so he couldn’t hurt us—or himself. As long as he was in human form, at least.
I stepped back from the window. “How do we know he won’t shift to get out of the shackles?”
“The tranquilizer we use in situations like this suppresses the ability to shift,” Aaron said, ready as ever with explanations. “The guards will have lowered the dose so he’s conscious enough to talk to us, but his bodily control is still inhibited.”
“He should be awake enough now,” the guard said. He unlocked the door for us.
Nate strode in first, anger radiating off him. Marco slipped in ahead of me. As I passed through the doorway, my nose caught the rogue’s scent. He was canine—some sort of dog. I wasn’t surprised. He had the look of a mutt.
West’s teeth bared when he came in. For once his glare was turned on someone other than me. This guy would have been his kin if the dog shifter hadn’t turned to murder instead.
Aaron stayed in the doorway, Alice right behind him. She stood tensed, as if she didn’t totally believe the precautions taken would be enough to protect us.
“You,” Nate growled. “Let’s start with the easy questions. What’s your name?”
The dog shifter’s gaze slid up toward Nate’s face, but his thin lips stayed clamped tight. He swayed slightly where he sat, his shoulders hunched.
Nate loomed even higher over him. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said. “But I’ve just come back from sending off four of my kin, whose deaths you had a hand in. I’ve got nine others still recovering. So I’m not feeling very forgiving at the moment. We can do this the p
ainful way if you want.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” the rogue spat out. His voice was slightly slurred, I guessed because of the tranquilizer.
My back stiffened. If he’d attacked us, I’d have had no problem seeing Nate savage him. And there was no question in my mind that he deserved payback. But if what we wanted was answers, I wasn’t sure torture was going to get us any. We’d watched rogues throw themselves to their deaths, impale themselves on our claws, just to avoid talking. They didn’t seem to value their own lives much compared to their cause.
“I’ll ask you again,” Nate said, his tone turning even darker. He raised his hand, and it shifted into a giant grizzly bear paw. “Just tell us your name.”
The rogue stared back with a wavering but defiant gaze. Words tumbled from my mouth before I’d even thought them through.
“There’s another way we can get him talking. I can use the truth-seeking flames. It worked on the fae monarch.”
Nate turned to me. “Are you sure you’re up for that, Ren?”
I shrugged. Now that I’d volunteered, I’d better be. “I’ve had a day to get my energy back. And it’ll be a lot faster than anything else we could try. You know what the rogues are like.”
“Yes.” He eyed the dog shifter. The rogue stayed where he was with the same hunched posture, but I thought a little of the remaining color in his yellowed face might have drained away. He might not know what I was talking about, but he knew it probably wasn’t good for him.
That settled things. “Let’s do it. Now, while the tranquilizer is still affecting him. We’ll need to bring him to a bigger space so I have room to shift.”
“That can be arranged.” Nate motioned to the guard.
The rest of us backed out of the room. “You’ll have to ask most of the questions,” I said to the other alphas. “I can’t carry on much of a conversation while I’m busy spewing flames.”