by T. S. Joyce
“Don’t call me that. I’m no one’s alpha.”
“False, you are the alpha of the Sons of Beasts. Do you know what this position is doing to Torren while you’ve been away? He’s literally put on forty pounds of muscle, and he fights me every day that ends in Y.”
“Bet you love it.”
“Fuck yes I love it, but HavoK needs to be controlled, and being in here isn’t going to help. Torren didn’t even make it five minutes before he was locked up with a silverback. Our crew can’t afford to go backward. We gotta baby on the way now, and half of us are in shifter prison, and one of us looks like a corpse.” Imaginary Nox jammed a finger at Vyr. “That’s you. I’m talking about you. I’m serious when I say you look like shit. Riyah will never play with your balls if you don’t take care of yourself.”
Arguing about Riyah not belonging to him was pointless. Nox wasn’t really here.
“I have to go. It’s hug time.”
“Pass,” Vyr muttered.
“Fuckface, hurry up, you’re going to get me busted, and I’m not leaving until I embrace you. In a manly way.”
Vyr wanted to die the rest of the way. Gritting his teeth, he stood up and prepared to hug a ghost because he was in full-on crazy town now. But as Imaginary Nox pulled him in, he was solid and clapped Vyr on the back three times so hard it whooshed his breath out. What the fuck? Vyr froze, his hands held up at Nox’s sides. “Nox? You’re really here?”
Nox’s voice sounded too thick as he said, “I really missed you, man. I really did. It sucks without you around. There’s a huge hole in the crew, and we’re struggling to stay steady. Do you know why?”
Stunned, Vyr patted Nox’s back and shook his head. “Why?”
“Because you’re the glue, Vyr. You always were. And if I ever fuckin’ hear you say you’re nothing again, I’m going to punch you in the dick. I love you, man. Say it back.”
“Nox—”
“I spray-painted one hundred and sixty-nine dicks around the town of Foxburg, Vyr. I signed them all. I got arrested for you. I gave up BJs for a six-month sentence so I could be here for you. Tell me you love me.”
Defeated, Vyr muttered, “I love you too, dude.”
“Now, tell me Torren is a hairy chode, that he is the worst member of the crew, and that I’m your favorite.”
“Nox.”
“Worth a try.” Nox slapped him hard once more, then spun and jogged to the rope. “Hey, Vyr?”
“Yeah?”
Nox stood there, his face unreadable in the shadows, holding onto the rope with one hand. “Even if the dragon is gone, you’re still important to me. And to Torren, Candace, and Nevada, and a lot people. And I bet you’re really important to that girl, too. Riyah? You touch the people who really get to know you.”
Huh. Vyr frowned. “You’re different than I remember.”
“Yeah, Nevada’s training me to be normal.” Nox snorted. “Just kidding, she would hate me if I was normal. Oh, and Mr. Diddles is still alive. I bought him a girl swan so he could stop humping that stupid duck statue. You owe me thirty bucks. I had to special order her from a feed store. I’ve named her Mrs. Tittles.” Nox slapped his leg, and his single, bellowing laugh echoed as he repeated, “Mrs. Tittles. God, I’m awesome. See you soon, Fuckface.” And then Real Nox scaled the rope neatly and disappeared into the ceiling.
Shocked to his core, Vyr was left in the dark, once again. But something small had eased in his middle. Nox had shown up right in the middle of the worst moment of his life and told him he was still important.
And he wanted to tell Riyah about it. He wanted to unload this burden on the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about. He wanted to hear it again. That everything would be okay. But he wanted to hear it from her because he was selfish. He wanted those words from Hope, because that’s what he sometimes called her in his head. Hope was what she was.
“Riyah?”
“…I’m here.”
Chills blasted against his skin as he went to his knees and arched his head back, closed his eyes in relief. “Are you okay?”
“I will be.” Her voice was so frail in his head. So weak.
“I wish I could hold you right now. I wish I could take care of you.” God, he wished that more than anything.
“Me, too. Vyr?”
“Yeah, babe?” She deserved pet names for what she’d done for him. For trying to save him.
“I was here when you were talking to Nox. Is…” Her voice dipped to almost nothing in his head. “Is the dragon really dead?”
Vyr opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. And for the first time in his entire life, a drop of warm water welled up and slid down his cheek. “Yes.”
Her voice trembled but held honest notes as she murmured, “Everything is going to be okay.”
He could feel her heartache in his mind. It matched his, and in this moment, he knew he loved her. He knew as long as she was here, in his head, he wouldn’t be alone with this.
The crack in his heart filled with something warm, something red. Something that tingled. It was the only thing about him that didn’t hurt right now.
Nox had been wrong.
Vyr wasn’t the glue.
Riyah was.
Chapter Twelve
“Everything is going to be okay,” Riyah assured Vyr.
Everything is going to be…okay. Okay. Okay. Everything will be…okay.
Riyah! her mother screamed, pulling her from Vyr’s mind. “Do it! Baby, look at me.” She fell to her knees, chin lifted high, eyes brimming with tears, but she looked so understanding. So sure. “Do it now, little witch. Everything is going to be okay.”
Riyah jerked awake. She didn’t know where she was, but every piece of furniture in the room was floating near the ceiling. Except the bed she was supposed to be lying on was still far below her, resting on the floor. Her hair was floating around her like she was in water. In the open doorway were two women, both with a hand on their chests as they stared silently up at her with similar, uncertain gazes.
It was like this sometimes when memories of what she’d done scratched at her mind. The power she kept so secret, so hidden, came out in her sleep. “I’m sorry,” she murmured as she lowered herself and the furniture back to the floor.
She turned, landed on her tiptoes, and looked down at herself. She was wearing a black crop top that said Gem’s across the front and a pair of purple-sequined sparkle shorts. “Uh, what am I wearing?”
The curvy brunette lowered her eyes to the floor and spoke in the softest, most timid voice Riyah had ever heard. “S-so this is gonna sound weird, but we’ve decided you’re going to be our friend, and friends like things that match. Candace was in the middle of teaching me how to pole-dance…sooooo…” She looked down at her own green sparkly shorts, then at Candace’s blue ones. “So we dressed you like us today. I’m Nevada. Fox shifter. Mate to Nox Fuller and part of the Sons of Beasts Crew. Vyr is my alpha.” She ghosted Riyah a look and lowered her eyes to the floor again.
“And I’m Candace,” said the lean and leggy woman with auburn hair and false eyelashes. “Baby momma and mate to Torren Taylor, and Vyr is also my alpha. So you know…don’t kill us with your witchcraftery because, by default, we really are friends. You like Vyr, and Vyr likes us. We think. He’s hard to read sometimes. He might actually hate everything and everyone, but he hates us the least, so it counts. Your other clothes smelled like prison so we had to change you, girl. I get nauseous easy nowadays.”
“Morning sickness,” Nevada whispered.
“Congratulations on the baby,” Riyah blurted, barely resisting the urge to cover her exposed stomach with her arms.
“Congratulations on being a badass with telekinetic powers,” Candace said with a nod of respect. “I mean, you’re terrifying as hell, but as long as you keep us on your good side, we’re totally cool with you being Vyr two-point-oh. Also, if I ever have to move, I would like to hire you so you can just do it for me, Mary Poppins
style.”
Riyah snorted. She’d never been compared to Mary Poppins before. More often, if someone saw a hint of what she could do, they made the sign of the devil and scurried away.
“S-so do you always sleep like there is a demon in you?” Nevada asked, attention still on the floor.
“She means with the floating and flying furniture. Also, it stinks like magic in here so I’m just gonna plug my nose, but it’s not me being rude. I’m a tiger shifter, and my senses are all jacked up with this baby Kong in my belly.” Candace plugged her nose but smiled brightly.
“Um, no. I don’t do that often. How long have I been out?”
The women looked at each other and then back to Riyah. “A day. You missed Vyr’s Change. Clara has been calling non-stop, checking on you, but there was no waking you up to be there for him. You were really, really sick. She understood.”
“I have to tell you something,” she murmured, sinking onto the bed. “Since we’re friends and wearing matching sparkly shorts…” Her voice shook so she swallowed hard before she tried again. “I can talk to Vyr. In my head.”
Candace’s eyes went round as dinner plates. “Whoa. So you really are Vyr two-point-oh.”
“We have some similar powers, but I’m no dragon.” She clutched the covers under her hands. “And now, neither is Vyr.”
Nevada jerked her gaze off the floor. “What do you mean?”
Riyah’s face crumpled just thinking about it. She couldn’t look them in the face when she told them what had happened to Vyr. Couldn’t. Shame heated her cheeks. “Clara wanted me to keep Vyr steady enough to keep the dragon for the rest of his six-month stay in that prison.”
“And?” Candace asked.
“And today the dragon died.”
“Oh, my God,” Nevada uttered. She stood frozen before she turned and left. Just…left. And moments later, even with her dull human senses, Riyah could hear the woman crying in the other room.
Candace just stood in the door frame, arms crossed over her chest, watching Riyah. “I have to tell you something, too. Something that will be hard to hear.”
“Okay,” Riyah said, feeling awful. All she wanted to do was go to Vyr and be there for him.
“After we watched that video you did, the one where Vyr asked for his crew to come to him? We got a call from the seer of the Gray Backs, Beaston. Have you heard of him?”
“Yes,” Riyah whispered, stunned. “Clara told me about him. She said he can see things kind of like we can.”
“He can see across the veil. Can see ghosts, but more than that, he can see things that will happen in the future. Good things and bad things. All things he can’t change. His son is the same as him. When one of them has a vision that can affect everyone? It’s a big deal. But when both of them have the same vision, over and over and over…everyone pays attention.” Candace rested her head on the doorframe and looked so sad as she said the next part. “You’re the one who will revive the Red Dragon, but afterward, Beaston and his son Weston both see the same thing.”
“What do they see?” Riyah asked.
“Fire. Fire everywhere.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Did you leave fingerprint bruises on my leg on purpose?” Riyah asked in the darkness.
“Yes,” came Vyr’s immediate reply.
“I’ve wondered that since you kissed me.”
“I’m gonna kiss you again someday.”
“Ahh, you’re back to fighting.”
“No. What are you doing right now?”
“Lying in bed,” she said. “Nevada and Candace are staying at a hotel next door to my apartment complex until we get things figured out.”
“What things?”
“You’ll see,” she said with a smile. She did her best to keep the plans a secret. Not because she wanted to keep things from Vyr, but because she wanted to give him an entire day of surprises tomorrow. He deserved a good day after what he’d been through.
“Why are you so nice to me?”
“Because I like you.”
“You like, like me?”
“I have a crush.”
“Fuuuuck. I wish I could’ve watched your lips when you said that.”
“What are you doing right now?”
“You don’t want to know.”
With a frown, she sat up in bed. “I want to know everything.”
“They never brought a bed into The Dungeon, and they haven’t taken me back to my cell yet. So…I’m lying on the concrete floor, hands linked behind my head, staring at a dark ceiling, and wishing to God I was in your apartment, lying next to you.”
“Vyr,” she whispered.
“Stop. At least we have this.”
Riyah drew her knees up to her chest. “You feel important.”
There were three beats of silence and then, “So do you.”
“I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. I want to tell you about what you saw in my head.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Maybe not, but it has always felt like it.”
Vyr gave a mental sigh. “I’m ready.”
“Once upon a time, there was a witch and her daughter, and the witch had a husband who was a good man. The little witch was lucky, but sheltered because she had powers she sometimes couldn’t control, just like her mother. But by hiding, they attracted attention from a crew of very rare shifters that lived in the territory. Polar bears. They were trying to keep quiet. Keep from having to register like the government was making all the other shifters do. They would visit us and tell us to leave the territory because they were afraid we would attract attention. But we had nowhere to go. Eventually, the visits got scary. It wasn’t just about protecting themselves anymore. It’s like they could taste the magic, and it drew them in. Made them crazy. When they shifted, they would come closer and closer. And at nights, we could hear them roaring. Closer, closer, closer. The little witch’s father approached the crew to ask them to stay away, but he didn’t come back. And that same night, the roaring came right up to the trailer. The little witch’s mom scooped her up and ran out the back door just as the front door caved in. And they ran into the woods as fast as they could. And the little witch didn’t know she was doing it, but her fear was leaching power from her mother. So when her mother turned to defend them from the bears, she had nothing. No power.”
Riyah’s voice broke on the last word, so she paused and swallowed hard so her voice would come out steady again. “The little witch watched as the white bears ran through the trees. Two of them landed on her mother, and there were screams. And the little witch’s body was pulsing with power. The more scared she got as she screamed for her mother, the more the power burned to escape her. Fuck.” She wiped her damp cheeks fast and shook her head hard. Just say it. “My mom, she got a break from the attack, but I was surrounded. It was a big crew, and the bears were just…massive. She struggled to her feet and turned, and whatever she saw in me, it took the fear from her eyes. She was crying and bleeding, so much, but she told me, ‘Riyah! Do it!’ I was so scared of the white bears, but Mom said, ‘Baby, look at me.’ And she fell to her knees and said, ‘Do it now, Little Witch. Everything is going to be okay.’ And I screamed because the power hurt as it came out of me.”
Riyah swallowed a sob. “I decimated everything within a square mile, my mom included. So you see, Vyr, you think you’re a monster. And others think you’re a monster because you eat people. But they don’t realize you see the bad ones. You see evil, and you do something about it to satisfy your dragon. You protect your people at great cost to yourself. I, on the other hand, destroyed the person I loved the most. And she was good. Pure. Kind. You aren’t a monster, Vyr. I am. I see you. I know what it was like for you. You grew up different from everyone else. You had to hide all the real things about yourself. You had to appear tough, even when people hurt you with their words or the thoughts you could hear. You became steel. That scares other people, but for me, I lo
ve that I get to see past the steel. It makes me feel less alone.”
“You’re never alone. Not anymore, Riyah.”
“I will be if you quit fighting. So don’t. I don’t want to go back to the way it was. I want you to kiss me again. I want you to touch me, hug me, and when my world is crashing and burning around me, I want you to be the one to tell me everything will be okay. Promise me.”
“A promise like that should be made in person. What are you wearing?”
Baffled, she looked down at her oversize T-shirt. “Uuuh…sexy negligee?”
“Liar. Take off whatever you’re wearing.”
“Even my pink and black polka dot panties? I should tell you now I’m terrible at sex talk.”
“No, Badass Princess, you just did good. I can imagine those polka dot panties. They’re already way better than the brown ones.”
“Soft beige. And I’m wearing an extra-large, brown, threadbare root beer shirt that I bought with ten Pepsi bottle caps a decade ago.”
“I’m getting a boner.”