by Eva Chase
“I think we can handle that, Princess,” Marco said with a grim smile. He brought his hands together, one clapping over the other in a fist. “There are an awful lot of things I’d like to find out from that asshole.”
Nate and his guard marched the rogue out of the cell, Nate holding the chains for the prisoner’s left arm and leg and the guard those for the right. The dog shifter walked sluggishly. He glanced over his shoulder at me with a flash of the whites of his eyes. Nervous.
We tramped back up the stairs. Just as we reached the hall, the rogue wrenched at his arms. He threw himself forward and around, putting all his strength into breaking his captors’ hold.
Fortunately for us, Nate and his guard had plenty of strength on their side, and the rogue’s was muted by the drug. Nate wrestled the dog shifter still with a quick jerk of the chains. Alice stepped closer, her hands fisted.
“You can walk, or we can carry you,” Nate said. “Your choice.”
The rogue grimaced at him. Then he started walking again.
Our strange procession took a sharp turn and ended up out behind the estate house in a small yard of hard-packed earth and tufts of grass. “This field is usually for outdoor sports and training,” Nate told me over his shoulder. “We’ll have plenty of room. And we can make use of this.”
He hauled the rogue over to a rectangle of metal jutting out of the earth. A mini-sized football goal, I realized after a moment.
Nate and the guard attached the chains to the sturdy posts. The rogue tugged at his bindings, but only feebly. Then he shrank down as close to the ground as he could get in a cringing pose. I guessed he’d given up.
I walked up to him until I was just a few feet away. He just looked at the ground.
“I won’t be doing this to torture you, but I don’t get the impression it feels all that great either,” I said. “If you want to skip that part, you could start answering questions now. Tell us why you and your ‘friends’ attacked this estate.”
Not a peep.
Fine. We’d do this the dragon way.
I backed up a couple steps to make sure I didn’t trample him as I shifted. With a nonchalance that was becoming easier every time I had to do this, I pulled off my shirt and kicked off my pants. I’d already ruined enough clothes with impromptu shifts over the last few weeks. The warm evening air washed over my bare skin. I leaned forward and let myself fall into the shift.
Reaching down and bringing forth the dragon side of me was coming easier every time too. I didn’t have to struggle at all now. The scales and talons were waiting just on the other side of my skin, itching to break free. I opened myself up to them, and, with an exhilarating tingling, my dragon shape expanded through my body.
Literally. My neck extended, my eyes sharpening, my teeth rising into points. My limbs steadied beneath my lengthening torso. A barbed tail lashed out behind me, and vast wings sprouted from my back. I stretched them over me, taking a little of the edge off the urge to soar up into the sky. I wasn’t needed up there right now. My business was right here on the ground.
Flames tickled the base of my throat. A deeper heat filled my dragon lungs. I dragged in a breath, sensing the difference between the two flames I could cast down. The scorching destructive burn of my usual dragon fire—and the bright, crisp blaze that could cut through to the truth. As much as part of me wanted to unleash the first for what the dog shifter had done here, it was the second I drew into my mouth.
With a hot gush, I let those violet flames pour down over the rogue.
A yelp broke from his throat. He thrashed at his chains, an incoherent mumbling spilling past his lips.
For a second I thought my power hadn’t worked. That somehow this mangy shifter had enough will to resist where even the queen of the fae hadn’t. Then his mouth burst wide open to answer my earlier request.
“We knew the dragon shifter was coming here with all of the alphas,” the rogue gasped out. “The kin-groups are starting to rally. We had to show that even with the alphas united, we rogues have more power. We can destroy you if we want. The alphas no longer get to call all the shots. They have to bend to our will.”
Yeah, we’d see about that. As my flames streamed on down, Nate stepped forward, his arms crossed over his brawny chest. “Are there more of your group nearby? Are they planning another attack?”
“There’s a large bunch of us gathering in the south. I don’t know exactly where. I wasn’t told, so that I couldn’t tell you. And we’ll keep attacking until the alphas and the dragon shifters no longer control shifter kind.”
“What exactly do you think is going to be so great about that situation?” Marco put in.
A whine crept into the dog shifter’s voice. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it much. But I don’t like that we all have to kowtow to your rules, and everyone who doesn’t is kept on the outside. If there were no alphas, we’d all be the same, making our own rules.”
Somehow I didn’t think it’d happen exactly like that. Whoever was in charge of the rogue group, they must be awfully persuasive.
An uncomfortable prickling was starting to fill my lungs. I couldn’t sustain these flames for much longer. I scraped my talons against the ground in what I hoped the alphas would realize was a warning.
“How many of you are there still?” Aaron asked quickly.
“Maybe twenty that I’ve met. Dozens of rogues throughout the country. We recruit more of them every day.” The dog shifter clutched his head, shaking it but unable to stay silent.
“What do you have planned as your next moves?” West said.
“I don’t know. We don’t know our instructions until right before we act.”
My chest was outright aching now. I aimed one final blast of violet fire at the rogue, and Nate got in one last question.
“How did you get past the guards to break into the estate?”
The rogue chuckled. Actually chuckled, as if the question was funny. “Oh,” he said. “We didn’t have any trouble there. We had someone happy to help us. A raccoon shifter named Keith—one of the guards. He let us right in, your precious kin did.”
Chapter 4
Ren
The truth-seeking flames drained me faster than any of my other shifter powers. I tried to hold on a few seconds longer, to give my alphas a chance to push the rogue for more answers, but my body crumpled. The fire snapped out. I collapsed in on myself, into my human form.
Aaron was at my side in an instant, handing me my clothes. His jaw was tight. As I reached for my shirt, Nate lunged past us. He shifted into his grizzly form, charging up to the rogue.
The dog shifter recoiled instinctively. But when Nate opened his jaws threateningly, he sagged into the hold of his chains.
“Go right ahead,” he said, managing to sound both disdainful and resigned. “Chew my throat out. I don’t care. What else are you going to do to me anyway?”
A good question. I glanced at the other alphas as I dressed. Marco’s eyebrows were raised, his mouth slanted at a crooked angle. Frustration smoldered in West’s eyes.
Nate let out a huff of breath and snapped at the rogue’s neck. But he didn’t let his teeth even graze the skin. He swung his massive form around, shifting back into a human.
“Take him away,” he said to the guard with a jab of his hand. “I don’t want him in my sight unless we need him again.”
“What about the raccoon shifter he was talking about?” I said as the guard moved to drag the rogue out of the yard. Alice sprang to help him, since Nate was obviously too agitated to join in. “If someone here helped the rogues, shouldn’t we—”
“It doesn’t matter,” West said flatly. “One of the guards who died was named Keith. Unless that’s a particularly common name among the kin here, I’m going to assume the rogues made sure their ‘ally’ couldn’t tell any tales.”
“He got what he deserved, then,” Nate rasped. He stalked back and forth across the yard as he tugged on his shir
t. He’d destroyed his jeans in his hasty shift. If the situation hadn’t been so tense, I might have enjoyed the view. “Traitor. Betraying his own people like that.” He ended the sentence with an agonized growl. “One of my people.”
Aaron turned to him. “Nate,” my eagle shifter said.
Before he could continue, the other alpha shook his head with a jerk. “I need to think. We’ll talk more in the morning. Give me the night to make some sense of this. If I can.” His gaze found me. “I’m sorry, Ren. This isn’t at all how I’d have wanted your first night here to go.”
“I know,” I said softly. It killed me, seeing him in so much pain. “If you need anything from me...”
“For now I’m not going to be good company to anyone.”
He swiveled on his feet and strode toward the estate house.
* * *
My bed felt too empty when I woke up in my room. I rolled over and stretched my arms across the soft mattress, feeling the vast space on either side of me. Just like at the avian estate, the dragon shifter’s bed was sized for five. For me and my mates. But none of those mates had spent the night this time.
The breeze drifting through my half-open window was warm, but I shivered as I sat up. The rogue dog shifter’s chuckle echoed in my head. He let us right in, your precious kin did.
What could have compelled one of the shifter kin to help an attack against their own kind? And if one could be persuaded, who was to say others hadn’t been?
No wonder Nate and the others had been so upset. I was only just starting to understand the bonds between kin and their alphas, and even I was horrified.
Hopefully Nate had calmed down and cleared his head by now. I might not understand the situation completely, but I knew enough to realize we had to talk and come up with some sort of plan of action around this new revelation.
Also like the avian estate, my suite and those assigned to the alphas were down a separate hall from the rest of the house, with a branch that led to a private common room. This one had a view into a stand of redwoods. A long oak table stood at one end next to a sideboard laid out with breakfast foods. At the other, closer to the window, was a cluster of armchairs and couches.
The smells of fried eggs and sausages turned sour in my mouth at the sight of my gathered alphas.
Nate was bent over in one of the armchairs, his head in his large hands. Marco was lounging in another, ever the casual cat, but I could see the tension wound all through his sleekly muscled body. Aaron stood behind one of the couches, his hands braced on the top, as if he couldn’t bear to sit down. Alice shadowed him, standing by the window. And West stopped his pacing between the sitting area and the dining table to scowl at me.
“You’re here,” he said. “We can finally talk.”
I could have protested that no one had bothered to wake me up to tell me they needed me, but I wasn’t in the mood to bicker with him.
“I’m here,” I agreed, walking over to the sitting area. “Do we know anything new?”
Nate shook his head. He raked his fingers through his dark hair and straightened up without quite meeting my eyes. “I still can’t believe it. My kin don’t turn on each other. We agree to work together to each other’s benefit, despite our differences. That’s the whole basis of being disparate kin.”
“Clearly it’s not,” Marco said. He might have been aiming for a teasing tone, but it fell flat. Nate glared at him.
As the bear shifter opened his mouth, Aaron cut him off. “It isn’t just the disparate kin,” he said, the rasp in his dry voice more pronounced than usual. “The owl shifter who attacked Ren at my estate was kin too.”
My jaw went slack. “What? But she—”
She’d had no kin mark, I meant to say. Then the memory snapped into focus in my head. The avian woman who’d attacked me had been wearing gloves. I’d thought it was odd at first, and then I’d been so distracted by the attack and her story afterward that I hadn’t thought to question it.
But Aaron had talked to her more, after we’d found out she’d been coerced into going along with the rogue group through the threats against her son. He was her alpha. Of course he’d have known.
Everyone’s gaze had shot to the eagle shifter. “And why is this the first we’re hearing about that?” Marco asked.
Aaron’s hands flexed against the top of the couch. “I was hoping it was an isolated incident,” he said thickly. “That the rogues had gotten lucky and manage to find one rare kin member they had the means to manipulate. Do you think I wanted to say my kin were untrustworthy? But now I have to think our kin aren’t so difficult to manipulate after all.”
My heart squeezed. The avian alpha had told me before that the other kin-groups often looked down on his people. Saw them as something lesser because of their forms. I wished he’d told me everything, but that attempt on my life had only happened yesterday. His reluctance made sense.
“It’s not about kin being trustworthy or not,” Alice jumped in, coming to stand beside him. “The rogues are still behind all of this. The rogues are still the ones we have to deal with.”
“I don’t know,” West said with an edge in his voice. “When we stayed in my kin’s village, the rogues didn’t get any help from my people. So maybe we can make a few judgments about where to trust and where not to.”
“This is the first time any of my kin has betrayed me in the sixteen years I’ve been alpha,” Nate said, getting to his feet. He glared at the canine alpha. “And I never heard of it happening before my rule either. We’ll see what happens on your estate, won’t we? If we ever get there, and you canines don’t throw the rest of us off to be anarchists or whatever you’ve got planned.”
“I do what’s best for my kin first,” West snapped. “That’s what pack loyalty is.”
“Hey!” I broke in, raising my hands. I stepped between them, close enough to Nate to make him step back. I glowered at West. “We’ve got enough problems without you guys taking jabs at each other. From now on we have to be extra careful even among kin. Stay on guard. I don’t think any of us should go off alone. It’s mostly me they want to hurt, but they killed the alphas last time too. I want all of us safe. From the rogues, and from each other.”
I shot Nate a look too. He dropped back into his chair, his mouth twisting. “You’re right. I’ll watch my temper.”
West looked faintly chagrined, which was about as good as I could hope from him. “All right. What other brilliant plans do you have to share with us, Sparks?”
Oh, great. Another chance for him to judge me and find me wanting. I groped for a reasonable answer. “The rogue we questioned said a bunch of his group is assembling in the south, didn’t he? We need to find them and take them down before they can launch some new surprise attack on us.”
“Great. That’s the what. The tricky part is the how. Got anything on that front?”
“Wolf boy,” Marco said from his chair. “Heel. Unless you’ve got some genius master plan, I don’t think you should be knocking our Princess of Flames’s contributions.” He gave me a hesitant smile.
“Before anything else, we need to know where the rogues are,” Aaron said, cutting off any snarky remarks West might have added. “This is partly my fault for not warning the rest of you sooner that our kin might be worthy of suspicion. I’ll go. I can survey the area quickly in eagle form while drawing relatively little attention. I’ll be able to spot their movements without getting close enough for them to know I’m anything other than your average bird.”
The corner of his mouth crooked slightly upward. His guilt shone in his clear blue eyes. I swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t go on your own either. I can come with you.”
“As a dragon?” he said gently. “You can’t let people see you soaring around all over the place, Serenity. And you’re still working on your endurance. It may take hours, even days, for me to locate them, if I do at all.”
I frowned, but I couldn’t argue with his logic. And even if neither o
f those points had been true, the rogues would scatter the second they saw a dragon swooping by. We needed them to think we weren’t on to them so we could turn the tables on them. Create our own surprise to get the upper hand.
“I won’t have either of those problems,” Alice said. “You’ll have some company.”
Aaron turned to his sister. “I want you to stay here with Serenity. She needs protection more than I do.”
“She’s got these three lunkheads looking after her already,” Alice protested, motioning to the other alphas. The insult didn’t seem to bother Nate, but West’s lip curled in distaste and Marco looked vaguely offended.
“Lunkheads who can’t spend ten minutes together without arguing,” Aaron said lightly. “I’m thinking she might want a break from the guys here and there. Please, Alice. I’m not planning on taking any unnecessary risks. I won’t engage the rogues—not even if I see one alone. It’s a simple reconnaissance mission.”
“Can you at least come back for the night?” I put in. “Report back anything you’ve seen, even if it isn’t much? You’re going to have to sleep sometime anyway.”
Aaron hesitated and then nodded. “That’s fair. I’d rather not cause you more worry than I need to.”
He came around the couch and walked up to me. When he touched my cheek, I raised my face instinctively to his. He kissed me fleetingly, but in the brief moment our lips met, all I wanted was to cling to him and refuse to let him go. His salty, ocean-breeze smell wafted over me, settling just some of my nerves.
“I’ll see you tonight, Serenity,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes. Hearing my full name in his measured voice still made my heart thump. It was only because he sounded so sure that I managed to let go of him.
Alice came up beside me as her brother headed out. She touched my shoulder. “I wanted to go with him because we’ll be stronger together, not because I don’t think he can handle himself. He’ll deal with those rogues if he needs to.”
“Yeah,” I said. But what if the rogues in question had guns?