by Eva Chase
Aaron drew in a breath. “A band of rogue shifters attacked your family one night, sixteen years ago,” he said quietly. “As far as anyone knows, their goal was to kill you, your mother, and your sisters—all of the dragon shifters—and the four alphas, who were there with you that night. Your fathers died trying to stop them from getting to you. The rogues caught your sisters and murdered them too. Your mother barely made it out alive with you.”
I’d been braced for his explanation, but the words rocked me anyway. My stomach churned. Nate offered his arm, and I scooted closer to him, letting him pull me into an embrace. The reassurance of his strong body barely took the edge off my horror.
“And then she ran,” I filled in. “All the way to New York City. She was afraid they’d try again.” That was why she’d tried to keep us so invisible. Why she’d been so scared she’d felt she had to block my memories and my powers.
“From what you’ve told us, we have to assume that’s the case,” Aaron said.
“And I for one can’t blame her,” Marco put in. “She kept you safe—and hopefully herself too. She did what she had to do.” He shot West a sharp look as if daring him to argue, but the wolf shifter had withdrawn to the doorway, his face shadowed.
“But why?” I burst out. “Why would anyone want to hurt us like that?” The remembered cry rang in my ears—the horrible pain in it. The image of my sisters’ faces... Neither of them could have been older than ten. And these rogues had just slaughtered them?
“No one knows for sure,” Nate said, rubbing my arm. “Your fathers and your mother killed a bunch of the rogues defending themselves, but of course the dead can’t say anything. The ones who survived got out of there before anyone else realized what was going on. They were never caught.”
“Most likely it was a power grab,” Aaron said. “Most of the shifters who refuse to ally themselves with their kin-group are carrying a lot of bitterness and anger. They don’t like the way the rules are made or who carries them out. Maybe they thought they could set themselves up as the new alphas. Maybe they just wanted to sow disorder. If we’re lucky, we’ll never encounter them again, so we’ll never need to know.”
“But if that group is still out there, and there’s no reason to think they aren’t, the first thing they’ll want to do if they find out you’re alive is finish the job they started,” Marco said in a darker tone than usual. He lifted his chin toward Nate. “Which is why bear boy has gone into overprotective mode.”
“I don’t think there’s anything over about it,” Nate muttered. “Do you see why I’d rather you stayed here, Ren? No one except us and Marco’s few people here know we’ve even found you yet. The longer we can keep it that way, the more time we can buy before we might have to deal with the rogues again.”
Right. More time for me to come into the powers that seemed stubbornly locked inside me, so I’d have any hope at all of defending myself.
A shiver ran through me. There were people out there who hated me so much they’d wanted to kill me when I’d been a helpless five-year-old.
And if they succeeded this time, what would happen to the shifters then? If I was the last dragon, and I died without passing on that line... My kind would be extinct. There’d be nothing left tying the kin-groups together.
My sense of shifter society was still vague, but that thought chilled me to the core. I wrapped my hand around Nate’s. I did understand why he was so worried, why Aaron had argued in favor of caution too, why Marco hadn’t spoken up for me. They needed me... and the alphas before them had already failed once.
I needed them too. I felt a connection to all four of the men around me, humming through the air. Even as the chill prickled through me, that connection steadied me.
I wasn’t alone anymore. I had them now, like I was meant to. I couldn’t keep running.
Mom had taken my memories, but not forever. I knew what I was now, and I needed to keep remembering.
I was a dragon.
I pushed myself away from Nate, with a squeeze of his hand to tell him it wasn’t a rejection. “I get it,” I said, standing up. “I don’t blame you for worrying. But I’m still coming. It’s the path my mother left for me to follow, and I’m not letting anyone stop me.”
CHAPTER 12
Nate
OUR DRAGON SHIFTER was so strong. She sat squeezed between me and Marco in the back of Aaron’s sedan as he drove the bunch of us into the city, her back straight and her jaw set. But I’d taken her hand a few minutes after we’d gotten in, and she hadn’t let go of mine since. Her slim fingers stayed twined with mine, gripping tight.
They felt so fragile, but I knew the rest of her wasn’t. The news about her family’s murders had shocked her—that was obvious. I was never going to forget the way the blood had drained from her face as Aaron had told her the story, as if she were dying alongside her long-gone sisters and fathers. But she hadn’t let her emotions hold her back. She wasn’t letting anything stop her from being right here with us to face whatever waited ahead.
I had to admit, I hated that Ren was here. My hackles had risen the second we’d crossed the city’s boundaries. I hadn’t scented a vampire yet, but the whole place stunk of metal and burnt gasoline. Even if there hadn’t been any bloodsuckers around, this wasn’t where shifters were meant to go. I had to admire Ren too, though. She might not have remembered much yet, but she was still every inch a dragon.
As soon as we’d figured out what had happened to her mother, we could get on with our proper lives. The way we’d all been waiting to for the last sixteen years. Alphas and dragon shifter, all the kin-groups growing in harmony.
As long as the other alphas didn’t screw it up. West sat in the front passenger seat with that perpetual cloud over him, his expression grim. “Isn’t there a way to avoid all this traffic?” he muttered to Aaron as we crept down a jammed street. He’d been so cold to Ren the entire time. How could he really think that pushing her aside, throwing away the legacy of the dragon shifters, was the right move?
And Marco... You could never really trust a cat. He lounged on the other side of the backseat with his elbow propped against the window. “Heel, doggie,” he teased. “We’ll get there when we get there.” Which only made West’s frown turn into a scowl. The feline alpha had welcomed Ren, sure, but he also took a little too much enjoyment from stirring up trouble.
“I can turn onto a street that should be less congested up here,” Aaron said calmly. The avian alpha seemed steady enough, but the avians didn’t mingle much with the rest of us anyway. I wasn’t sure how to read him.
The bear-kin and those we ruled over had never wavered in our devotion to shifter law. I would stand by Ren no matter what happened. At least she could be sure of that.
I ran my thumb over the back of her hand, and she leaned a little more of her weight on me. I resisted the urge to nuzzle her hair and take in her lovely scent. For now I had to stay focused on protecting her. All the other pleasures of having a mate could wait until our business here was finished.
But I was looking forward to them even more now that I’d met her.
Aaron drew the car to a stop. “From here, we need to go on foot,” he said. Ren looked up at me with a smile that sent a bolt of desire through my chest. Resolve coiled around it.
She was leaving this city alive, or I’d die here too.
Ren
I braced my hand against the wall of the tunnel, and my fingers came away damp and gritty. My nose wrinkled at the sensation. The stairs we were tramping down were narrow, the air dank, and the space dark except for the bobbing beam of Aaron’s flashlight as he led the way.
I’d never been really claustrophobic, but this place gave me the creeps. Nowhere to run or jump.
Nowhere to stretch the wings I couldn’t convince to rise out of me yet.
At least I had my best friend with me again. Kylie squeezed my other hand where she was walking shoulder-to-shoulder with me and shot me a grin. She seemed mor
e excited about this expedition than I was. Maybe because she hadn’t just heard a story about practically her entire family being slaughtered.
“Do you have any idea what we’re going to find down here?” she murmured. “I mean, why your mom wanted to send you to that symbol?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know any more than you do at this point.” About my mom’s plans, at least. The second we’d met up by the subway entrance, Kylie had asked how I was, but I hadn’t mentioned what I’d learned about my past. It seemed like a lot to dump on even my best friend. I was still processing the facts myself.
I must have seen more of the violence than the brief fragment of memory that had come to me, but none of the rest had come back yet, even after hearing the story. I wasn’t sure if that was for the best or if I’d rather have had those images to examine. I could almost sense them, like sharks weaving by beneath water too dark to penetrate in my mind. They were going to surface sometime, and when they did, it was going to hurt.
“Quite an adventure,” Kylie said, and nudged me with her elbow. “You looked like you were getting pretty close with the big guy. Now he’s a hunk and a half.”
She must have meant Nate. He was at the back of our procession, several feet behind us, making sure no unfriendly intruders snuck up on us. My face warmed a little. I was getting used to the idea that all four of these guys were meant to be my partners, but I knew it was going to sound kind of weird to anyone else. Anyone human, at least.
But it wasn’t as if I’d be able to hide it from Kylie very long. I didn’t want to.
“Actually...” I said. “I’ve been getting pretty close with all of them. Well, the three of them who don’t spend the whole time glaring daggers at me.” I glowered briefly at West’s lean back where he was stalking along just behind Aaron. “It turns out that’s the thing with dragon shifters. We’re supposed to, er, bond with all of the alphas. It’s, like, a political decree.”
We followed the guys past a door with squeaky hinges and into a wider tunnel that was just as dark and dank. Aaron’s light wavered over the curved walls of the long-unused subway route.
Kylie’s eyebrows had shot up. “Wait. When you say bond, you mean in a fully bodily way, right?”
The flush in my cheeks deepened. “That’s the idea. We haven’t gotten that far yet.”
I braced myself for shock or disgust, but Kylie just laughed. She held up her hand for a high five. “You go, girl. If I had a chance to handle four guys like this at the same time, you’d better believe I’d go for it. What a way to give up your V-card!”
In that moment, I wished I hadn’t admitted to her that I’d never gone all the way with a guy. “I’m pretty sure it won’t be all of them at the same time,” I said. So far they’d only reached out to me one at a time. The thought of more than one of them kissing me, touching me, together sent a sudden warmth through my body.
Maybe I didn’t entirely hate the idea. But this wasn’t really the time to be exploring that.
Kylie’s expression turned a shade more serious. “You are okay, aren’t you? Are you sure you can trust everything they’ve been telling you?”
“Yeah. I remember enough that it all makes sense. It’s overwhelming, but at the same time, I feel more like myself the more I find out.” I paused. “You don’t think it’s totally crazy, do you? I mean, shifters and vampires and who the hell knows what else?”
“Please. Of course it’s crazy. But that doesn’t mean I can’t believe it. I saw Hunk-and-a-Half turn into a bear with my very own eyes. And I know you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. That’s why I need you around.”
She looped her arm around me to give me a quick sideways hug. The gesture sent a pang through my chest. How much longer would I be around? When—if—I did manage to take on the full role of dragon shifter, I couldn’t hang out in Brooklyn with Kylie all the time.
We could figure that out later. After we’d figured out whatever it was Mom had wanted me to understand.
Aaron’s voice rang out. “It’s here.” He was pointing the flashlight at a spot on one of the walls. The rest of us picked our way closer over the cracked cement and abandoned tracks. The air shifted, sending a cool chill over my arms. I rubbed at the goose bumps.
The wall had been built out of interlocking stones. The circle of light illuminated a rectangular one that had been carved with a symbol like the one in my locket: an upside-down flame in the midst of a spiral. My heartbeat kicked up a notch.
“That’s really it,” I said.
I glanced around, as if Mom might step out of the shadows now that I was here. As if she could have been waiting down here all this time, or even just since my birthday.
No one stirred in the darkness except West’s tense form. Then Marco and Nate prowled closer to the stone. Nate prodded it first before stepping back.
Marco tested its edges with his more lithe fingers. “It doesn’t seem all that eager to offer up its secrets,” he remarked.
“They’re not secrets meant for you,” I said. This was why I’d insisted on coming. I walked up to the wall, into the glow of the flashlight. Up close, the symbol sent a tingle through my body. It drew my hands to it. I raised my arms and pressed my palms to either side of the flame, the way it seemed to want.
The stone jolted toward me with a scraping sound, and my mind cracked apart. The sensations of the tunnel washed away in a wave of memories.
I was a little girl, dashing through the forest to find a hiding spot before one of my daddies finished counting. The lush green smells of late spring surrounded me. I ducked behind a tree and swallowed a giggle.
Me and my sisters danced around our mother in time with the pop song she’d started playing on her old boombox. She grasped each of our hands in turn, spinning us around. Our feet pattered over the wooden floor.
We sat in a row along the edge of a platform where Mama was holding audience. The edge was high enough and my legs short enough that I could swing my feet without touching the floor. The shifters approached our mother one by one. We whispered to each other, guessing each shifter’s animal by scent and mannerisms. “That one’s got to be a badger.” “No, no, I’d say raccoon.”
We were running down the hall, Mama urging us faster. My pulse thundered in my ears. We had to get outside, outside where Mama could shift and fight. An immense lioness sprang from a doorway, snapping her jaws around my sister’s arm with a burst of bright red blood. A shriek broke from my throat.
And on and on. The fractured memories hit me as if from inside and out at the same time, bubbling up through my head and pouring into me from the stone. I was drowning in them.
Then they stuttered to a halt. My mind went blank. My mother’s voice washed over me, soft and lilting.
I’m so sorry it had to be this way, Serenity. I did the best I could to keep you safe. Follow the crystal—
There was a sound like an intake of breath. It jerked me back to reality.
I was standing in front of the subway tunnel wall. My fingers clutched the cool stone slab the flame symbol was carved into. It had popped out of the wall, revealing a dark hollow. The alphas and Kylie still stood around me, waiting.
My legs wobbled. Aaron leapt to my side to place a steadying hand on my shoulder. I leaned into him, trying to make sense of my swirling thoughts.
“I remember,” I said. But that wasn’t totally true. My head felt stuffed full of the early childhood I’d just recovered, but the memories jostled against each other with ragged edges. They didn’t entirely feel like mine yet. There were still gaps and fuzzy bits. Whatever Mom had done to suppress them, it hadn’t been an exact magic.
“What’s in there?” Kylie asked.
I focused my gaze on the hollow. Something pale and flat lay on the rough surface inside. I set the stone down and tugged the hidden object out, my fingertips sliding over a polished surface.
It was a clear circle, like glass but with a brighter sparkle, twice the width of my pa
lm. A faint pattern of lines and dots was etched into its surface. I squinted at it, trying to make sense of them, but they didn’t form letters or even definite shapes.
Follow the crystal, my mother’s voice had said. I guessed this was the crystal. How the hell was I supposed to follow it?
I swiveled, turning it in my hands as if that might trigger some kind of pull, and a tapping sounded farther down the tunnel. My body froze. The guys whipped around to peer in the same direction.
Several figures approached us, materializing out of the shadows. They stopped at the edge of Aaron’s light. Nine men and women, all slim with deep-set eyes. Their skin ranged from pale to darker brown, but all of them had a slightly sallow look to them, as if they’d been too long out of the sun.
Oh. Understanding prickled over me at the same time as their papery acidic smell reached my nose. I’d never met one of their kind before, but I knew exactly what I was looking at all the same.
It wasn’t vampires who’d threatened my family before, but it sure as hell was now.
CHAPTER 13
Ren
ONE OF THE vampires opened his narrow mouth, tasting the air with a snake-like swipe of his tongue. Thin fangs glinted behind his lips. I repressed a shudder.
“Shifters,” he said, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “You’re far from home, aren’t you? This is our territory. There are penalties for infringing on it, as you should well know.”
Smarmy bastards, weren’t they? I stepped back, closer to the wall, but my hackles had risen. If they were threatening my alphas, they were going to have to contend with me as well.
“We didn’t think there was any harm in taking a little stroll,” Marco tossed out. “Checking out the sights, enjoying a change in scenery.”
A couple of the vampires glanced around as if seriously wondering whether shifters thought subway tunnels were scenic. The one who’d spoken to us sneered.