Dragon Born 1: The Shifter's Hoard

by Dante King

  I’d seen Carli with cat ears and a tail before, but by the time she landed on top of Mom’s couch, she was a nightmare of fur and teeth. Electricity crackled along her coat, the powers of the Raiju filling her as she gave her soul over to the beast within.

  The leader of the pack took one look at her and jumped out of the way. His two flunkies filled in the gap, attacking Carli from either side in a desperate attempt to outflank her.

  She wasn’t having it.

  Carli moved like a lightning strike, burying her clawed fist in one wolf shifter’s stomach. The other bit down on her shoulder, only to get a mouthful of sparks as the Raiju’s electricity powers infiltrated the shifter’s body.

  I caught the gun. The metal felt faintly warm in my hands, almost like a living thing.

  Silver bullets, I thought, remembering the loading process Carli had done in the backseat. We all know what those do to werewolves…

  I raised the pistol and aimed at the second wolf shifter, intending to turn Carli’s fight from two-on-one into something more fair. But I didn’t get the chance.

  Because just then, the leader of the pack hit me in the face.

  The carpet and the roof of Mom’s condo switched places. Blood leaked from a shallow cut along my cheek where I’d landed in some of the broken glass from the coffee table. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, but I managed to stagger to my feet.

  The lead wolf shifter stood over me, seven feet tall if he was an inch. He stood upright like a man, retaining enough control over his form to turn himself into the classical Hollywood version of a werewolf. Drool dribbled down his jaw, his yellow fangs as long and sharp as paring knives.

  “Pathetic little mageling,” the assassin chuckled. His wolf muzzle distorted the words, turning them into a barely-understandable growl. “Would you like to throw some more furniture at me before I tear your throat out?”

  The gun. Where was the gun? It had been in my hands a moment ago.

  The glint of metal caught my eye in the midst of the broken glass—I’d dropped the pistol a few feet to my left.

  I could have reached for it, but the wolf would be on me before I could pull the trigger. Instead, I pictured the gun sailing upward into my fist and reached out a hand, praying my powers were strong enough to act fast.

  An instant later, I felt the pistol against my palm, and fired.

  The fucking wolf saw it coming. An inhuman laugh erupted from his lupine throat as he ducked to the side, anticipating the shot. The silver bullet sailed over its head, ricocheting off a dish sitting in the drying rack and pinging against the refrigerator.

  A lazy sideswipe from the assassin knocked the pistol out of my hands.

  “Parlor tricks,” the wolf growled. “That’s all you mages are good for—”

  The wolf shifter reached for me, but suddenly there was a steel blossom in its wrist. The monster shrank back with a cry as Soojin entered the fray, swinging the corkscrew of bone she’d had strapped to her hip in a wide arc.

  “Derek, get back! Run!”

  Fuck that! The apothecary might have been thinking about Raya, and how she’d want her son to be safe. But my new friends were fighting for their lives, and it wasn’t in my nature to abandon them.

  Soojin stabbed at the creature’s eyes with the twisted spear of bone. It struck a glancing blow off the wolf’s eyebrow, leaving a deep gash in his flesh. Blood trickled from the wound, leaving him blinded in one eye.

  He twisted away, and Soojin tried to use the moment to snatch the silver dagger from the wolf’s wrist. A glance across the room confirmed that the other was still buried in one of the assassin’s throats—the man hadn’t been able to transform before Soojin’s weapon took him, so his all too human form lay bleeding on the carpet while Carli fought off the other two shifters.

  Soojin’s fingers closed around the dagger’s hilt and tugged. It gave—but then caught against bone. Pain flared up the wolf’s arm—pain that told him exactly where Soojin had gone.

  Oh no.

  The monster wrapped its free hand around Soojin’s throat and lifted her off her feet. The apothecary stabbed out with her twisted bone spear again and again, seeking the wolf’s other eye, before the villain plucked the pale weapon from her fingers.

  “Using a mage weapon against a shifter,” the wolf rumbled, smashing the device to dust beneath its heel. “You must be desperate indeed, healer…”

  Writhing in the creature’s grip, Soojin locked eyes with me. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

  “Run, Derek!” she begged, putting every ounce of emotion for Raya’s boy that she could into the request. “Save yourself, young man!”

  The wolf grinned savagely.

  Behind him, one of his cronies caught a lucky swipe and socked Carli in the stomach, doubling her over as she landed on her knees. The two shifters stepped back, claws at the ready as they prepared to tear her apart.

  We’d lost. The assassins would kill Soojin and Carli, the same way they’d killed my mother. There was nothing I could do to save them.

  I just wasn’t strong enough.

  I didn’t have enough time to learn my powers.

  The wolves circled their prey, moving in for the kill.

  I dropped to my knees.

  And roared.

  All of it—the rage, the fear, the despair—coursed through my veins like an electric current. Dimly, I felt my features beginning to shift, but it felt like something happening far away and to someone else. As I rose to my knees, the world quaking around me, I only had space for one emotion.

  Fury.

  I was on the leader in an instant—it was as if I’d teleported across the room, moving from one side to the other with no frames in between. The wolf shifter’s eyes widened with shock at the same moment I slugged him in the face, his nose giving beneath my fist with a sickening crack.

  Soojin dropped from the monster’s grip, coughing and sputtering. If there’d been anything like a human being left inside of me, I’d have stopped fighting and checked on her to make sure she was alright. But the fire inside of me burnt out everything, consuming every nice impulse in my chest to leave me a hollow shell of pure, bloody vengeance.

  I shoved the leader of the wolf shifters backward and grinned as he fell onto his ass. I pounced on top of him, pinning him to the glass-strewn carpet. The monster rolled this way and that, struggling to get away, but I was too strong. Glossy black claws held his forearms tight, keeping his face just below mine.

  I opened my mouth as new knowledge exploded in my brain, filling me with the ability to take action. To reach in and activate powers I didn’t even realize I had.

  Flames poured from my open mouth.

  The fire consumed the screaming wolf shifter. All his bravado had vanished—these were no longer the actions of a fighter trying to win a battle but a desperate animal trying to escape with its life. The wolf shifter kicked with all his might, struggling to throw me off-balance, and succeeded in giving himself a tiny bit of space to roll away. In retrospect, it was the only thing that kept me from burning the whole condo to the ground.

  As he raced for the balcony, I grabbed him from behind and bit into his throat. Hot, arterial blood poured down my jaws as my teeth sank deep into his flesh. He knew in that instant he was dead and stopped trying to get away. His claws reached for my eyes, trying to gouge them out to at least save the rest of his shifter buddies from my wrath.

  Too much of his strength left him. The massive wolf sank to the carpet, blood pouring like a bib down his chest as the flow inside his arteries began to ebb. He was stone dead.

  I kept on biting until I’d cut all the way through his neck. My whole body was covered in blood; I could have bathed in it. I grabbed his severed head between my jaws and tossed it across the room, aiming at one of the shifters still standing over Carli.

  At the sight of their boss’s head rolling over the carpet, the remaining two shifters lost their nerve. Both of them abandoned t
he Raiju entirely, racing for the closed door leading to the balcony like it held their only salvation.

  As they passed me, I grabbed the slower one, my claws digging into his chest from behind. With savage strength, I drilled into his flesh with my long nails, popping ribs out of their sockets with a sound like bubble wrap. The wolf screamed and screamed—then stopped as I ripped its rib cage wide open, spilling the contents of its torso out onto the carpet.

  The final assassin barely spared a backward glance for his fallen comrades. He snapped the lock holding the balcony door closed with a single swipe, then prepared to jump into the night. Tail tucked between his legs, he’d have fled back to whatever clan had sent him, reporting that all but him had been killed by a dangerous new shifter.

  That’s what would have happened, anyway, if Soojin’s dagger hadn’t taken him in the back of the neck and punched all the way through his throat.

  To my surprise, it was Carli who’d done the deed. The Raiju plucked the dagger from the dead man and tossed it with all her might, sending the final shifter crumpling to the carpet to gurgle through his death throes.

  As Carli transformed back to her human form (save for her ears and tail), her face filled with horror and awe. Part of my brain moved so sluggishly that I wanted to ask her and Soojin what they were staring at. Then I remembered the blood all over me and something inside my brain snapped.

  The rage that had filled me flowed away like a dam bursting.

  I sank to my knees, the world collapsing inward, as I landed on the carpet with a heavy thump, my arms and hands losing their silhouettes.

  I could hear Soojin and Carli yelling at me as I sank into the black.

  Chapter 9

  When I woke up, Soojin and Carli were standing over me. Relief flooded both of their faces as my eyes opened, and I dimly wondered how long I’d been out. I felt like I’d been run over by a mack truck—what the hell happened to me?

  Memory came back in a rush, and I sat bolt upright.

  “Mom,” I yelled, already crawling toward the bedroom. “Is she…?”

  Soojin kept me from rising to my feet.

  “We searched the apartment after you… dealt with the wolf shifters,” she explained, sharing a look with Carli. “Your mother isn’t here, Derek. There’s no blood in the bedroom, either—and Carli would be able to smell it if there were.”

  I felt some of my own relief. Mom wasn’t dead! The wolf shifter had just been winding me up, trying to break me before he killed me and my friends. It had backfired on him spectacularly, because he’d allowed me to access my powers.

  Speaking of which…

  “The Dragon,” I gasped, allowing Soojin to lead me to the remains of Mom’s couch. “I was the Dragon, wasn’t I?”

  Both women shared another look.

  “Derek, I won’t lie to you—I’ve seen a lot since becoming a Raiju shifter.” Carli smoothed down her skirt as she took a place next to me on the couch. “But that was some next-level shit you pulled off. I mean, biting right through that guy’s neck? That was badass!”

  “Yeah,” I grunted. “It’s going to take me days to get the blood off of my hands. And even longer to get that taste out of my mouth. Jesus, that’s foul!”

  “Things that seem awesome in your shifter form can sometimes disgust you when you’re back in your normie body again,” Carli said sagely. “It goes for other stuff too. There’s some kinky shit Raiju me is into in the bedroom that I wouldn’t even think about trying while in human form…”

  Carli trailed off, laughing at the look on my face. “Well, that part of you hasn’t sustained any serious damage, at least,” she said with a snicker.

  I wiped some of the blood off my face with one of Mom’s decorative pillows. “Nah, I’m okay,” I told both women. “A little bit freaked out, though. I can’t believe I… I never thought I had that in me…”

  I started to feel choked up, but Soojin’s hand on my shoulder steadied me. “You saved our lives, young man,” the apothecary said, meaning it. “We were dreadfully unprepared for that group of wolf shifters. Neither I nor Carli thought they’d bring heavy hitters like that in for an operation—not against an old mage like Raya, in any case.”

  “They who?” I asked.

  Carli’s lips formed a tight little line, as did Soojin’s. Clearly, neither of them thought I was ready for the whole story yet.

  I decided to try a different tactic. “Wait, you said my Mom’s not here,” I said, my gaze flickering between the two women. “If that’s the case, then where the hell is she?”

  Soojin gave me a look that said I wouldn’t like the answer. “There are a couple of possibilities,” the apothecary said, carefully hedging her words. “Raya might have gotten wind of the assassins en route to her condo and fled for some hiding place. Or her condition might have worsened, and she decided she needed to go to the hospital after all.”

  “Or she might have opened a portal to a magical land full of unicorns and gumdrops,” I snarled, feeling irritated. “Why don’t you tell me what actually happened, Soojin? I’m a big guy, I can take it.”

  She nodded. “The shifters kidnapped her,” she whispered. “The wolves we fought were merely the part of the strike force left behind, to ransack the place for any magical items it might contain. The real prize was Raya.”

  I put my head in my hands. Truthfully, I’d been thinking along the same lines as Soojin ever since I’d been told my mother wasn’t in the condo. I just hadn’t wanted to say it.

  “So what happens now?” I asked.

  Carli leaned over and gave my clothing a theatrical sniff.

  “Right now, I think you’d better take a shower,” the shifter purred, cocking an eyebrow. “You smell like an abattoir and you look like Jeffrey Dahmer. Five minutes out in normie world and you’ll get the cops called on us.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, looking down at my clothes. “And then?”

  “Then we go back to my hideout,” Carli said, confirming with a glance at Soojin. “And start figuring out where the shifters stashed your Mom. These were wolf shifters, and they don’t tend to ally with others, so she’s likely taken to the base of a wolf pack. They don’t have any specific clan insignia on them, but they can only be from one of three wolf packs since only three operate in the area.”

  “Perhaps we could do a scan of any other locations in K-Town capable of fixing your mother the medicine she needs,” Soojin suggested mildly. “She is still sick, after all. Whoever has her captured will want to cure her before they interrogate her.”

  Interrogate her!? What the hell did these people want with my mother?

  Dutiful son that I was, I wanted to run off and track her down right away. But Carli and Soojin were right—looking the way I did, I wouldn’t get very far. And the drying blood all over my clothes felt gross.

  I took off my jacket and gave Soojin the packet of medicine. “I should have some old clothes in the hamper,” I explained, nodding toward the laundry room. “I bring stuff over for her to wash every week or so. Could one of you maybe…?”

  It felt kind of silly to ask these beautiful, powerful women to do my dirty laundry.

  But I had just saved both of their lives, after all. They kind of owed me.

  “I’d be happy to take care of it,” Soojin said with a smile. “Carli, perhaps you can clean the living room up a bit while I take care of that?”

  I was happy to leave them both to it. Trying my best to shake off the bizarre feeling of transforming into a homicidal dragon, I made my way down the hall and to the condo’s master bedroom.

  It felt like stepping into another world—one that made a hell of a lot more sense. The back half of the condo hadn’t been touched by the wolf shifters, and all my mom’s things were right where she’d left them.

  The door to the master bathroom lay open, and I quickly discarded my clothes and got in the shower, careful not to look at myself too closely in the mirror.

  Hot water spill
ed from the taps, filling the room with steam. After so much blood and carnage, it felt like being born again. I scrubbed off the blood as best as I could, humming gently as red swirled around the shower’s drain.

  As I worked, I tried to process what had just happened to me.

  I’d just killed a man. Two men. Okay, they weren’t technically ‘men’ when I’d killed either of them—the cops would probably classify the fight as some kind of wild animal attack if they’d seen it. But that didn’t change anything.

  I was a murderer. I’d done it for a righteous reason: if I hadn’t, Soojin, Carli, and I would be dead. That part of it didn’t bug me, as much as it shames me to admit it. I’d expected to feel awful about killing that wolf shifter and his cronies, but I couldn’t muster up much sympathy for them after finding out my mom had been kidnapped.

  No. What really worried me as I washed the remains of other people’s blood off my naked body was how much I’d enjoyed it. It had felt good to give myself up to something animalistic inside of me, to go berserk and rip out some throats.

  In fact, as I thought about it, my cock stiffened.

  Shit, Carli did say combat gets your blood up, I thought, trying to ignore the way it pulsed.

  I’d saved both those women. Even before that, they’d seemed like they were into me.

  God, I need to get laid, I told myself, shaking my head. Maybe once we get out of this, I’ll ask Carli if she wants to go out on a date sometime.

  Most of the blood was off and I’d switched attention to shampooing my hair when the bathroom door opened. Soojin stood in the doorway, holding a pair of clean, fluffy white towels and a neatly folded bundle of clothes.

  “Hey there,” she said, stepping into the steamy bathroom. “There were a few outfits in that hamper, so I went ahead and picked out something I thought looked nice. I hope you like it.”

  Oh shit! The master bathroom’s shower was a glass stall—and I was nursing a massive stiffy. Thankfully, steam filled the room, turning the normally see-through glass all foggy. But if she kept that door open too long, Soojin would be able to see that I had a boner.