by Juniper Hart
Dex couldn’t help but laugh.
“No,” he replied quietly. “Your lineage is much older than Wicca. Your ancestors are among the most ancient creatures to roam this planet.”
“Dex…” Sabine inhaled as if she was trying to keep her temper in check. “What are you trying to say?”
“Please come and sit down,” he told her quietly. “This might take a while to explain.”
She stared at him defiantly, folding her arms over her chest.
“No,” she insisted. “Tell me now.”
Never in his long life had Dex ever encountered a time where he had needed to explain the existence of the magical creatures who existed on Earth. The humans weren’t meant to know about them, and the enchanted beings all knew about the others. This was an entirely new situation altogether.
“There are creatures in this world, Sabby, creatures capable of many talents, creatures that have been around longer than history dictates.”
He watched as her eyes widened and narrowed as her mind tried to absorb his words.
“You are a witch, born into a long line of very powerful shamans and sorceresses. Your family is one of the most ancient and renowned lines in the world.”
“Are you messing with me right now?”
“I am…” he paused, knowing once he opened this can of worms, it wouldn’t be easy to close it again. “I’m a dragon shifter.”
She laughed shortly.
“Oh great. You’re insane.”
He chose not to take offense to her harsh statement, knowing that he had thrown too much at her already.
“There are others too. Wolves, bears, fairies—”
“Unicorns?” Sabine snapped. “Leprechauns?”
Dex sighed heavily and rose from the bed. Without speaking, he moved toward the bigger outer room.
“Where are you going?” Sabine demanded. “Are you done with your fairy tale already?”
Her voice raised an octave but Dex knew there was only one way to prove it to her. He closed his eyes, anticipating her reaction. His muscles began to stretch, the scales of his skin appearing. His tail widened to fill the room, wrapping around the sharp claws of his feet until his head was knocking the chandelier above him.
Sabine reeled back, the stunned look on her face warning him that she was about to scream. Instantly, he fell back into his mortal form.
“Don’t scream,” he told her, keeping a safe distance between them. “The last thing we need is—”
“…to bring attention to ourselves,” Sabine gasped, finishing his sentence as she shook her head. “I-I remember. I’m not going to scream.”
He blinked at the unexpected words and gaped at her in surprise. It was something that they always said in training, something that was endlessly driven in.
“Really?” he asked hopefully. “You remember?”
She began to nod, a look of wonderment replacing the terrified awe in her eyes, and she sank to the floor in front of the fireplace, curling her legs behind her buttocks.
“Yes,” she breathed. “I remember it all now.”
A glazed look overtook her luminous eyes as if she were a computer screen downloading a hard drive of memories. Dex moved toward her cautiously, perching on the floor beside her.
“What do you remember?” he asked. “How did all this happen?”
She inhaled deeply and stared at him blankly as she began to shake her head.
“This is all my fault,” she breathed shakily. “I brought this on myself.”
17
Five Weeks Earlier
Sabine looked over her shoulder again before skirting her way into the storage facility. From what she had gleaned, no one was following her, but over the past week, she couldn’t shake the sense that she had eyes on her everywhere she went.
That’s what happens when you’re being sneaky and doing what you’re not supposed to be doing, she thought wryly, heading toward her storage unit. The mental chiding did nothing to slow her from doing what she’d come to do. She was so close now, her research almost completed.
Soon, I’m going to prove corruption from within the compound, she vowed. Starting with Anatoli.
For months, she had fallen into her placement in Bremen, taking on a job as a yoga instructor and building her persona as the cute, single girl next door. It was everything she’d been trained to do, after all, but when it was all said and done, Sabine was bored.
This is not what I signed on for, she told herself as she waved to the same dull neighbors and ordered the same dismal latte. It was impossible for her to imagine that she was going to be stuck in this life, possibly forever if she was never activated and Sabine was sure she would lose her mind if that happened. It was bad enough that she was forbidden from using magic, but she wondered what her family would say if they knew she was wasting away like some human, drinking Starbucks and scrolling through Instagram.
The Mayers were made for better than this, she thought firmly. And I am going to do us all proud.
At first, she hadn’t been sure what it was she was looking for. Whatever excitement she had hoped to find, she certainly hadn’t expected it to come this far.
With measured, even steps, she grabbed her keys and opened the unit she had been renting for just over two months. For a moment, she paused to stare at her handiwork, the names and dates of places and people carefully aligned along the wall in a timeline.
Anatoli isn’t being honest with any of us, Sabine thought with smug anger as she pensively pored over the latest entry.
Klaus Bremner.
She remembered Klaus from class, his arrogance and quick temper quickly growing legendary. It hadn’t surprised anyone that he had been kicked out of the program and Sabine hadn’t been sorry to see him go. Yet that didn’t mean she agreed with what Anatoli had done to him…
Present Day
She paused to take a breath and came back to the present moment as Dex stared at her with wide, alarmed eyes.
“What did she do to him? What else did you learn?”
Sabine pressed her lips together. Yes, her memory was back now but that meant she recalled everything.
Like how Dex is Anatoli’s right-hand man. I can’t tell him what I know about her or he’ll go right to her and confront her.
Her thoughts must have been clear across her face because Dex growled, “I’m not going to say anything, Sabby. My loyalty is to you, not her.”
“Before you met me, your loyalty was to her,” she reminded him. “Who’s to say it won’t change again.”
Dex glowered.
“I’m here with you, aren’t I? You know that Ana wanted me to send you home with an extraction team? I bought us time now, sending the team on a wild-goose chase looking for you.”
Sabine wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She wanted to believe him, to accept that he was truly on her side, but her training had taught her to trust herself first.
“Anatoli has been up to some shady shit,” Sabine told him. “I don’t know how much you’re aware of. For all I know, you could already be onto all this.”
“I am learning new things every day,” Dex replied shortly. “The fact that she hasn’t told me about it should speak volumes to how much she trusts me.”
Sabine considered the words and nodded.
“Did you know about the trackers she was putting in all the Sleepers?”
Dex exhaled in a whoosh of breath and hung his head.
“I only found out about it because yours was removed,” he replied curtly. “How did that happen?”
Sabine paused, trying to filter the memories as they swooped upon her.
“Klaus grabbed me from behind,” she murmured, recalling the attack. “I opened my mouth to utter a spell—”
She gasped aloud.
“I’m a witch!” she declared and laughed. “I cast a spell on him in the car and I probably tried to that night but…”
She frowned, the images of that night still hazy.
“Are you saying that he removed your tracking chip?”
Sabine raised her head and looked at Dex, nodding slowly, her eyebrows still knit into a vee.
“He must have…and he wiped my memories, the way Anatoli did to him.”
“What?”
“Deprogramming,” Sabine explained. “Anatoli uses an ancient memory blocking spell to deprogram the failed recruits so that they don’t speak of what they learned in the program.”
“B-but Klaus is a demon,” Dex sputtered. “What does he know about spell magic?”
He’s a demon, Sabine realized silently. That’s what Hans was saying in the café that day. It’s all coming together now. Hans knew I was a witch. He’s a wizard and was trying to protect his own.
“Sabine, you had a gash on your head you said. What did he do?”
She shook her head.
“I imagine that he bit me,” she said but it was only a guess. She couldn’t be sure. The time from being taken and waking up in the clinic in Hude was all a blur.
“Do you think that Klaus thought you were targeting him, which is why he came after you?” There was confusion in Dex’s voice as he tried to make sense of how everything had come to pass but Sabine could give him nothing else.
“I have no idea,” she replied honestly. “It’s all I have for now. I was collecting evidence about Anatoli and what she’s been doing to the Sleepers. I can’t work for her anymore, Dex, but I don’t think she’s going to let me go that easily.”
A wave of dread overcame the short burst of excitement that had lined Sabine’s veins.
“She’s not going to find you,” Dex said firmly, reaching to pull her into his arms. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“She’s not going to let you go either,” Sabine told him, pulling back to meet his eyes squarely.
“We’ll get out together,” Dex promised her, an urgency creeping into his voice. “First we need to get rid of Klaus. We can’t be looking over our shoulders, wondering when that one might pop up again. After that, we can go anywhere in the world.”
Sabine eyed him warily.
“I can’t ask you to give up your whole life to be with me on the run, Dex,” she said quietly. “We already said our goodbyes, remember?”
“I remember,” he replied shortly, his voice gruff. “I never stopped thinking about it.”
“I love you,” Sabine told him, cupping his face in her hands. “But it’s too dangerous for both of us to leave. She’s apt to write me off, but you? Anatoli will search for you to the ends of the earth.”
“She’s trapped in Virginia,” Dex reminded her. “She can’t do anything without allocating resources and to do that, she’ll need to explain it to someone. As much as she thinks she’s running things alone, there’s always someone to answer to.”
Sabine wished she shared his confidence.
“We’ll talk about it after,” she promised him. “First we need to find Klaus Bremner and stop him from whatever the hell vendetta he’s got.”
“No,” Dex countered. “First we take you to the shifter doctor and ensure that everything is okay with our child.”
“No,” Sabine replied, snuggling back against his chest. “First we spend the night here in each other’s arms and pretend that none of this clusterfuck is happening all around us.”
She didn’t add what she was thinking.
Because it might be the last time we ever do this. Again.
Dex’s strong arms wrapped around her and Sabine’s head dropped against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, the lull of it making her sleepier. She desperately wished that moment could go on forever.
They took their time in the morning, lounging leisurely among the silky sheets, pausing to eat a hearty breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and oranges. They made love again and watched the sun rise higher over Berlin until begrudgingly, they knew it was time to go.
If this is the last memory I have of Dex, I’ll take it, she thought, swallowing the bittersweetness in her windpipe. She didn’t remind herself that she had said goodbye once before.
The shifter clinic was only a few miles from the Regent and Sabine was ushered in without a wait.
“A baby, how exciting,” the bear doctor cooed happily. She smiled but her eyes didn’t reflect a modicum of happiness as she pretended to read the ultrasound.
She’s one of those that hate interbreeds, Sabine sensed. The doctor would hardly be the first who felt that way.
The situation made Sabine sad. Anatoli had spun such a great plan of uniting the world against an evil cabal, one who divided the shifters for their own political gain and profit, and yet the director was just as corrupt as them in her own way.
The Cabal uses the lower classes to fight their battles and so does Anatoli while she sits in her office on her ivory throne. She doesn’t care who gets hurt as long as she gets what she wants, Sabine thought.
“The baby looks fine,” Dr. Weiss told them in German. “I’ll run some bloodwork and have the results to you in a day or so.”
Sabine’s eyes traveled toward the small blob on the screen, her heart swelling with love for this little bean she and Dex had created. She felt the squeeze of Dex’s fingers against her hand.
“I’ll be right back,” Dr. Weiss told them before leaving the two to stare at the frozen image on screen.
“That’s our baby,” Dex whispered, the emotion in his voice almost palpable. Tears of happiness blurred Sabine’s own eyes as she nodded.
How could I ever have thought that I could give this child up? What was I thinking?
Dr. Schwartz had warned her to give it time and she realized how wise the old, human doctor had been.
A moment later, a nurse entered with syringes to draw blood from her. Dex stood patiently to the side as blood filled the vials.
“Wait a minute…” the nurse mumbled. Sabine looked down, her eyes widening as she caught sight of her plasma.
“What the hell is that?” Sabine squeaked, noting the pale purple hue inside the tube. The nurse met Sabine’s eyes with a look of shock herself.
“Demon blood,” she choked. “Why do you have demon blood inside you?”
Dizziness and confusion overwhelmed Sabine as she shook her head. She had no answer.
“Would her blood be like this if she’d been bitten by a demon?” Dex asked, finding a plausible answer. The nurse snorted.
“If she had been bitten by a demon, she’d be dead,” the woman retorted flatly. She shook her head again. “Nein, Herr. The only way that she would have demon blood like this is if she was a demon herself.”
The couple gaped at one another in disbelief.
“That’s impossible!” they chorused in unison, but the nurse only shrugged, withdrawing the needle as she collected the samples.
“We’ll see what the bloodwork says,” she replied. “But I’m telling you, science doesn’t lie. There is no other way this can be.”
She disappeared and Sabine gaped after her.
“She’s insane,” she finally managed to say. “I would know if I was a demon hybrid. Everyone would know if I was a demon hybrid!”
“Demon hybrids don’t exist,” Dex reminded her.
“I know!”
Again an uncomfortable silence fell over them as they lost themselves in their individual thoughts.
How many more surprises can I endure? Sabine wondered, rising to dress in the absence of the medical staff. This is just getting wilder and wilder.
“I’m going to talk to the doctor,” Dex grumbled, reaching for the door. “That nurse doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
He was in the clinic before Sabine could protest but she let him go. She could use the few moments of silence to collect her thoughts.
A prickle of apprehension shot through her as something occurred to her.<
br />
What if that’s why Klaus was trying to kill her? What if he knew what she was and was trying to put a stop to it?
Sabine was overcome with the logic of the notion for a moment except for one small fact.
How could he possibly know when she didn’t?
It roused an even more terrifying question.
Were there more demons after her? Would her baby ever be safe?
Gnawing on her bottom lip, Sabine slid her t-shirt over her head. When her head popped out through the hole, her heart jumped into her throat.
“Boo,” the black-hooded man jeered, slipping a hood over her face. Sabine opened her mouth to scream out for Dex, but she felt the needle in her neck before she could formulate the word.
This is an extraction team, she thought as her eyes dropped. Dex set me up.
18
He heard the chopper blades too late. By the time Dex registered what they were and his feet flew back toward the room where he’d left Sabine, she was gone.
“DAMMIT!” he screamed, startling the staff, who eyed him warily. The looks in their collective eyes told Dex they were ready to shift to subdue him, but he was already on the move.
He sprinted out into the blazing Berlin sunlight, but the chopper had vanished into the cloudless sky, taking Sabine with it.
For a moment, he felt the pressure of his wings at his back, threatening to poke through, but he willed himself not to morph. He couldn’t on a crowded street in broad daylight. What could he do even if he caught up with the chopper? Bring it down? Risk the wrath of defying Anatoli?
Fury spiked through his veins like molten lava. In his pocket, the burner phone rang.
“Hello, Dex,” Anatoli chirped. “Thank you for leading me to Sabine.”
Dread filled Dex’s body.
“Did you find her?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.
“I think you already know the answer to that,” Anatoli sighed. “You were supposed to be with her too so I could bring you both home.”
Grim determination made Dex’s teeth chatter.
