by Connor Crowe
I peered at the horizon, shielding my eyes with a gloved hand. We’d made good time, but there was still a ways to go. Of course, I was just going off of decades-old memories at this point, but I knew we were heading in the right direction.
When I was a child, there was a bustling docking station with ferries that went from the surface to the Flying City. I was never allowed to set foot on them, of course. Mixing with riff-raff was below me, at least in my family’s opinion.
That was, until it came out that I was omega. And not only that, an infertile omega. The greatest disappointment possible in their eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. I’d left them years ago, and did my best to move on.
But now we were heading back to the one place I thought I’d never set foot again, and if I was being honest? I was scared.
Scared that once we got there, I might turn into the weak-willed, disappointment of an omega that my parents thought I was.
Scared that I’d not only let down myself this time, but my new pack.
And most of all, scared that when Hugo and James saw who I really was, they wouldn’t want anything to do with me anymore.
“Sure,” I muttered at last, shaking the thoughts away. “We’ll stop. Let’s find some shady trees though, I’m not trying to get sunburnt today.”
We pulled off to the side and found a spray of small maple trees to rest under. Lionel parked the truck and when he cut the motor, I could have sworn I heard something coming from the cargo bay.
But I was probably just hearing things.
Try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about the strange sort of coma I’d gone into when learning about Ataraxis and that we planned to go there.
I remembered the fear just fine. I remembered my shifter rebelling within me, and I remember everything going dark.
Then someone’s hands were on me. Two people’s hands, in fact. I woke to find Hugo and James standing over me, their energy flowing into my body and connecting with my spirit.
I should have brought him with us. I should have fought for him, just as he had fought for me. But when the time came to leave, he was nowhere to be found.
I wiped my brow and stepped around the truck to the shady area where the men were gathering. Getting distracted by what-ifs on a mission of this importance was unacceptable. They needed me, and if I screwed this up, the fate of our world would be at stake.
I sighed. No pressure.
No sooner had I got sat down than I heard the strange thump again. The men looked up, looked to me. I wasn’t imagining things.
“You hear that?” Lionel asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You think someone followed us?” Markus said under his voice.
Kit had already extended his claws, ready for a fight. Hugo looked to me with alarm. The same sort of surprise and confusion I had.
“I’ll take Hugo and check it out,” I said, standing. “Stay here. Stay on your guard.” I waved at Hugo to follow.
Once we were out of earshot, Hugo spoke up.
“You feel that?” He said.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Thought maybe I was going crazy.”
“Nope,” Hugo confirmed. “Else I am too.”
I chose not to focus on how he’d been avoiding me all this time. I chose not to think about the way his hands felt on my chest when he revived me.
For now, we had a mission to accomplish.
“You go around one side, I’ll take the other. We’ll open up the truck and see what’s in there. Deal?”
“Deal.”
My heart thudded faster as we walked toward the truck. The noise came again. Just the slightest shuffle of movement, but one that set off bells in my heart and mind. I’d heard that soft little shuffle before, I was sure of it...
“Ready?” Hugo asked, cracking his knuckles.
“Ready,” I nodded. I grasped the handle of the trunk, took a deep breath, and pulled.
It was a good thing I leapt out of the way when I did. A body came tumbling out of the trunk, landing in a heap on the ground. And not just any body.
That was James!
The others must have heard the commotion and came running, already in their shifts and ready to fight. “Someone was following us!” Markus roared, his teeth bared. “Knew it!”
“Wait!” I shrieked, throwing myself between him and James. “It’s James! And he’s hurt!”
A terrible moment passed where I thought they wouldn’t believe me. That their bloodlust was too strong and they’d barrel me over just to get to the perceived threat. But a few tense seconds ticked past, and the men shifted back to human, looking at James with poorly-concealed surprise.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Markus growled, advancing on him. “How did you get in there?”
“Whoa, whoa!” James held up his hands in surrender. He struggled to his feet. His shirt was ripped in a few places, and scratches on his face and knees told me he hadn’t had the smoothest journey. His eyes, though, were still as bright and perceptive as ever. “I fell back at the docks, lost my balance, ended up trapped. I tried to get someone’s attention, but no one heard me!”
Markus’s eyes flicked to Lionel, who had been helping load the truck. “Is this true?” His voice carried no small amount of disapproval.
Lionel didn’t meet his gaze. “I checked, I swear I did. I think I would have noticed if a whole person fell into the crate.” He crossed his arms.
“And yet here he is,” Markus mused. “Be lucky it wasn’t an actual spy.” He gave Lionel a final withering glance. “Well, regardless. He’s here now.”
“What are you going to do with him?” I asked. It wasn’t my place, I knew that, but I still couldn’t believe he was here.
“We didn’t bring enough supplies for an extra man,” he said simply. “We haven’t gone that far yet, we can send someone back with him. Besides, if he really is injured, he needs proper medical attention. Something he can’t get out here.”
“But Markus—“ I started. I didn’t even know what I was going to say next. What reason I could have for keeping him around. I just knew that every fiber of my being screamed at the thought of losing him again.
“Are you volunteering, Tristan?” Markus asked.
“Markus, he could be quite an asset to us. If we just let him stay—“
“Quiet!” Hugo hissed, throwing out a hand to stop us. “I hear something.”
My heart jumped into my throat. I listened. Nothing at first, then a loud, echoing crack thundered through the forest.
The roar of water. The crumpling of trees and foliage. Almost sounded like a waterfall, but we weren’t even near one. Not unless...
“Run!” Markus barked. “The dam’s broke!”
6
Hugo
The roar of the engines drowned out everything else. Well, almost everything.
There was still the small matter of the looming wall of water bearing down on us.
“Come on!” Markus yelped, slamming his foot on the gas pedal. We sped away, rocks and dust billowing out behind our tires. I didn’t have time to think or react. Danger was not only coming—it was here.
My skin itched with the urgency of it. I broke out into a sweat, the flames within me threatening to take over once more. But I couldn’t shift. Not here. Not now. Not with all my friends packed into this truck together. I tried to focus on breathing, simple in and out breaths through my nose and out through my mouth, but the bumpy road and the impending danger wasn’t making it any easier.
“You okay?” A small voice asked. I almost didn’t hear it at first, so wrapped up in my panic I was.
I looked to the side. James was there, sitting next to me with an expression full of concern. Despite the gravity of the crisis, he didn’t look worried. In fact, he seemed like probably the calmest out of all of us. Even after getting trapped and possibly injured in the truck on the way over here.
His hand slipped over mine for a moment, just brushing it, really.
But it sent the same shivers down my spine that happened the first time. The same burst of momentary connection that had me questioning everything.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, wiping the fear from my face. “The hell happened back there, anyway? What dam? What’s going on?”
James lowered his voice and leaned in closer. Yes, maybe if he kept talking, that would ground me. Keep me from losing control.
“If it’s coming from where I think it’s coming from, it’s the dam on the outskirts of Nox Bay.” He grimaced.
“What?” I gasped. The flames rose again, sparkling across my skin like firecrackers. I gritted my teeth against the change, thinking of something—anything else. “But the people—“
“The people are strong,” James reminded me. “They know what to do. But what do you think will happen if we rush back there and get hurt along the way? I know it sucks, but we need to keep going.”
I clenched my fists, the nails digging into my palms painfully. I wanted to run. Wanted to shift. All the anger and fear was like an inferno within me, threatening to spill over and swallow me whole.
“But what about Felix?” I shrieked. “What about Loki?”
“Marcus knows what he has to—wait, shit, look out!”
The truck’s tires squealed. Dust and pebbles scattered as Markus slammed on the brakes. Somehow in our haste to escape, we’d taken a wrong turn. And there was nothing more than a sheer ravine ahead of us. Definitely not something a truck could go over.
“Everybody out!” Markus barked, throwing open the door. “Let’s move!”
I stared down at the drop. It had to be hundreds of feet to the bottom. And the ground looked pretty rocky and unstable.
Oh, and one more thing. There was still tons of water rushing toward us ready to sweep anything in its path to destruction.
“We don’t have enough flying shifters!” Tristan grunted. “And the sky ferry is still miles from here!”
“I thought you knew where we were going,” Lionel spat.
Tristan threw his hands up. “We must have made a wrong turn, I don’t know! I wouldn’t lead you astray, you know that!”
“Stop bickering, you two. Grab what you can and let’s move!” Markus took the lead, shouldering a large pack. We worked quickly and silently, but the beating of the midday sun and the rush of oncoming water didn’t give us any time to pause. I could shift into one of my forms and carry more, but I couldn’t carry the whole cargo with me. Nor could I carry everyone from the party. The only flying shifters among us were myself and Tristan, and I was pretty sure I didn’t trust myself to carry anyone over this ravine anyway. Not with my shifts being as unstable as they were.
“What are we going to do?” James gasped, looking down at the ravine.
Markus held his ground. He clenched his jaw and then released it, taking on the voice of a leader. Of our Alpha. “We’re going to have to scale down.” He shook his head. “There’s no way around it.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked down again. One false move would be certain death.
Tristan grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. “Don’t think, just move!”
And that touch, combined with the chaos of everything else that it just happened, set me over the edge. Something in my mind snapped. Or maybe it was my bones slowly breaking themselves into two. Flames coursed through me. And then I was the flames.
I was the Phoenix.
There was only fire. My vision blurred and then sharpened. Flames licked around me and through me. There was shouting, that much I could hear. But it was far away, muffled. Like it was coming from underwater.
My skin prickled and burned. My wings unfolded and I leapt up into the night, letting out a high-pitched screech.
Yet somehow, through the pain and muddled headspace of my shift, I heard my name.
“Hugo!”
The phoenix stopped for a fraction of a second, pausing my descent into madness.
It came again.
“Hugo! It’s me.”
Me. Who was me?
I flapped my wings harder, soaring higher into the sky. I couldn’t stop, everything within me was going haywire, out of control, and...
“Hugo. You are not this.”
The burning paused, for a fraction of a second.
You are not this.
What did that mean?
And why did that voice sound so familiar?
“I know you can hear me.” The voice was calm and soothing. Sure of itself. Everything I wasn’t.
“You can come down now.” A different voice this time, but no less comforting.
“We’ve got you.”
The words flashed through my mind several times before I could grasp the full meaning of them.
We. More than one?
“We’ve got you, Hugo.” The two voices rang out in unison this time, and the spiraling madness began to fade. The flames subsided, and for a single, blessed moment, I could breathe.
Then I began to fall.
7
James
Hugo was falling, I was stuck to the side of a cliff, and there was nothing I could do.
So not how I wanted today to turn out.
I looked to the sky, watching in horror as Hugo’s fiery form sputtered and fizzled. His body contorted in midair, then he was human again.
Mortal.
And falling without a net.
“Tristan!” I shrieked.
“On it!” He roared, launching himself off the cliff face. His gryphon wings stretched out in a torrent of wind and feathers. I clung to the rocky cliff face and the rope we’d unraveled, closing my eyes against the grit.
The flap of wing beats. The feral, not-quite-human scream of the falling man. I held my breath and waited for the bone-crunching impact.
And there it was. A thud more than a crunch. Tristan’s high pitched screech. I steeled myself and craned my neck to see the damage.
Well, there was good news and bad news.
Hugo lay draped messily across Tristan’s wide wingspan, but the impact had knocked them both astray. Tristan flapped his wings frantically, trying to stay aloft. But he was failing.
A wild compulsion almost drove me to throw myself off the cliff right then and there. To reach them, to get to them somehow. Never mind the fact that it would doom all three of us. I just knew, in my heart and my soul, that I needed to do something.
But I clung to the last scraps of life, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain, willing the tears not to come.
Any minute now, they would crash into the ground. Any minute now, it would be over.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
Seconds passed. Nobody moved. Still, there was no impact. No cries of pain or death. There was nothing.
I let out a long, shuddering breath and dared to crack open one eyelid. Then the other.
I was going to have to look down. I wasn’t that scared of heights, but still...
I looked, and the world seemed to spin around me. I nearly lost my grip on the cliff wall as nausea rushed into my stomach and chest. It seemed so far away, so impossible...
But there they were. Hugo and Tristan were on the ground, sprawled and panting, but alive.
Not a bloody pulp, as I’d feared. Thank all the gods that be, they’d made it. I let out a breath. Then another.
They were alive.
“Keep moving,” grunted Markus from above. “We can’t check on them till we get down there. Safely.” He emphasized that last word. Once again I honed in on my surroundings. The rope was rough in my hands. Grounding. The steps were laid out in front of me. All I had to do was take them.
One shaky, unsure step at a time.
I focused on my breathing and the position of my hands and feet the further I descended. My team was counting on me, and if I missed a foothold, it could spell disaster. Despite the racing of my heart and the sweat gathering on my brow, I made step after step. Handhold after foothold. And slowly, ever so s
lowly, we approached the bottom.
Please don’t let it be too late.
The moment my foot hit solid ground, I just about wanted to cry with happiness. And I wasn’t even the one deathly afraid of heights! I looked up at the rest of the team. Kit, bless his heart, clung to Lionel with all the ferocity of a spider monkey. The fact that he’d been able to descend at all was an accomplishment—I knew how terrified he was of heights.
As soon as I got my balance I rushed over to Hugo and Tristan. Hugo still lay there unconscious. Tristan hovered over him.
“God,” I whispered. “I’m so glad you caught him.”
Tristan’s face twisted. “What if it wasn’t enough?” He looked away. “He’s not waking up.”
“Neither did you, at first,” I reminded him. “Give him some time, I’m sure he’ll be—“
A harsh, crackly breath shuddered through Hugo’s body and he jerked, his eyes flying open. Deep breaths, long and ragged, rasped through his throat and forced themselves out.
I let out a breath. The tension I’d been holding in my shoulders fled, and when Hugo’s eyes met mine, I forgot all about my own aches and pains. I was simply present, there in the moment with him.
He was alive.
“Hey,” Hugo coughed, his cracked lips creeping upward.
“Hey,” I said. I couldn’t hold back the relieved smile stretching across my face.
“You’re okay,” Tristan breathed. “Thank the heavens.”
Hugo winced. “I wouldn’t go so far as that.” He stretched and shifted into a different position, then looked back up at us. “But yeah, I’m alive. Thanks to you both.” He stared at the ground for a moment, his lips curling into a smile. Hugo shook his head, probably at some errant thought. “I don’t know how you do it but...” He shrugged. “Thanks. I thought I was a goner.”
Markus, Lionel, and Kit caught up with us. Their skin was sweaty and their clothes were a bit torn, but we’d all made it down in time. Any second now...
“Everyone okay?” Markus asked, but his words were drowned out by the crash of waves above us.
