by Abigail Owen
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Abigail Owen. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
10940 S Parker Road
Suite 327
Parker, CO 80134
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Heather Howland
Cover design by Bree Archer
Cover art by
AndrewRafalsky/GettyImages
vector images/Gettyimages
Spondylolithesis/Gettyimages
Photocreo/depositphotos
Interior design by Toni Kerr
MMPB ISBN 978-1-64063-9102
ebook ISBN 978-1-64063-9119
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition September 2020
Also by Abigail Owen
Inferno Rising series
The Rogue King
The Blood King
Fires Edge series
The Mate
The Boss
The Rookie
The Enforcer
Brimstone, Inc. series
The Demigod Complex
Shift Out of Luck
Bait N’ Witch
To Dad:
Thanks for teaching us to not be afraid,
that life is an adventure,
and to be ready for anything.
Prologue
“The time has come.”
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Skylar Amon jerked her head up from the computer screen she’d been staring at. She’d been studying for her next-level pilot’s exam, having completed her final hours needed. But everything in front of her faded as she focused on those words in her mind, a telepathic communication.
Mom is afraid.
That alone petrified Skylar, freezing every thought, every muscle. Their mother was never afraid, always knew what to do. Skylar’s heart stopped cold, then slammed against her chest in an attempt to leave her to deal with this alone.
She knew what her mother’s words meant, what she had to do. Since the moment she and her three sisters were born, their mother had been preparing them for this day.
“Skylar!” So much fear filled her sister Meira’s call, Skylar’s body clenched against the sound of it.
“In here,” she shouted back.
I can’t let the fear in. Fear had no place here. Right now, all she had to do was act.
The screen door banged as Kasia ran into the kitchen from outside. Her pale skin had a greenish tint to it, probably made worse given the contrast to her deep red hair. Her pale blue eyes were wide and wild. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes.”
A second later their other sisters, Meira and Angelika, sprinted into the room and they stared at one another. They all knew what those words meant.
“He’s come for us,” Skylar spat through lips almost frozen.
Pytheios.
The Rotting King of the Red Dragon Clan. The man who had once deluded himself into thinking he could mate their mother, Serefina, because mating a phoenix would make him the High King, legitimize his reign, and grant him incomprehensible blessings. A tyrant whose every decision, every choice, ended with the exact consequences he wanted.
But Serefina had chosen another—Zilant Amon, the King of the White Clan of dragon shifters. For her sins, Pytheios had murdered Zilant.
Terrified, Serefina had escaped.
What the mad king would do if he discovered their mother was pregnant at all, let alone with four babies, had kept them in constant, vigilant fear.
Four possible phoenixes when there had only ever been one born to any previous phoenix in history? The most likely scenario to enter Skylar’s nightmares, when she allowed it, would be Pytheios using the sisters against one another. Maybe even force one of them to mate him.
Not that it would end well for him.
Nor for whichever sister he forced after his followers found out he was dead.
Running was all they’d ever known. Five centuries of it. Ages of training, preparing, and hiding.
Was it all to end this night?
The shock that had held her immobile, if only for moments, disappeared. She was the strong one of the four of them. She was the fighter.
Kasia was the courageous one. Meira the brains. And Angelika the heart.
But Skylar was the protector. Ever since they were tiny, she’d been the one to pluck her sisters off the ground when they fell down, or take out the bullies, or speak the hard truths.
She could protect them from this, too.
Gods above I hope I can.
“Let’s go.” She ran back out through the same screen door Kasia had just come in, her sisters right behind her.
They sprinted through the small backyard of their unassuming house—rickety white siding that needed replacing, dirt-covered screens, and white sheets drying on the line out back. A house in nowhere, Kansas, USA, where they’d lived quietly for the last twenty years. Out through the gate in the chain-link fence and into the clearing beyond. Skylar stopped in the middle of a field with tall, dry grass almost silver in the light of the full moon—the location her mother had told them to meet if they ever heard those words.
The time had come.
Death, in the form of a red-winged monster determined to claim the phoenix as his own, was upon them.
“Where’s Mom?” Skylar whispered, searching the fields with a desperate gaze. She should be here by now.
No sooner had the words passed her lips than a woman suddenly appeared in the field. She hit hard, crumpling to the ground. Skylar gasped as she immediately recognized the long silver handle of a knife illuminated by the moonlight. The blade was buried in their mother’s back.
No. Oh, gods, no.
Pytheios had already attacked? He must’ve caught their mother alone at the diner where they all took shifts. Where Skylar should’ve been working tonight.
This is my fault.
“Get up. Get up. Get up,” Skylar chanted under her breath.
Only her mother continued to lie there, unmoving.
“Mother!” Kasia’s voice pierced the sweltering night air.
Serefina Amon raised her head, her black curls, so like Skylar’s own, matted to the sweat on her forehead at the effort that smal
l movement took, her expression a mask of dread and determination.
Could she even get them out of here with that injury? She needed to, quickly. The house where they lived was located only ten miles from the diner. Pytheios would be here any second.
Skylar took a step forward but jerked to a stop when her mother gave a miniscule shake of her head. That’s all it took. That one tiny movement, and Skylar knew what was coming.
Their mother—their immortal mother who always had time on her side—was dying. This night, one phoenix would turn to ash, and another would rise to take her place. The only question was, would one rise? Or would all four of them?
Before that moment, though, Skylar knew her mother would send them away. Without her. That was the plan. Had always been the plan.
No. I’m not ready. I’m not strong enough to keep us all safe without you.
Serefina focused on her children—each as different from the other as the moon from the sun, all a reflection of both their darkly beautiful mother and her ancestry, born of the red dragon king and the previous phoenix, and their blond-haired, pale-blue-eyed white dragon king father.
A cry of agony burst from Serefina’s lips as she forced the crackling energy inside her to manifest into flames spilling over her body, igniting the source of her powers. All around her, the grass burned, tinder to her flames, catching quickly. Her body began to shift—long, glorious feathers bursting from her arms for the first time in her life. A sight Skylar had never wanted to witness. The one time a phoenix ever turned into the bird was when she passed her powers to her daughter, either in death or by choice to willingly give them up.
Serefina seemed to heave a breath into her body, then her voice sounded in Skylar’s mind…all their minds. “I love you all, and I am so proud of you. You are women worthy of our phoenix legacy, but don’t let history control you. Find your own way in this world.”
A colossal roar reverberated across the land. Pytheios, in his true form, lured by the flames, was coming for them.
Kasia, Meira, and Angelika all ducked, covering their ears. Skylar didn’t duck. She crouched, assuming a fighting position, then looked to her mother.
Her face a mask of anguish, Serefina directed her gaze to the youngest of her quadruplets.
Skylar turned her head to look at Angelika, too. Tears streamed down her sister’s face. Her pale blond hair whipped in the wind. “I love you,” Angelika mouthed. Skylar had to close her eyes, torn apart. Torn every which way. When she opened them again, her sister was gone. Sent to another place, a safer place, by her mother’s will alone.
The flames covering her mother’s body ebbed slightly, but she pushed through, focusing next on Meira. More angular and serious, with her bouncy strawberry-blond curls at odds with her personality, she held her body rigidly, dark eyes closed as though unable to watch their mother’s last moments.
Just like Angelika, in a silent instant, Meira was gone, too.
Breath coming in panting bursts Skylar could hear even above the crackling roar of flames, her mother had almost completed the shift, her features turning more delicate and yet sharper. At the same time, her feathers had already taken on a gray hue, turning to ash before Skylar’s eyes.
Serefina shook her head, as if clearing it, then looked up.
At Skylar.
Skylar stared back, trying to will strength into her mother’s body. She knew what came next, but she silently sent her mother a promise. I’ll make sure my sisters never come to harm, and, by the fates, I will destroy Pytheios for doing this to us.
In an instant, Skylar disappeared into that space, the in-between. Every sense shut down, and she was surrounded by pressure and darkness and utter silence.
But only for moments.
With a whoosh of returning sound, her feet suddenly stood not in the brown grassy field but on solid rock. All around her was granite, mighty columns framing what appeared to be a doorway.
A cave. Where had her mother sent her?
“No. It can’t be possible.”
Skylar whirled at the sound of a man’s voice, crouching into a defensive posture once more, her hands up. Ready to fight.
Before her stood a man with hair so white, it almost glowed even in the dim light of the cavern, cropped close to his head, almost military-style, and eyes a glacial blue. Eyes she and her sisters shared. Her father’s eyes. The hallmark of a white dragon shifter.
Only this wasn’t her father. Zilant Amon was dead.
“Who are you?” she asked through stiff lips, her voice harsh. Even now, the scents of fire and ash clung to her skin and her clothes.
“I’m your uncle, Tyrek.” He took a step forward but stopped when she scooted back. He held up both hands. “You must be Skylar. Serefina made me promise—”
“My father’s brother?” Skylar scoffed. “Try again, asshole. He’s dead. Pytheios took out the entire royal family of both the Red and White Clans.”
“Not dead,” the man said. “In hiding these five centuries. Just like you.”
She refused to let up, her posture stiff. “Show me.”
Without hesitation, he turned. He wore a loose outfit, almost like a gi, but with buttons instead of belted, and collarless. She had a clear view of his neck. Sure enough, the intricate design of the Amon crest marked the skin at the nape. A design her mother had made her memorize.
For this day?
“Show me your hand,” she snapped.
Every dragon shifter bore two marks. That of their family on their neck, and that of their king on the back of their hand. If any brand showed—an indication he was loyal to the current reigning king of his clan—she’d kill him where he stood.
Tyrek held up his hand, and Skylar sucked in a breath. No mark, which meant… “You’re rogue?” she asked.
At the same time, she relaxed her posture, dropping her hands. To be rogue was anathema to dragon shifters, which could only mean he was telling the truth. When Pytheios murdered their father, Tyrek must’ve run, the danger of being rogue a lesser evil than facing that red bastard.
The man before her gave a sad smile. “You’re so like your mother.”
Mom.
She’d sent her here to a man Skylar could trust to protect her. To a dragon shifter, a creature she’d learned to hate. To family.
“Mom,” Skylar choked.
She dropped to her knees as sorrow grabbed hold of her heart and twisted, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe even as sobs wracked her body.
Immediately, Tyrek was there, taking one of her hands in his. He waited through the storm of her tears, an unexpected source of comfort.
“Was it Pytheios?” he asked softly once she quieted.
Skylar nodded, then took a shuddering breath and raised her head, cold determination filling her veins with ice. “I’m going to make him pay. Whatever it takes.”
She had to. Her sisters, wherever their mother had sent them, would never be safe until he was dead.
CHAPTER ONE
Why the hell did I come here?
Oh, right. Kasia needs me.
Skylar stayed close to the smoothly curved rock wall as she eased herself down the long, human-sized tunnel the dragon shifters of the Blue Clan used only when in that form. Most of them seemed to prefer flying to their rooms via a massive, hollow center to the mountain fortress inside Ben Nevis, Scotland, where they lived. So the likelihood of being caught was minimal.
After all, she’d been here days without incident.
Still, she remained vigilant, moving slowly, cautiously, the skintight combat-ready gear she wore designed to slide noiselessly, every sense acutely attuned to her surroundings. Any sign she wasn’t alone, any hint of a sound or twitch of her instincts, and she’d make herself scarce, ducking into one of the many rooms—mostly small meeting rooms used for clan business—that lined this ha
llway.
Helpful that a subtle smoky scent hovered around these shifters, preceding them and warning her with plenty of time to spare. In fact, unless she missed her guess, a group had come through here shortly before her. One man in particular. That underlying note of bourbon and blood surrounding Ladon Ormarr, the new king of this clan, was unmistakable. After only a short while hiding here, she’d recognize his scent anywhere.
Skylar gritted her teeth at the admission. She shouldn’t be paying attention to any of those blue bastards other than playing keep-away.
“Dammit, Kasia,” Skylar muttered under her breath. “This is all your fault.”
Her sister was the only reason she’d set a toe anywhere near this place. How Kasia managed to get herself captured by dragon shifters—clan dragons no less—and brought to one of their strongholds was beyond Skylar.
Their mother had taught them a hell of a lot better than that, and now Skylar had to come out of hiding to fix it.
Getting into the citadel of Ben Nevis had been easy. The Blue Clan had been under attack by other clans of dragons at the time, distracting the sentinels. No one had paid the slightest notice to a woman with dark hair and pale blue eyes—not unlike many of the blue shifters here—amid the rush of battle. While gold and green and blue dragons fought over the lair like starved jackals fighting over a carcass, she’d snuck inside and hidden herself away in one of the abandoned living quarters on the upper levels where royalty should be. From there, she’d searched the mountain, trying to find her sister.
When the gold dragons had taken over the place, she’d almost left. Before she could, the blue dragons returned, taking their mountain back—something to do with the death of Uther Hagan, the King of the Gold Clan. Good riddance to the man who’d helped Pytheios murder her father. Skylar had managed to stay hidden through all that, still waiting for her sister.
All her intelligence said Kasia was here.
However, even after Kasia had finally shown her face, Skylar’d had no luck trying to get her on her own, thanks to the thug of a dragon shifter her sister had mated.
Fucking mated. What the hell, Kasia?
Still couldn’t get over that one. Disgust curled through her, entwining with deep-seated concern. Had they broken Kasia’s mind? Her will? Except, by the glimpses she’d had, her sister didn’t act broken. Either way, this had gone on long enough. Skylar was done with patience and waiting. She needed to get both of them out of here to safety. Time to try a different tactic.
