The Shifter's Gift

by Haley Weir

  The bartender folded his arms and glared even more severely at her. “Stalling? Really? That’s your approach?”

  “Stalling for what?” Belle’s confusion grew more and more by the minute. What was he talking about? Had they met before and she just didn’t remember? That was unlikely. She knew her memory was sharper than normal. Her entire life, people had been telling her that she was not average.

  “Please. Serpentina don’t know how to play coy, so drop the act.”

  “I’m not acting. Who’s the Serpentina?” She crossed her arms and wished she had never come down here. But it was too late now. “Look, forget that. I don’t care unless they are relatives of mine. I only came here because we have similar eyes. I’ve never met someone whose eyes looked so much like mine. I wanted to ask you about your family, or heritage, in hopes that it would lead me somehow to mine.”

  The man snorted and said, “well, I’ll be damned. The Serpentina really have bumped up the game in this war.” With that, he strode over and grabbed her arm.

  “Hey, what are you doing?!” Belle tugged at his grip, but he was the strongest man she had ever met. His grip didn’t loosen at all, and Bella was pretty strong herself. “Stop it! Let me go!”

  “Not going to happen, Serpentina. You’re coming with me.”

  “Stop it! Help! Someone help me!” Belle looked around wildly at the crowd, but no one paid her any attention. The bartender pulled her down the street quickly; he was as fast as he was strong. He grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder. Belle attempted to beat at his back, but he just kept walking, deeper and deeper into the dingy alley.

  Belle felt the primal urge to fight take over her body. She was rarely violent, but she wanted to bite, scratch, claw and tear into him. He must think she was someone else. What could he possibly want with her? Belle began to wail on his back, digging into his shoulder blades with her nails and attempting to beat on his spine, but he seemed unfazed. As they neared the end of the alley, he stopped short and dumped her on the ground, staring down at her with intense, unadulterated fury. What had she done wrong? Was he simply deranged?

  “Please, I’m begging you, I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know who the Serpentina are. I’m just a ticket booth vendor. I’m not a part of any gang.” Never in all of her life living in Manhattan had she experienced something as terrifying as this. She’d heard about gang violence, random shootings, terrorist attacks, and criminal attacks on women, but she’d never fallen prey to any of it before now.

  “That’s a nice ploy the Serpentina have going on, but I’m not buying it,” the bartender growled. When Belle looked into his eyes, they were definitely on fire. There was no moon to reflect off the irises. His eyes were living flames.

  “Please, I don’t know…I didn’t do anything wrong!” She felt the tears slip down her cheeks as he raised his hand. She flinched and covered her head in anticipation, but the blow never came. Then he started shouting.

  “Didn’t do anything wrong?! How about murdering my brother Cairne! The Serpentina have hunted us like dogs since you turned…you’re vicious and feral and…” He stopped again and Belle froze, waiting to see if he would continue his rant. When no strike came, she dared to peak out from under her arms up at him. She sniffled and saw the look of abject horror on his face when he slowly lowered his arms.

  “Why aren’t you fighting back?” His voice was hoarse.

  “Because you’re stronger than me,” she cried. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know the Serpentina, and I don’t know your brother. I don’t know anything about families.” Belle felt the sob rip itself out of her throat and then she couldn’t contain the dam of emotions that burst inside of her. She cried so hard she didn’t think she was going to be able to stop. She was about to die without ever really knowing who she was. What Belle wasn’t expecting was for the two strongest arms she’d ever felt in her entire life pull her into an embrace. The body was hard and warm, and then she was being rocked back and forth as she continued to cry.

  It was quite a while before her sobbing ceased and gave way to hiccups. She was keenly aware that the man holding her had threatened to kill her moments ago, and she stiffened when she hiccupped and felt his fingers brush the tears away from her cheeks.

  “You’re not going to kill me?” she asked. She didn’t dare look into his eyes. She did not want to know if he was luling her into a false sense of security as part of some sick serial killer game.

  “No. I’m not.” His tone was genuine.

  “What changed your mind?” She wasn’t sure that was the question she should be asking, but her brain was on hiatus and her mouth was forming sentences before she had time to think them through.

  “Because no one, not even the Serpentina, can talk of family and home with such a broken heart.” The bartender sighed and shifted her on his lap. At some point, he sat down to the pavement, and pulled her onto his lap.

  “I don’t know what the Serpentina are,” she heard herself insist. Maybe they were some long lost relatives and he had a grudge against them for killing his brother. She wondered if she really was one of them.

  “They are the she-dragons; the females of our kind. They turned on us many years ago. They hunt and kill us, as they did with my brother. Your eyes tell me you are a she-dragon. As a dragon warrior, I am honor bound to kill you.” His voice was calm and steady, and Belle found herself stiffen in his arms again. In a shocking twist, Bell could not help the laughter that spilled from her lips. In all of her hysteria, Belle wasn’t sure why she was laughing so hard, but her emotions were jumbled. She could not help it.

  “I hardly see anything funny about this,” the bartender huffed at her.

  “I know,” She gasped whilst clutching her sides. “I don’t either, but I just can’t help it. I always kind of wondered when I was going to go crazy, but I never figured it would be in a dark alley with a homicidal maniac trying to convince me that dragons are real.” She continued to mop at her eyes, which were now wet from the laughter instead of mind-numbing terror.

  “Hey! I am not…well…” He trailed off. “I’m not going to kill you. Not yet, anyway. You haven’t attacked me.”

  “What?” Belle wiped at her face one more time. “I told you, I am not going to attack you. Whoever these Serpentina are, they don’t sound like me at all. I just want to be left alone. Well, I want to find my family if possible. But other than that, I don’t want any trouble. I’m a Broadway ticket vendor who wears a stupid uniform, gets gawked at by too many men and has urges to sprout wings and fly, but I always figured that was the first stage of my inevitable psychotic break.”

  “You have urges to sprout wings?” the bartender stiffened.

  “Well yeah, but that’s not possible.” Belle leaned back and for the first time dared to look up in his eyes. He was staring down at her like he couldn’t figure out what she was.

  “Have you ever…”

  “Have I ever what?” She bit her lip.

  “Have you ever burnt yourself, but it didn’t really burn?”

  “Umm...”

  “Have you ever injured yourself, but it faded after a short time?” His face was passive, but the awe in his eyes was giving away his excitement.

  “Yeah, all the time. I’m the biggest klutz I know. My injuries fade after a day. Mrs. Bueller at the orphanage said it was the strangest medical phenomenon she had ever seen. But she never complained because it saved the orphanage money. I’ve never really been sick, either,” Belle told him proudly. She wasn’t sure why she was proud of that, but it seemed like some sort of accomplishment.

  “Well I’ll be damned. I wonder when, who, or how this happened.” He was shaking his head at her and Belle felt like she was on the cusp of some important answer, but she didn’t know what. Surely, the answer wasn’t about dragons, was it?

  “Are you telling me, I’m a dragon?” she whispered.

  “I am. But I don’t know how. You shou
ld be feral like the others,” he told her.

  “What do you mean?” She looked down at herself.

  “The she-dragons are all feral. They turned on all of us a long time ago and now we are at war with them. They kill us, and we have figured out the only way to survive is to mate with human women. Claire, Drakkain Lord of the Dragon’s mate, is expecting. If she delivers successfully, we may have found a way to circumvent whatever biological or genetic condition caused the Serpentina to turn on us to begin with.”

  “But I’m not Serpentina,” Belle insisted. She felt like the word was a knife to her heart, like some sort of venomous epitaph that meant she had been destined for another life, but somehow it had died and she had been granted this one.

  “That’s just it; you are. My guess is they figured out how to breed with human males, and here you are, a half-breed.”

  Belle looked around in confusion. “But you don’t understand, I’m not a dragon. I have never sprouted wings. I’ve never flown off into the night anywhere and breathed fire or had shiny scales. Dragons don’t exist. I think you’re tripping.”

  It was with these words that Belle discovered out how very wrong she was. In the next instant, the bartender stood up and transformed into the stuff of legends. Where a man had stood before, she looked into the fiery eyes of a beast ten times her size. Its voice came out in a low, growling hiss.

  “Would you care to reconsider your opinion?”

  The last thing Belle remembered was her vision fading to black. Before she hit the ground, a giant paw reached out and scooped her up.

  Chapter 4

  Scyros caught Belle, took off into a run, and leapt into the sky. He kept the Serpentina carefully tucked in his paw, and took a few broad passes around Manhattan. He steered clear of the bay, as that was where his brothers were likely to be patrolling. Until he figured out what he was going to do, he did not want to answer any questions. .

  A half-breed Serpentina who had no idea about her true identity. How was this possible? For the clan, it meant that Claire’s pregnancy wasn’t doomed. It begged another question: if Serpentina could have children, were they also capable of recognizing the ability to replenish their army and continue the war for ages to come? Sky didn’t like the thought of that; in truth, he was tired of the constant fighting. He snorted. To think he had just been complaining about having been benched for a year. In the eyes of an immortal dragon, an eternity of war felt completely hopeless. Every dragon in existence would become a casualty.

  Sky enjoyed the more leisurely flights, like the ones where he and his brothers would go back and forth, bantering and nipping at each others wings. That thought made his heart ache for Cairne. His brother taught him to fly and to fight. Their own father had lost a battle with a Serpentina. That seemed to be the way the dragon warriors went. Their mother had been one of the last females to turn, and she made their father promise that, when the time came, he would take care of her before she could cause any harm. Cairne had long suspected that their father had lost a fight not long after on purpose to rid himself of a broken heart. Then, Sky lost Cairne. He was grateful for his brothers in America, but there was something to be said for blood relations, and his brothers place in his heart ached. No other warrior would fill that void.

  And yet, here was a woman who had searched for her place in the world her entire life. All she ever wanted was a sense of family. She’d never get it, not from her sisters at least. But she gave Sky a reason to pause and consider her situation. What if she-dragons could be brought back into the fold? Claire wasn’t due for an ultrasound for a while, so no one would know the sex of the baby until then. Drake had convinced himself the baby was a son, but it very well could be a female.

  The question was, what was Sky supposed to do with her now? She had gone twenty-five years without turning on anyone. She had yet to turn into anything at all. There was no doubt she was dragonborn, but she had yet to shift.

  Sky circled around Central Park before making his decision to land in a secluded area by trees in the park. Home was only a few minutes away, and he could ask Drake what to do. He did not doubt her honesty; she had no idea dragons actually existed. If she had an inkling that she was different, she hadn’t been able to put a name to it. Speaking of names, he had not gotten hers yet. He checked her pockets and found her I.D. Belle Smith. The orphanage must not have known her last name when she was found or dropped off. Belle was a beautiful name though; as was the woman herself. Sky risked a moment to look over her unconscious face. Without stress and anxiety, and that hint of stubborn curiosity, her face was beautiful. She had the same oval eyes and dark skin he and his brothers had, although hers was a tad lighter. If there was one thing Sky was certain of, whoever had been the sperm donor to her Serpentina mother probably hadn’t lived long after the deed was done. The Serpentina were like overgrown praying mantises; they bit the heads off their lovers after a romantic rendezvous.

  Scyros studied her lips and felt a stirring inside himself that he hadn’t experienced in decades. Sure, he didn’t mind looking at women, but his lust for revenge had consumed him, overshadowing all else. Looking at Belle, he was reminded of what he had been missing for so long. He felt his cock stir and then gritted his teeth. There was no point in letting those thoughts come barreling into his head. Scyros bent and picked her up, cradling her to his chest.

  Scyros made a mad dash for the brownstone where Corey was already opening the door for him when he climbed the cement steps and entered the house.

  “I take it you don’t need the young lady’s address?” Corey looked at her passively, and Sky wondered how he felt about seeing her. Corey was a human who had been gravely injured by a Serpentina when he first began working for the warriors. His sister’s best friend who was also Ari’s previous mate, was killed in the crossfire that destroyed their home on the Hudson River in upstate New York. If anyone had reason to loathe the Serpentina, Corey certainly did. But curiosity was the only discernible look on his face.

  “No. Did you find anything else out about her?” Sky asked. Belle was still dead weight in his arms, so he began to ascend the stairs to his bedroom to set her down. Once in his room, he turned back to Corey, who had a tray of refreshments for him.

  “Lord Drake has been worried about you. You didn’t come home after your shift,” Corey replied, evading the question.

  “Corey, what aren’t you telling me?” he pressed.

  “Belle Smith was an orphan at St. Augustine’s Home for Orphans. She is twenty-five, works as a ticket vendor for Broadway shows, went to her local school districts and has never been in any kind of trouble with the law.”

  “But...” Sky began.

  “But, it is peculiar that, as the daughter of a Serpentina and a human male, a woman dropped her off at the orphanage twenty-five years ago. The report indicates the woman only said her name, Belle, then turned around and walked away. The caseworker on duty at the time said it was unusual because there was something wrong with the woman’s eyes. She said they appeared to be on fire.”

  Sky sat on the edge of the bed. If this report was true, it indicated that their ideology on the Serpentina war was all wrong. If a Serpentina was alert and civil enough to have sex with a human male, carry a child to term, and then drop it at an orphanage whilst remaining civil and not killing everyone on sight, then the Serpentina weren’t feral or vicious. The war was being fought against she-dragons who were just as sound-minded as the dragon warriors, but their intent was deadly, and the purpose was unclear.

  Sky watched Belle sleep until he heard the thunderous boots of his brothers. When Drake burst open the door to his bedroom, he knew his leader was going to be angry. But he did not expect Drake to pick him up off the bed, and throw him across the room where he landed with a deafening crash. Plaster and sheetrock rained down on top of him and pictures fell off the walls with the tinkling sound of shattering glass. Shouts of alarm rang through the house as Drake advanced on him again, and he br
iefly saw the profiles of the brothers and their mates right before Drake’s fist came smashing into his face.

  Chapter 5

  Belle came to and realized the last thing she saw was a massive, black dragon with silver wing tips and scales and fiery eyes. She shot upright in bed and looked around, noticing she was now in a bed, not a back alley in Manhattan about to die.

  There were four men in the room, one being the bartender, and three others who looked eerily similar to him. She wondered if they were brothers. She jumped off the bed when the biggest of the four punched the bartender in the face.

  “Hey! Hey stop it! Stop!” She ran around the bed and before any of them could react, she checked on the bartender who had gotten roughed up by the largest man in the room. He was honestly one of the largest men she had ever seen. She turned back and glared at him. “What is wrong with you?” She took this moment to look around the room and considered the precarious position she was in. The men were looking at her with loathing, and the women who were crowding into the doorway, one of them very pregnant, looked scared.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me, but our brother here seems to think it’s a perfectly logical idea to bring a Serpentina into my house.” Belle stood up and jutted her chin out.

  “Well, you must be blind then,” she spat. “I don’t see any Serpentina here, just an overgrown brute who strikes people in anger rather than letting someone take a moment and explain! You lunatic!”

  Belle was sure he was going to attack her until the pregnant woman began to laugh. The man turned and looked at her in shock. “It’s not funny, Claire. Do you have any idea the danger she poses?”

  “Hey,” Claire began. “I think the only one here posing any danger is the man prone to knocking people’s lights out! You big looney tune.” With the tension slightly defused, the women trickled into the room.

  “Claire’s got a point,” one of the women said. “Jennifer.” She stuck out her hand and for a moment Belle thought her partner was going to pin it back to her waist.