Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1)

by Aimee Easterling

  Book 1 of the Dragon Mage Chronicles

  A dragon shifter's treasure turns traitor when secrets ignite.

  Chapter 1

  When life gets tough, you’re left with two choices. Surrender to the pain...or become a pyromaniac. Fee chose the latter.

  “Burn, baby, burn,” she chanted, fingers tingling with the force of fire magic exiting her skin. All around, dormant trees woke, stretched, sought her spark of life...then went up in flames as the superheated air ignited loose bark, crunchy lichen, and eventually even the sap-sodden Green itself.

  Take that, suckers!

  The beech was the first to go. Ghost leaves dangling from smooth gray twigs were perfect tinder for an incipient blaze. Not quite as satisfying as the pines up on the ridge, though, which seemed to thrive on fire, popping and spewing seeds of destruction in their wake. Still.... “Not bad,” she muttered as she spun, sending tendrils of fire licking up the hillside in her wake. “Not bad at all.”

  “Focus, Bug.” As always, the male voice made Fee startle with combined fear and anticipation. Never mind that this time around the words emanated from the magic-infused cell phone at her hip rather than from a flesh-and-blood human. Never mind that Malachi—never Dad, never Father—was presently too far away to lash out with fists or fire.

  Regardless, the partially healed burns dotting her pale skin ached with the pain of recent memories. The scars along her spine puckered at the mere sound of her father’s voice. And the joy of fire-starting abruptly vanished.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, hating the way her voice quavered, hoping the distance between face and hip was sufficient to block out the intensity of her fear...and longing.

  It wasn’t. Malachi’s voice was smug when he answered. “I know you’ll try your best, Bug. I just hope your best is good enough this time.”

  And there was the familiar disappointment creeping into his tone. The disappointment that led to the rages, to the infernos of agony that built slowly until Fee blacked out and dreamed of self immolation. She tried so hard to evade her father’s displeasure...and yet, she never quite managed to sidestep in time.

  Smoke whipped down out of the conflagration, teasing tears out of Fee’s eyes. Gritting her teeth, the fire mage smeared the liquid away with the back of one soot-covered hand then pushed the full force of her own frustration into the surrounding forest.

  I’m just like my father, venting my rage on the weak, she realized as a standing snag exploded, splinters of flaming wood shooting off in every direction. Would she one day create a daughter of her own to terrorize? A daughter to turn into a certified firebug bent upon devastation?

  “Not likely,” she murmured even as she obeyed Malachi’s instructions to the letter, pushing fire downwind and up the slope she’d turned to face. The Aerie lay just over that hill, close enough for dragons to smell smoke and come hunting the culprit. Close enough so she’d have no time to flee back to the hidden settlement of fire mages that Malachi ruled with an iron fist.

  But running away had never been in the cards. This was a suicide mission, and that concept Fee could fully get behind.

  “What did you say?” demanded the voice at her hip.

  It took Fee a moment to realize her father was responding to the muttered “Not likely” rather than to the thoughts that had been whirling through her mind. A moment during which she was unable to breathe...and not just because the wall of flames had superheated the surrounding air and threatened to blister the interior of her lungs.

  “I was talking to the Green,” Fee prevaricated once she pulled equilibrium back around her like the quilt her mother had sewn six months before she died.

  Okay, I won’t lie to myself. Before Malachi killed Mama for trying to escape.

  The mere memory of Mama’s quilt gave Fee the spine she so often lacked in the presence of her ever-volatile father. So she elaborated on her fib even as she kicked at charred tangles of what had once been semi-sentient plants. “The vines are waking up,” she said. “They’re less dormant than we thought.”

  And it was true that the Green did hunt every spark of electricity and fire magic it could get its grubby little tendrils on. During the Change twenty-nine years earlier, the Green had swallowed everything from cities to farms, sending the remnants of humanity scurrying to the few regions too dry, too wet, or too high for plants to survive. Fee hadn’t been alive back then, but she’d heard the stories.

  So it wasn’t a stretch to believe the Green would now be fighting back against the destruction a lone fire mage could wreak. Despite the danger, though, Fee had worked fast and the plants had lacked time to transition from winter slumber to active retaliation.

  Malachi hummed something that could have been complaint or possibly encouragement. Whatever it was, Fee could tell he didn’t quite believe her. Still, her father was too far away to know for sure whether she told the truth.

  “They’re homing in on the electrical signature,” she said quickly, stepping closer to the flames in an effort to strengthen her resolve. It didn’t matter that soot clogged her nostrils and burned her eyes. She always felt stronger in the proximity of fire. “I’m gonna turn off the cell phone to give myself space to work. Don’t worry, though. I know what I’m doing.”

  Not that Malachi ever worried. He wouldn’t worry now either, not even when she powered the device down without giving him time for a reply. Not even when she was the only pawn presently on the board in the face of an enemy so much more powerful than the Green itself.

  Malachi wouldn’t worry because he knew that Fee would obey him without question. Minor rebellions like dropping his call were one thing. A major rebellion like taking advantage of this wall of flames and using the distraction to disappear into the wilderness? No daughter of Malachi’s would be so stupid as to try to evade his grasp.

  Fee tried to talk herself into proving her father wrong. Into walking away from this battle she’d been enrolled in since birth. She yearned to escape the father who manipulated her and hurt her and—she suspected—didn’t even know how to begin loving her.

  But she couldn’t. Instead, running across the charred earth in the wake of the flames, she chased her personal inferno up onto the hilltop. There, ultra-flammable pines were already sizzling into life...but not the kind of life the Green preferred. Instead, this was a plant’s afterlife, one flaming pillar of catharsis reaching toward the pure blue sky, grasping at the smoke, clinging onto the skyline.

  Beyond the flames, a city that had once been Knoxville stretched out across the valley below. Down there, the jungle was unseasonably active, vibrant leaves shielding most of the original human habitations from view. Because the Green didn’t sleep so close to the dragons’ Aerie. No, the plants reached upwards toward the high rises where dragons and humans still lived in all of the luxury of Before. Where they lived in all the luxury Fee had heard about but had never really been able to imagine.

  The dragons refused to share that luxury with fire mages like her father. So Malachi had resolved to take it by force...or at least to ensure the dragon cities couldn’t be used against him when he constructed high rises of his own.

  As she watched, a black speck took off from the top of the golden globe just west of the Aerie proper. Winged beast dipped, rose, then arrowed directly toward her location. The fire had been spotted and a dragon was on its way.

  “I did everything you asked, Papa Bug,” Fee murmured, using the childhood endearment with a sad smile on her lips. Because even though she’d obeyed Malachi’s instructions to the letter, she knew his plans would fail. After all, the rebellion depended upon her reaching the Aerie safely...

  ...And the flames had eluded her grasp, growing a mind of their own while their maker was peering out across the valley below. Now they encircled her body in a wall of overwhelming heat, dense smoke not only tearing her eyes but also rasping her breath. Her head was already growing muzzy, her thoughts slowing to a snail’s pace.

  “The fire,�
� she muttered. “I can still guide the fire.”

  So she did. But not the way Malachi would have wished. No, rather than asking the flames to move along and leave the closest trees untouched, she pushed the heat deeper into the leaf mold at her feet. Deeper even than that until the earth itself ignited.

  “I always knew I’d go up in flames,” Fee whispered. Then, with a smile on her face, she slid away into darkness.

  Chapter 2

  Dragon shifters were, by definition, motherless. But Mason would be the first to admit he was a mama’s boy.

  Well, not in the wimpy, mollycoddled way that term generally suggested. After all, he was the Lord Dragon everyone in the Aerie looked to for answers. The Lord Dragon before whom underlings genuflected if he didn’t take the time to break them of the habit. The Lord Dragon who kept his small contingent of two-leggers safe from the Green.

  But despite all that, when his foster mother showed up at his office door with a concerned wrinkle creasing the bridge of her nose, Mason dropped everything and ushered her inside. It was time to call out the big guns.

  “Mason...” Sarah started. But the shifter put one finger to his lips and led her in silence to the seating alcove that overlooked the western horizon. Despite the mountain of responsibilities on his desk, he’d recently noticed how stooped the older woman’s shoulders had become and how her formerly sprightly steps slowed into a trudge by the end of every day.

  And, yes, she was about to celebrate her seventieth birthday. But the Sarah he knew would have met aging with grace and dignity. Something was seriously wrong.

  Luckily, Mason possessed the antidote. Opening the secret compartment his twin had built into the side of the sofa years ago, Mason drew out a small parcel wrapped in a much-used square of dingy waxed paper

  “What is it?” his foster mother asked, intrigued.

  Ah ha! She hadn’t even seen her gift yet and already the spark was back in his foster mother’s voice. The quiescent fire in Mason’s own belly grew even as he pulled back the edges of the paper to reveal his find.

  Treasure. Rare and delicious, the nuggets scintillated his senses. The scent was nearly strong enough to taste, but Mason didn’t partake of a single morsel himself. Instead, stretching his arm out, he popped the prize into his foster mother’s mouth before she had time to protest the luxury.

  “Where...?” The question halted as Sarah’s eyes closed in surprised rapture. “Mmm,” she hummed gently, that troublesome crease fading back into just another lax wrinkle in time-worn skin.

  And therein lay the true treasure. Sarah’s joy was worth every harrowing moment Mason had spent hunting ginseng in woodland glades that yearned to eat him alive. He knew his brother Jasper would feel the same way about his own lengthy flight south to trade for this decadent treat ripped so carefully from the heart of the Green. One moment of peace on their foster mother’s face was worth any number of risks to life and limb.

  So Mason didn’t fidget as they sat in shared silence. Instead, he watched and waited as Sarah’s closed eyes signaled her contentment. Her worries would bubble back to the surface sooner rather than later, but for now he would revel in the intensity of her pleasure.

  Still, when his foster mother’s eyelids opened at last, her face remained almost girlish in its peacefulness. “Wherever did you find chocolate?”

  Mason could smell the bitter sweetness on her breath, his shifter senses making the world more vivid than it appeared to those who spent their entire lives on two legs. Sarah’s face glowed gently with infrared light as her aroused limbic system elevated her temperature ever so slightly. Operation chocolate had been a resounding success.

  Now the goal was to maintain that hard-won tranquility. Sidestepping her question, Mason merely shrugged and placed the remainder of the parcel in Sarah’s unresisting hand. Her slender fingers closed around the gift, a hint of a smile curling her lips upward into what he hoped were good memories from the Before.

  This is how life should be. Rich, sated, full of love.

  The reprieve was short-lived, though. Soon, his foster mother’s usual keen intelligence filled her face and Mason braced himself for the inquisition that he knew was soon to come. Only, the initial question wasn’t one he’d expected.

  “Have you seen Jasper lately?” Sarah asked, that darned crease reappearing on her face. Mason wanted to reach over and strangle the worry out of existence, to snuff it out with one iron fist.

  But he’d learned from hard experience that women—or at least this one very important woman—didn’t react well to overbearing management. No, if he wanted his foster mother’s concerns to die a speedy death, then he’d have to be more subtle about his intentions.

  “Jasper?” he asked, as if he’d forgotten the name of one of the five dragons who shared the Aerie’s towers.

  “Yes, your brother,” Sarah replied, her voice as tart as the juice of the little sour oranges that grew wild down by the river.

  Mason ignored both her reproof and the fact that Jasper wasn’t really his brother. Dragons only enjoyed one blood sibling apiece, a twin who hatched within their same egg. Neither he nor Jasper currently boasted such a relationship.

  But long-standing sadness would do neither of them any good. So Mason squashed that line of thought and merely shook his head. “Not lately.”

  He hadn’t spoken to Jasper in a week, actually, not since the other shifter had returned with chocolate in hand and a plan for bringing their foster mother back to her usual vibrant love of life. But a few days or even weeks between visits wasn’t unusual given Mason’s center of operations in the Sunsphere, a tower set apart from the rest of the Aerie by a sea of hungry Green.

  “Well, you need to go check on him,” Sarah countered. “He’s been withdrawn lately. Absent-minded. A bit cold.” She paused, then dropped the bomb she’d obviously come to share. “I’m worried he might be succumbing to the Fade.”

  And just like that, the pleasure of the preceding moment fled. Mason had heard rumors of the fading sickness, an unexplained ailment that began unobtrusively within certain shifters then grew like wildfire. The afflicted complained of cold, weakness, fatigue. Then, one day, they simply ceased to exist.

  The magic that had merged man and beast imploded and left nothing behind but ash.

  “There hasn’t been a single confirmed case...” Mason began. But, uncharacteristically, Sarah interrupted rather than affording him the deference every other Aerie human offered to their dragon overlords.

  “He’s twinless,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. The older woman cleared her throat and spoke more calmly even though Mason could tell that squashing her fears required a supreme effort of will. “Everyone knows it hits the twinless first.”

  Mason opened his mouth to say...well, he didn’t really know what to say. But before he could think of a way to calm his mother’s fears, the older woman had jumped to her feet and pressed her nose up against the angled glass that wrapped all the way around each floor of the Sunsphere.

  “Is that smoke?” she demanded.

  Mason growled in frustration. Between the chocolate and that dratted crease, he’d missed the obvious. Because the vision that met his gaze was more than smoke. It was fire...and fire kindled by a mage.

  Brilliant magenta light flared out in all directions, the streaks of color invisible to the human eye but vivid as the nearby sunset to the shifter retina. The sight was beautiful, but it set Mason’s teeth on edge nonetheless. Because while the presence of mages was never a good sign, human magic always boded ill for their sworn enemies—dragon-kind.

  Without speaking, he rose and flung open the massive fiberglass door leading into nothingness. Cold winter air swept inside, tearing papers off his desk and whipping his mother’s hair into a frenzy.

  Mason’s long, flexible tail reached out and plucked Sarah out of harm’s way. Ah, so he’d shifted. Good. The sooner back in his own true form, the sooner this crisis could be averted.

&nbs
p; Spreading his wings, the Lord Dragon prepared to leap. Then, remembering his mother at the last moment, he paused to glance back over one shoulder.

  “I’ll alert the others,” Sarah yelled, her voice barely audible above the roar of rushing wind. She was unfazed by his abrupt transition from ordinary man to beast large enough to eat her alive and was equally untroubled by her adopted son’s descent into his instinctual animal nature. Instead, she stood tall, clutching her waxed-paper parcel in one hand while holding hair out of squinting eyes with the other.

  Still, Mason strove to showcase the manners his foster mother had so carefully drummed into her family of reptilian predators ever since hatching. Nodding his thanks, he met her gaze. Then, bugling, he leapt into the air, wings beating hard to turn the initial plummet into a soar.

  Jasper and the fading sickness would have to wait. Because if a mage threatened the Aerie, then Mason would have no problem squashing the intruder like a bug.

  Chapter 3

  The girl lay surrounded by ashes but untouched by flame as Mason came to earth beside her. No missing eyebrows, no singed clothing. Instead, she was as pristine as a slogger could be, the hand-knit sweater around her waist gray with age while the traded-for jeans from the Before boasted holes in each knee.

  Only the t-shirt appeared intentional. An intricate line-drawing of fire and leaves swept up one side, exploding into birds and flowers at the neckline before descending into a network of roots that encircled the hem. The lines appeared to have been dyed with walnut hulls and pokeberry juice, the rich brown and purple faded and smudged with wear but imperfections only adding to the beauty of the whole.

  “A treasure,” Mason murmured, unsure if he was referencing the shirt or the girl herself.

  He’d discovered her moments after lighting a carefully planned backfire to snuff the inferno. First, he’d caught a glint of red hair and pale skin as he winged overhead. Then something tugged at his belly, a deep connection he’d nearly forgotten was possible, the bond of a dragon to his twin. The sensation had struck Mason out of the air, forcing him to shift so he could trail human fingertips across the woman’s soot-streaked chin.