Evander (Stratham Shifters Book 4)

by Sarah J. Stone

  She had been acting like a wife despite fighting against it.

  It was one lonely morning before dawn when the thoughts got the best of her. She sat up in her bed, reaching for her phone. She wanted a distraction – anything to show her mind another path.

  While scrolling through her recent searches, she found her mother's name. She had never finished that search to find more about her mother online. The carapaces had told her endless stories, but stories weren't as good as the digital trail she might be able to find. Maybe her mother would have an interview – a video somewhere – where she could hear her voice.

  Ariel researched both names, but nothing came up. Frustrated, she pulled the pictures from her suitcase and put her phone over the pageant one. She wasn't very good at a Google image search, but it might be a better shot than what she was doing. There were so many Marina Campbells and Marina Reginas; she needed a better answer.

  Eventually after playing around with it, she found copies of the image that matched the picture.

  Except, it wasn't her mother's face on the image. There was someone else who won Miss Victory in 1992, with the exact same dress, sash, and background.

  Ariel froze, feeling chills go down her spine. This couldn't be right.

  She found another picture, the one with tap shoes, and Google image searched that as well. It was the same thing. An image that almost matched, except for the face. They had doctored them.

  She didn't move for a solid moment, her mind whirling. Why would they have doctored them? Why would they have lied to her?

  Eventually, her fingers spoke for her. She found herself texting Cole, praying that he was still on Earth. Cole had always been her ally, even when he was detained for war crimes in the kingdom. She had never judged him or his actions. She now prayed that he wouldn't judge her as well.

  Have you gone back?

  She waited for what felt like an eternity. The fact that there was no answer as the minutes ticked by made her hope that maybe, just maybe, they had gone back. Maybe this nightmare was over, and she could move on with her life. They knew she was closing vortexes; they wouldn't linger.

  Call me, came the simple response.

  She knew that she shouldn't. She knew she was risking it all if she did – her future with the carapaces, her family. Except for the fact that she didn't know what was real right now.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Where are you?” he asked, urgency in his voice.

  “Does it matter?” she said, curling her legs up underneath her. “You know we're closing the vortexes. Why are you lingering?”

  “Ariel, where are you?” he said, urgently. “Are you still in the city?”

  “No,” she said. “We moved a lot. We're closing the vortexes in some strange ass order. First Berlin, and then Hong Kong, and then we went to–”

  “Dublin,” he replied.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Didn't you know?” he asked. “You're tracking us.”

  “What?” she replied. “No, there's an order that we're supposed to do it in. A mystic order, they said.”

  “The only order that you're doing it in is getting a mass of carapaces as close to Alexander as possible,” Cole answered. “You're killing him, and he won't leave until Peter can take command.”

  “Killing him?” she choked. She hadn't expected that answer.

  “Alexander has been with you for so long, you've slowly been depleting him of power. A normal carapace wouldn't be able to do that, but you are special. And the combination of you and your carapace family – if that's what they want to call themselves – it will kill him. He's stubborn. He won't leave without Peter's mind intact. We keep moving, but you keep tracking us.”

  “No,” she said. “I didn't know.”

  Cole was silent on the other end.

  “What else didn't you know, Ariel? You're my sister, you've been my sister before he even married you. I knew from the minute I saw you that you were special. And now you're going to kill my brother.”

  She put a hand to her mouth, tears falling down her face.

  “Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you stop us?”

  “For any one of us to get that close to a ring of carapaces is dangerous. I wouldn't risk losing my power for the sake of Enya. Peter is king, and Alexander is his regent. We can't get near enough to you, or they will take us out. I had no idea if your phone was being monitored.”

  “I've never heard you afraid before, Cole,” her voice trembled. “Tell me you aren't afraid.”

  “Everyone is afraid of something,” he answered.

  “They gave me pictures,” she said. “But the pictures don't match the story. The pictures don't match the name. I don't know what to do or what to believe anymore.”

  “So, come back to us,” Cole said, softly. “We're in the Grand Hotel in the center of town. I'll text you the room number.”

  “I don't know what is real anymore,” she was surprised to find herself blubbering like a child. “Cole, I can't.”

  “They won't cast you out for seeing your husband one last time,” Cole said. “Because either you come and save his life, and their opinion does not matter, or you come to say goodbye to him. If you can't get the carapaces out of the city so we can take the vortex, we will be trapped here.”

  “But we aren't even done closing the–”

  “They are lying to you, Ariel,” Cole said. “You are done. There is one more in this city, and then we will be trapped here forever.”

  “Cole,” she hollowed, losing control. “I can't lose everything again.”

  “You won't,” he promised her. “But you should come soon.”

  Tears flooded her vision as he hung up. Her head pounded with tears she needed to shed, her body wracked with sobs.

  There had to be an explanation for why the pictures were faked. Was Cole telling the truth, or was he luring her in? Was her father trying to save her from a more horrible truth? Was he even her father? What was happening?

  She sat on the bed for an hour, unable to breathe for her tears. She wanted to be held, to lay her head on a shoulder and be protected.

  Only one person had ever made her feel safe, and that was Alexander.

  If this was her last chance to see him, she couldn't waste it. She couldn't let him die knowing they were at odds. They had been so different their whole relationship, but they had never meant to hurt each other.

  Finding her way to the Grand Hotel wasn't hard. It was the tallest hotel, gleaming in the center of the city. Its golden color reminded her of a dragon's eyes, glinting in the sunlight.

  She looked like a mess in the elevator mirror, her eyes red and her hair pulled every which way. Her posture was slumped, her body tired. She felt like she was walking underwater, as if every movement was difficult.

  Cole opened the door, wrapping his arms around her.

  “Hello, darling,” he said, as if she wasn't responsible for the mass destruction and chaos in their lives.

  “Hi, Cole,” she said, softly. “Just take me to him.”

  “No song and dance required,” Cole said, pulling on her arm.

  Nothing prepared her for the sight of Alexander on the bed. He had lost at least twenty pounds and now resembled a skeleton. His eyes were closed, his face covered in a thin layer of sweat. His hands were gripped in pain, and his chest was barely moving.

  Enya was at his bedside, a cold cloth on his head. Peter stood by the window and looked like he wanted to bite her when she walked in the room. Cole held his arm out as if to calm Peter.

  “She's waving a white flag, brother. She gets to see her husband one last time. After all, family is everything.”

  “She is not–”

  “She is his wife and your queen,” Cole's eyes bore into his brother. “And so it shall be, as the old ways dictate.”

  Ariel's heart almost broke at Cole's words. Even now, they were loyal to their family. And she was family now, just as
she had been family for years.

  She squeezed Alexander's hand and his eyes opened. They were yellow, but it wasn't the healthy dragon yellow. She knew that he was dying.

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry. I don't know what to believe.”

  “My darling,” he managed. “You have no reason to be sorry. You were loyal to your family.”

  “I don't even know if they are my family,” she said. “I don't know what is real. My mother wasn't a dancer, or a pageant queen.”

  Alexander's brow furrowed at that. He coughed, but struggled up onto his elbows, resisting his brother's help.

  “No,” he said. “Your mother was a nurse.”

  Ariel froze. “A nurse?” she said.

  “Yes.” Alexander looked at Cole who found the voice to continue.

  “Your mother was a first responder, tending to the injuries of the Regina carapaces who attempted to close a vortex when we were transporting. Your father was in the mess, just outside the apartment that they lived in. She ran out. Her death wasn’t intentional, but Alexander did kill her, if that's what you're after.”

  “It was an accident?” Ariel asked, in shock.

  “As much as an accident as defending yourself can be,” Cole said. “The Regina carapaces did not want peace. They were murdering dragons who came to Earth. We retaliated, and because we are dragons, it turned into a slaughter. Our father thought they were better off dead. He ordered us to continue the slaughter, and we did. It was war, Ariel. There was no attempt at negotiation.”

  “That's not what they told me,” Ariel said, looking back to her dying husband.

  “They knew they were killing Alexander,” Cole said. “That's why they kept wanting to meet in your hotel room. In the beginning they wanted to concentrate their energy onto him.”

  “How do I know this is real?” she asked, her hands shaking.

  “Here,” Cole said, handing over his phone.

  ‘Marina Campball only victim of fiery explosion,’ said the article.

  She had been spelling the name wrong in her searches. And there, on the front of the article, was the face she had come to know so well.

  Other news articles showed the same thing: various wordings of the same story with different pictures of the same woman.

  “It's almost sundown,” Cole said. “I don't know if they can close that vortex without you. But if they can, we will be trapped here forever.”

  Ariel looked between them and the phone again and again. But within moments, she knew what was right. Her mother had saved lives. She wasn't a dancer; she wasn't a pageant queen, but she had a good heart. And Ariel was going to make her proud.

  “You won't be,” she said, rising up. “I never wanted to be queen, but I am their queen. They cannot deny it any more than you can. Pack your things. We're all going home tonight.”

  Chapter 15

  She chose to use every bit of her acting training to approach the vortex site. Her heart was pounding, but she was trying to keep her poker face. Cole had made it clear to her that they needed to get back home, away from the carapaces and soon. She didn't want to know what the consequences of waiting too long were.

  “Are you ready, Ariel?” Alvin appeared ahead of the rest of the pack. “We are excited to close this one. This is a big one.”

  “It's also the last one,” Ariel said, and Alvin froze. “Which you neglected to tell me. You didn't tell me that you were trapping them.”

  Alvin went pale.

  “You said that they would know,” she continued. “When would they know? When it was too late?”

  Alvin said nothing, and she pulled out the photographs.

  “This isn't my mother,” she said.

  “That is your mother. Do you not see her face? It's–”

  “That is her face,” Ariel said. “This is not her body or her job. I'm not an idiot, Alvin. It started with the touring community theater, which is not a thing. “

  “I can explain,” Alvin said.

  “My husband explained to me already,” Ariel said, “that she was a nurse, and that she was killed in an accident. Google confirms this, which is the same thing I used for an image search. You lied to me.”

  “We had to,” he said at last. “We had very little time to close the vortexes, and your brother-in-law was moving fast in his murders. We needed you to understand and relate.”

  “My brother-in-law has been in a hazy hell for the past few years,” she replied. “And I'm sure that you would be, too, given what he's been through. You wanted to kill them. They wanted to kill you. I’m sick of it.”

  “Carapaces have always been enemies of the dragons.”

  “What are we, robots programmed that way?” Ariel snapped. “We can make our own choices. This age-old feud is ridiculous”

  “They killed your mother!” Alvin cried.

  “Yes, they did,” she said. “Two wrongs don't make a right. When Alexander took the throne, he stopped the carapace slaughter. The sins of the father are not to be revisited on the son.”

  “Ariel, we are your family!” Alvin said. “You are my daughter.”

  “And you gave me up,” she said. “You didn't have to. You didn't. This is a newsflash to you, but mixed-race relationships are frowned on in many places in the world. People find ways to make it work. And if the carapaces are all united now, it wouldn't have been that hard for you two to figure out. But you chose another path in life. You chose to sit on your thrones, and then, dear God, you give me shit for choosing to sit on another throne.”

  “That is not your throne! They are not your family!”

  “They were there for me,” she said. “They did not judge me for what I was. They did not leave me on my own. They knew it was a difficult relationship – a mixed relationship – and they didn't run for the hills.”

  “Because your husband is addicted to you.”

  “Because my husband saved me!” she screamed. “And I will do the same for him. You may be my blood family, but I've had enough of this.”

  She was surprised to find tears running down her face. Her body was reacting to the loss, the grief of what could have been overtaking her. It would have been better if she never met them and never saw what she could have had.

  But it had taught her a valuable lesson at least. She had thought she was indifferent to her marriage – indifferent to her husband and her in laws.

  She wasn't. She loved him. She wasn't sure that they would ever be a fairy tale couple, but she didn't want to be without him. She didn't want to divorce him. She didn't want to be apart from him anymore.

  “We can't do this without you,” Alvin said. “We aren't strong enough. You, Ariel, you are strong enough. You are the missing link.”

  “I'm also your queen,” she said, raising her chin. “You and the dragons aren't so different. You have to listen to your queen, and when you die, Alvin, all the carapaces will be mine. What makes you think I won't side with the dragons and get rid of them all?”

  “You wouldn't dare,” he said. “You're no better than they are!”

  “Wouldn't I?” she raised an eyebrow. “Queens have done worse to end wars, and this war ends here, do you understand?”

  “Your mother wouldn't have wanted this,” Alvin said in a last-ditch attempt. But Ariel knew exactly what her mother would have wanted, and she didn't need to be a nurse to understand her.

  “She wanted no more slaughter, and no more death. She wanted everyone to stop killing each other. She risked her own life to save people. That's what she wanted.”

  Alvin said nothing to that, and Ariel knew she had won. She looked around at the redheads around her, staring at her with stunned faces.

  Two days ago, she thought she'd never see her dragon family again. But it was her blood family she would now break ties with.

  “This vortex will stay open forever,” she said. “And if I can find a way to open the rest of them again, I will.”

  “If you bring your husband back he
re, he won't survive,” Alvin said. “Not around us. In his kingdom around you, your powers are suppressed enough. But his time on Earth is done. And I understand there are very few who will bring you back here.”

  “So be it,” Ariel said, raising her chin high. “I couldn't dance forever. I've known that for a long time. And if I never have to dance Prince of Egypt again, that's fine. I'm not a princess anyways. I'm a queen twice over.”

  Alvin softened slightly. “Good for you, Ariel. Many of us wander through life not really knowing who we are. You're one of the rare few.”

  Her heart broke, and she lowered her head. “Just leave it open,” she said, turning away. It was time to go home. No one moved, and she didn't turn back. “Just go.”

  “Goodbye, daughter,” Alvin said, and she sighed.

  “Goodbye, father.”

  She waited half an hour after they had cleared out to make sure that the carapace magic was gone. Finally, she sent the text indicating the all clear. When the dragons arrived, she knew they were against the wire.

  “You can't come back,” she said to Alexander as she slipped an arm around his waist. “I'm sorry. It's as simple as them being too powerful when they hang out together.”

  “I know,” he said, weakly. “Eleven years, Ariel, and I never thought it would end like this.”

  “End?” she replied. “Why would it end?”

  His face reflected surprise.

  “I can no longer transport you,” he replied. “And I cannot ask my brothers to take the risk.”

  “Cole,” Ariel spun around. “Do you love me?”

  Cole smirked. “Of course, I love you. I have to come back anyway, all the time. Enya and I won't mind the company, would we?”

  “Cole, you can't,” Alexander said. “She is my wife. My responsibility.”

  “If you feel so strongly,” Ariel said. “Then we'll stay in the kingdom.”

  “What?” Alexander asked, in shock. “You'll give up your life here?”

  “If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have told you that you were nuts and pushed the divorce papers on you. But having you away from me and seeing you like that made me realize that I've been taking you for granted. I don't want to be apart from you, Alexander. I don't want our marriage to end.”