by Eva Chase
“I don’t get it,” I said, sitting up a little straighter. “You keep talking as if you know more about this—about me, and my mom—than I do. What’s really going on here? Why are you all even here?”
And why do you make me feel like I want to somehow jump all of you simultaneously? Yeah, I’d keep that question to myself.
Aaron’s tone stayed calm and even. “We knew you a long time ago,” he said. “Before you came to the city, when we were all children. The fact that you don’t remember... My best guess is that your mother suppressed those memories to make it easier for you not to give yourself away.”
“Give what away? And what do you mean, ‘suppressed’? You’re talking like she put a magic spell on me or something.”
I laughed a little, but the guys didn’t take it as a joke. They exchanged a glance. Aaron ran his hand over his golden-blond hair. “That is one way of putting it.”
“Let’s just say there’s a lot your mother didn’t tell you.” Marco piped up.
Nate shifted toward me. The strong, protective energy of his presence washed over my body, settling my nerves. “There’s something you need to know about what we are, and what you are,” he said.
“Hold on,” West interrupted. “If we have to handle her with kid gloves, fine. But that one doesn’t need to hear this. She’s got no place in this conversation.” He pointed at Kylie.
My fingers tightened around Kylie’s. “My best friend stays. That’s non-negotiable.”
“I don’t think you’ll get very far arguing the point,” Marco said. “I already tried once.”
“Yep,” Kylie said. “I’m un-budge-able.”
West grimaced, but Nate held up his hand. “If Ren trusts her, then we can trust her too. Ren’s memory has nothing to do with her emotional awareness.”
“It’s against policy to break silence with non-kin,” Aaron put in. “But I think just this once, we can make a reasonable exception.”
“Would you all please stop talking about whether you can say it and get on with it?” I burst out. “What’s the big secret? What are ‘non-kin’? What the hell—”
I fell silent when Nate moved closer. He sat down on the chair Marco was standing by, kitty-corner around the coffee table from me. The closer he came, the closer I wanted to be to him, but I stayed frozen in place on the settee. His voice came out as warm as before, but his deep brown eyes were so solemn.
“Ren, your mother let you believe that the two of you were just ordinary people. But you’re not. And neither are we. We’re not human at all. We’re shifters.”
CHAPTER 5
Ren
FOR THE FIRST few seconds after Nate spoke, I could only gape at him. Finally, I relocated my tongue. “Shifters,” I said. “What does that even mean? How am I not human? How are you not human? Look at us!”
“That’s kind of the point, princess,” Marco said lightly. “We look human, but when we’re in the mood, we can shift. Into something else.”
“Something like what?”
“Whatever animal essence is tied to your spirit,” Aaron said. “It’s different for each of us here. But our nature comes with additional powers even when we’re in human form. I’m sure you’ll have noticed you’re stronger, faster, more agile than anyone else in comparable shape, for example.”
My heart skipped. I’d become Fisher’s best thief because my sticky fingers could snatch a valuable off a person so quickly they’d never notice. The warehouse manager had stared at me when I’d shown him how easily I could handle the heavy boxes. How did Aaron know?
Oh. Because if what he was saying was true, he and the other three guys before me were the exact same way.
“Oh my God!” Kylie said, cocking her head at me. “He’s totally right. I know pro athletes who can’t move like you do. I always thought it was just cool. But supernatural powers—that totally makes sense.” An undercurrent of laughter ran through her words. She didn’t totally believe it. She turned to Aaron, her gray eyes sparkling. “Is she supposed to be psychic too? I swear sometimes she knows things about people there’s no way she should.”
“Ky,” I protested, but it was true. I’d known just what soft spot to hit to make that guy in the bar back off. I picked up on the flavor of people’s emotions all the time.
“That’ll be part of your animal side too,” Nate said, but I was too keyed up for even his rich rumble of a voice to be soothing.
Aaron nodded. “Instincts for reading body language, pheromones in the air—our senses extend beyond what any ordinary human would pick up on. And we’d expect you to be particularly sensitive.”
I held up my hands. “Okay. So maybe I’m a little weird in a few ways. But I definitely don’t have an ‘animal side.’ I’ve never ‘shifted’ into anything. This is the only body I’ve ever had. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if it warped into something completely different.”
“Hold up,” Kylie said. “I forgot about that part. You shift into animals. You’re talking, like, werewolves and shit then?” She cracked up, patting my shoulder. “Ren, you’re a werewolf! This is awesome.”
“Not a werewolf,” West muttered where he was still skulking by the door. “Human horror stories have no idea what they’re talking about.”
“Let’s be fair,” Marco said. “There are some similarities. But we come in a lot more forms than the garden-variety wolf. And the full moon doesn’t really factor in. When we want to shift, we do.” He snapped his fingers.
“You know how crazy this sounds, don’t you?” I said to all of them. “Again, I repeat, I have never changed into any kind of animal. Not a wolf, not a goldfish, nada.”
“There could be a couple of reasons for that,” Aaron said. An academic-ish enthusiasm colored his measured voice. He rocked on his heels, looking even more the part of professor—a really, really hot professor. Explaining this stuff was obviously his wheelhouse. “If your memories of knowing you’re a shifter have been locked away, you wouldn’t have thought to try to exercise those powers. You might have felt an urge, but not known what it meant.”
My back stiffened. That clawing sensation that came into my chest when I was caught up in anger—or other sorts of passion. As if there were something inside me trying to dig its way out...
“And,” Aaron went on, “none of us come into our full powers until we turn twenty-one. Even if you’d been fully aware of who and what you are, the shift would have taken more effort and been difficult to hold for very long. So it makes sense that it wouldn’t have happened automatically.”
Nate leaned forward and set his large hand on the side of the settee, just inches from my arm. “Before she left, did your mother tell you anything about your twenty-first birthday? We found you because of a pulse of her magic we started sensing yesterday. I think she must have wanted you to return to your kind.”
Kylie’s eyes widened. “Your necklace.”
I clutched the locket. “She gave me this right before she left. And told me not to open the locket until that birthday. You’re saying it’s some kind of magic?” After everything else they’d already said, that part no longer sounded particularly absurd. Well, actually, it all sounded equally absurd.
West must have heard the incredulity in my tone, maybe because he was so well versed in skepticism himself. “We’re all here, aren’t we?” he said. “Believe me, it’d have been a lot simpler if we’d found you earlier.”
“No.” I shook my head. “This is still crazy. Something weird is going on. I’ll give you that. But people don’t just change into animals. My mom wasn’t some kind of witch.”
Kylie glanced from one guy to the next, kicking her legs against the base of the settee. “It’d be pretty easy for you to prove it if what you’re saying is true, wouldn’t it? You said you don’t need a full moon. Great! Let’s have a shifter demonstration, right here, right now. Your eager audience is waiting.” She smiled at them.
Aaron hesitated. “We don’t generally reveal
ourselves outside our kind.”
I waved off his objection. “Oh, please. If you’re telling the truth, you’ve already ‘revealed’ it. At least if Kylie’s here, I can be sure I’m not hallucinating.” Except there was such a thing as a group hallucination, wasn’t there? Well, I could worry about that if these guys really did start morphing into animals in front of us.
“I’ll do it,” Nate said, standing up. “How else is she going to believe us?”
He pulled off his cotton tee, revealing a chest even more densely muscled than I’d imagined. Then he reached for the fly of his jeans. My jaw just about dropped to the floor.
“Oh. Um...” Heat flared across my face as Nate shucked off his pants.
Marco chuckled. “You’ll find shifters don’t have the same hang-ups about getting naked as your average human being. It comes with the territory.”
The substantial bulge in Nate’s boxers gave me a clear preview of the territory to come. I averted my eyes. I’d never seen a guy naked, not right in front of me. Not some stranger I’d only just met.
Kylie didn’t have the same qualms. “You’re missing the best part of the show, Ren!” she said, watching avidly. Then her expression froze. Her voice came out thin and tinny. “Holy shit.”
My head jerked back around. I wouldn’t have thought my jaw could go any more slack, but it did.
Before our eyes, Nate’s body was... shifting. There really wasn’t a better word for it. The rich brown hair on his head was rippling down to cover all of him in a thick pelt. His torso expanded, his haunches and neck thickening. His face had already lengthened with a narrow snout.
The entire transformation finished moving through his body in the time it took me to blink. I might have thought that kind of bodily change would have to be painful, but it had looked completely natural. Almost... beautiful. A twinge of longing shot through me from collarbone to gut.
Longing and recognition. Yes, that was what people like them were meant to do.
People like us.
And now a majestic grizzly bear loomed on its hind legs before me. Its head nearly brushed the light fixture overhead.
No, not it—him. Even as my pulse skittered, I knew it was Nate. He lowered himself onto his front legs so that we were at eye level. His deep brown gaze felt just the same as when it had looked at me from his rugged human face. Warm. Protective. The sense of recognition in my gut tugged me toward him. I raised my hand, my fingers curled and then extending.
The bear took a careful step toward me, dipping his head so I could touch the fur between his rounded ears. It was coarse but pleasantly thick to the touch. I had the sudden urge to bury my face in his neck, to drink in the sensation and the musky, peppery smell of him. To feel his protective warmth all around me.
He was a massive predator, but he would never hurt me. He would never let anyone else hurt me either. I knew that, as surely as I’d known the asshole in the bar last night was sore about his ex.
“There,” West said. “You’ve gotten your demonstration.”
“This is—” Kylie giggled, a little hysterically. I’d never seen her at a loss for words before. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she managed to keep going. “Oh my God. It’s real. You really—” She laughed again.
Why wasn’t I just as shocked? That first glimpse had startled me, but now all I felt was awe and that deep sense of familiarity.
Maybe I’d known, deep down, that it was true, even when my mind had balked to accept it. I swallowed hard and looked up from Nate to the other guys.
“Nate’s a bear. What are the rest of you?”
“Jaguar,” Marco said. “Not quite as impressive as Nate in size, but I make up for it in other ways.” He smirked.
“I’m an eagle shifter,” Aaron said. He glanced at West. When the grouchy guy stayed silent, Aaron added, “And West is actually a wolf. Most shifters belong to one of four kin-groups. Canine, feline, avian, and, well, everything else.” He gestured to West, Marco, himself, and Nate in turn, with a hint of a smile at the last. “We’re the leaders of each of those kin-groups. The alphas, by our usual terminology.”
“This is seriously the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me,” Kylie said. “So when do we get to see the rest of you ‘shift’?”
“I don’t perform on command,” West snapped. But seeing Nate had been enough. I was convinced. Of everything except the last, most important part. Nate nudged my arm with his muzzle, and I rubbed behind his ears automatically, searching for the courage to ask the question that I already knew would upend my life.
Could it really get that much more upended than it already was? I had to know.
I dragged in a breath. “All right. So we know all about you now. Maybe you can tell me—what am I?”
At the look Aaron and Marco exchanged, I braced myself. That didn’t seem like a good sign. Marco’s lips curved with his crooked grin.
“You, my Princess of Flames, put the rest of us to shame. You’re a dragon shifter.”
CHAPTER 6
West
THE GIRL STARED at Marco as if she couldn’t wrap her head around a single word he’d said. Could she really be this ignorant? How could she have gone sixteen years without ever sensing the power inside her, even if her mother had meddled with her memories? I still found it hard to swallow.
“A dragon?” she sputtered. Nate, still in his bear form, shuffled backward as she pushed herself to her feet. “Are you kidding me?”
“As much as I enjoy joking around, at this particular moment I’m being totally serious,” Marco said.
Ren—of all the things to be calling herself. It sounded like a fragile little bird—gestured vaguely with her hand. “At least bears and wolves and whatever are real animals. Dragons don’t even exist.”
Her disbelief, acted or real, was damn irritating. I pushed myself off the doorframe and stalked a few paces toward her. “Look, you asked the question. You got the answer.” I let my gaze travel over her slim but toned figure. “Although I’ve got to agree, right now you look like you have about as much fire in you as a puff of sparks.”
She turned to glower at me, and I saw a hint of the power in her then. A flicker behind her bright brown eyes. It lit up every inch of my skin as if I’d been hit by a whole shower of sparks.
Damn it. The only thing more irritating than her bewildered human routine was how strongly my body responded to her no matter what I was thinking. I’d been waiting for her way too long.
But this wasn’t how my mate was meant to be. She was meant to be powerful, stronger than any of us. Not the type to run away from danger and cower among humans for sixteen years. We hadn’t known if there were any dragon shifters left. We hadn’t known what might be keeping them away. From the sounds of things, it’d been nothing more than fear.
What had her mother been thinking, throwing her back to us now with no understanding of who she was or the role she was meant to fill?
Ren took a step closer to me, and her smell, sweet as strawberries and cream, wafted over me. Enough to make me half hard. Her expression was anything but sweet. She jabbed her finger at my chest, just shy of grazing the thin fabric of my henley.
“I’m trying my best, okay, tough guy?” she said, her eyes all but blazing now. “Try having your world turned completely upside down in the space of an hour sometime, and see how you handle it.”
Technically, my world had been turned upside down in the instant I’d felt that first tingle of dragon magic from afar. But I wasn’t going to admit that to her. Especially not while her lips were curling with a hint of a smirk.
“And here’s your watch back,” she said. The thick metal band dangled from her fingers. What the hell? I glanced down at my wrist—which was in fact now bare. Had she just stolen that right off me?
Marco’s melodic chuckle rang through the room, his dark blue eyes glinting. “Don’t you know better than to poke a dragon?”
I grabbed the watch b
ack from Ren, ignoring him. Feline-kin never knew how to mind their own business.
“I didn’t even see her pull that off,” Aaron said with his scholarly awe. He was probably getting a hard-on just from the chance to talk to a dragon up close instead of relying on all those old records he liked to pour over.
The theft had, maybe, been a tiny bit impressive. I re-fastened the watch around my wrist and eyed Ren. Now that she’d gathered a little more confidence, I could almost imagine a dragon’s vitality in her. Her eyes were still shining, the deep brown waves of her hair flowing past her shoulders as if recently whipped by the wind. What kind of a dragon would she make after all?
The need to see it wrenched through me. I folded my arms over my chest. “All right, Sparks. You know a few tricks. You want to find out how real dragons are? Shift right now and you’ll know.”
Ren
West’s dark green eyes flashed in challenge. The bravado I’d managed to call up faltered. “I don’t know how. I have no idea about any of this. Haven’t you been listening?”
I glanced toward Nate, the only person I’d ever seen “shift,” and found he’d transformed back into his human self. He was just pulling up his jeans, his sculpted chest still bare. A fresh wave of heat coursed through me at the sight. But—if that was how you shifted—
My arms rose to hug myself, my fingers curling into the sides of my shirt.
“You wouldn’t have to undress,” Aaron said gently. “You’re unlikely to make a full transition on your first try anyway. And if you’re able to”—he tipped his head Marco’s way—“I suspect our host has plenty of clothes around the house he could spare.”
Marco shrugged. Under the jagged fringe of his black hair, his indigo eyes looked suddenly hungry. They gleamed more deeply than the sapphire stud in his ear. “My kin come and go from here. I keep the rooms well-stocked.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “But what do I do?”
“Well, first, just in case,” Marco said, “I think we should take this little party outside, dragons being the size they tend to be. I’d rather not turn this room into a pile of rubble.”
