by Eva Chase
He threw himself out of the driver’s seat before anyone could protest. Another bullet struck the window across from me. The glass cracked. I flinched down, ducking beside the seat. Nate growled. Aaron wrenched off his shirt.
“You’re going to shift?” I said, panic jolting through me. “They’ll shoot you out there.” Two more cracks rang out, with a thunk against the side of the SUV—and a snarl on the road outside. Where was West? Had he gotten to Marco? How many rogues were in on this ambush?
“It’s a lot harder to hit a moving target,” Aaron said. He shot me a quick look, his bright eyes intent. “Stay down. We’ll take care of this.”
He leapt out, slamming the door behind him. A flash of golden feathers rocketed past the window an instant later.
A hiss and a yelp carried from down the road. My alphas or the rogues? I didn’t dare raise my head high enough to peek out the window.
“And it takes more than a few bullets to stop a bear,” Nate growled. He shoved open the back hatch, shifting as he went. His immense furry body charged past my window into the fray.
Another shot crackled. I winced, my fingernails digging into the leather seat. My heart thudded so fast the beats blended together.
A voice, thick and guttural, called out from somewhere above. “Give up the dragon shifter, kin-bound, and you’ll live to keep bossing your people around.”
The words struck a chord of recognition deep down in the animal core of me. I’d never heard that voice speak before, but it jolted me back to the first rogue attack, the snarls and growls of the black wolf that had tried to gouge open my neck. The skin there stung in memory.
I swallowed hard. He must be the one leading this group. But my alphas obviously weren’t interested in bargaining my life away. The snaps and cries from down the road were getting louder.
A high keening filled the air—Aaron’s battle cry—and cut off abruptly. My throat constricted.
The rogues had killed four alphas once before. My fathers. They’d murdered my sisters too. Slaughtered almost all of the people who’d mattered most to me. And now they were trying to take away my mates too, to get at me.
No. Rage bubbled up inside me. My fingers curled tighter, forming fists. I dragged in a breath, slow and steady the way Aaron had taught me, and the anger streamed through me in a white hot glow. As powerful as the connection that had solidified between him and me when I’d claimed him as mine last night. When I’d grasped the role I was meant for with both hands.
The energy rippled through all my limbs. I was not going to let this happen again. Not here. Not now. I would not stay. My alphas deserved a mate who could protect them as much as they protected me.
And damn it, they had one.
I dashed forward to grasp the door handle. Yanking the side door open, I flung myself out of the car. Out and up.
The shift rippled through my muscles, stretching, burning. My body expanded, sleek and sinewy. Talons ripped from my arched fingers. Wings burst from my back. They flapped with an instinctive heft, and I careened through the air. My eyes sharpened. The wind warbled over the smooth scales covering my skin. Fire smoldered all through my extended neck.
I’d done it. I was a dragon. And it felt amazing.
I beat my wings, soaring higher. Testing every inch of my newfound body. But I didn’t have time to savor the sensations. My shadow streaked over the ground, twice as large as the SUV, and my gaze caught on a woman crouched by a boulder thirty feet up the mountainside. A pistol was braced in her hands. She raised it toward me.
A fiery confidence blazed through me. Oh, no. She could forget that. She was going to regret ever messing with me and mine.
I dove toward her. She pulled the trigger. A splinter of pain lanced through one of my wings, but I didn’t care. I opened my jaws and let loose the fire searing through me.
The woman screamed as the flames engulfed her. I swooped over her hiding spot and whipped around, seeking out her companions. There’d been two guns firing. Where was the other coward hiding behind a pistol?
There. A gray-haired man hunkered down in a crevice on the other side of the road, not a pistol but a rifle poised against the dark rock. I swung toward him.
He proved himself an even bigger coward. Dropping the gun, he shifted into a black-and-gray-speckled weasel and darted away up the mountain.
I sped after the weasel shifter, but he dove into a deeper crevice. I blasted it with fire and then spun around. My gaze narrowed on a man with shaggy black hair who was leaping to snatch up the rifle.
“Keep at them, keep at them!” he hollered down the slope in the same guttural voice I’d heard demanding that my alphas hand me over. His scent laced the air with a wolfish tang. It was him. The rogue who’d left me marked all over with the slashes of his claws. Who’d led his followers to savage Kylie too.
Anger surged up inside me. I was never letting him get a chance like that again.
The wolf shifter swung toward me, yanking the rifle upward, as if he thought he might catch me by surprise. A hot, heavy blast of dragon-fire was already searing up my throat. I opened my jaws and let it flow.
My fury blasted over the rogue’s leader, leaving nothing but a charred heap and the molten lump of the rifle where he’d been. A twist of brutal satisfaction filled my chest.
I wheeled toward the road. A few of the other rogues were already fleeing, racing up the mountainside the way they’d come. The young man who’d stopped our SUV sprawled on the pavement, his chest torn and his throat gashed open. My wolf and my eagle had pinned a black bear to the ground between them. My grizzly was cuffing a mountain lion across the head. It bolted away as my shadow swept over them. I couldn’t see Marco.
I turned again, meaning to give chase, and a prickling sensation raced through my muscles. They were clenching, condensing, the effort of the shift catching up with me. I strained to hold my shape, but exhaustion gripped me.
It was my first time. I had no stored endurance.
Gritting my teeth, I plummeted to the ground.
Chapter 21
Aaron
Serenity!
The shout echoed in my head as I saw her brilliant body fall from the sky. My eagle’s throat couldn’t form the name. My talons loosened where I gripped the bear’s shoulder, the urge to fly to her rushing through me.
The black bear had gone limp in my and West’s grasp, but now it lashed out its paw in one last desperate smack. Its claws raked across one of my wings. A lance of pain joined the other aches already radiating through my body.
I bobbed to the side and slashed at the bear, torn between two duties. Nate lumbered over, baring his teeth threateningly at the rogue that could have been his kin. He swung his head toward me as if to say, Go on.
My wounded wing faltered as I pushed myself backward. I landed awkwardly on my clawed feet and shifted back into human form. Bleeding claw marks scored my right arm, and a burning gash ran across my ribs. Clenching my jaw against the discomfort, I pushed myself toward my mate.
Serenity had hit the pavement on her hands and knees, somewhere between human and dragon form. The dragon side of her had saved her from the worst of the impact. She was slumped a few feet from the SUV when my eyes found her, and my pulse lurched.
Before I’d even dashed two steps, she raised her head. A bullet wound was leaking blood down her forearm and a scrape marked her chin from the impact, but her amber eyes glinted with a deeper fire than I’d ever seen before. It took my breath away.
I dropped to my knees beside her and pulled her to me. She sagged into my embrace, her cheek against my collarbone. Her chest was still heaving with ragged breaths.
“You were fantastic,” I said, stroking my hand over her dark hair. “The most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen.” My heart swelled with the memory of her bright red scales flashing against the sky.
My mate. My dragon shifter. And she’d accepted me as her own last night. The awe of it filled my throat.
Se
renity’s hand brushed over my wounded arm and stilled. She pushed herself upright. Her eyes widened. “You’re hurt. We have to get you bandaged up. Is everyone else okay?”
“We all survived,” I said. “And I’ll heal.” But she was right. I’d lost more than enough blood already. I heaved myself to my feet, reluctant to leave her. Moving to the car, I grabbed my pants and tossed my shirt to her, since her own had ripped apart with her transformation. The shreds of it lay on the road by the open door.
There was a roll of sterile gauze in the glove compartment for exactly this eventuality. I wrapped up my arm and knelt beside Serenity to tend to her own wound. She winced as I covered it.
“Fucking bullets. That’s how they came after my family before. I heard the shots in one of my memories, just didn’t realize what they were until now.”
The set of my mouth hardened. “It’s a stark line for them to cross. Any shifter who’s broken that law, used a weapon against their own kind, can never join a kin-group in future.”
“I get the impression that lot is more interested in tearing apart our groups than joining them,” Marco said, propping himself against the hood of the car. He’d balled his own shirt against the bullet hole on his upper chest. The wound hadn’t stopped him from shifting into jaguar form and taking care of the bobcat shifter who’d tricked us and then attacked him. Nate had shoved him toward the shelter of the SUV after that.
“Rogues don’t usually like to completely throw away their other options,” I muttered. Serenity moved to stand, and I straightened up with her.
West and Nate had both shifted back. So had the black bear shifter, who was now a woman sprawled limply on the road. The blankness of her half-open eyes dampened my relief. “She’s dead.” Damn.
“She took one of the bullets meant for us,” West said, nodding to a bloody mark on her chest. “Managed to fight like she wasn’t dying for long enough despite it.” Bloody scores marked his chest, just below the glowing splatter of a scar I knew had been left by fae magic. He hurried to the SUV to grab his clothes, shooting me a pained look as he passed. “I was hoping we’d get some answers too.”
Our dragon shifter was staring at the woman. She bit her lip. She’d taken lives with her dragon-fire a few minutes ago, but seeing a dead body up close wasn’t something Serenity was used to.
“I got their leader,” she said, jerking her gaze away. “The wolf shifter who attacked me in the village. He’s a pile of ashes up there now.” She jabbed her hand toward the mountain slope. “I tried to catch the ones that were running too...”
Nate’s eyes darkened. “You did everything you could, Ren. I’ve never seen any other shifter hold their form that long the first time they made a full transition.”
“Oh.” She blinked. Then a small smile crossed her lips.
Nate followed West to the car. We had to get moving before any humans showed up. The road wasn’t frequently traveled and we’d left the last town several miles behind, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been anyone around to hear the gunshots.
Serenity pulled my shirt closer around her shoulders. “They still wanted me dead,” she said.
“Apparently sixteen years of chaos wasn’t enough for them,” West muttered.
Marco’s lips curled. “You put them right in their place, though, princess. Blasted them all to cinders.”
We couldn’t know what other rogues might be out there who were just as set on destruction, but I didn’t want to say that. Not as I watched Serenity draw her back a little straighter. She glanced around at us as the others returned, looking every bit a princess in that moment. Every bit a queen. This was a victory, and it belonged to her. I felt, in the hum of energy passing between us, my alpha equals responding to her power.
We were all in this, all the way. None of us were backing down, not even West. It felt good. It felt right.
“Then let’s get on with whatever the rogues were trying to stop us from doing here,” Serenity said. “There’s just one thing I need to do first.”
She turned to me and reached to cup my jaw, pulling me into a kiss I was more than happy to return. I kissed her back with all the passion and reverence I had in me, until a tremble passed through her body. Everything—the danger, the wounds just starting to heal across my body—was worth it for this.
Ren
I eased back from Aaron, breathless, but I wasn’t done yet. I reached for Marco next. My jaguar shifter came easily, sliding his arm around my waist as he tipped his face to mine. He kissed me long and deep, with a teasing caress of his tongue. Of course Marco would slip that in.
Nate was there waiting for me when I stepped back from Marco. I joined my hands behind the bear shifter’s neck, and he pulled me up to meet him with his broad arms. His kiss was firm but sweet, with a lingering brush of his lips over mine before he let me go.
Last I turned to my wolf shifter. West’s stance had tensed. He eyed me warily, but heat smoldered inside his gaze. He wanted me, despite himself. We all felt the same pull.
I held out my hand to him. “It’s just a kiss, not a contract. I need to know you’re with me at least that much.”
He wet his lips. The gesture sent a flicker of desire through me. “All right, Sparks,” he said. “You can have your kiss.”
After that, I expected him to give me nothing but the briefest of pecks. He stepped closer, bringing the smells of the forest with him, rich earth and sharp pine. My heart beat a little faster. He bowed his head, and I bobbed up on my toes to tentatively press my mouth to his.
A hungry sound reverberated in his chest. His hand found my waist, hot as a brand as he yanked me to him. He kissed me so fiercely that my head spun. For an instant, there was nothing but the heat of him and the demanding pressure of his lips.
West released me just as abruptly. He backed up, folding his arms over his chest in a familiar standoffish pose. “Let’s go then,” he said gruffly, holding my gaze for a moment before jerking his away.
The sharp taste of him lingered on my lips. I let out my breath, feeling as if I’d finally fully settled into my body. The body of a dragon shifter, surrounded by the four alphas who’d be my mates. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s.”
After a brief delay while Nate and West swapped out the shot tire with the spare from the back, we set off down the road again. The mountains pulled back around a wide valley with a glittering river down its center. Sunridge lay on the south bank, a small town of a few thousand inhabitants. I peered out the window as we cruised down the main street, waiting for something to hit me.
Aaron glanced at me expectantly. I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“They’ve got a town historical museum,” Nate said, pointing. “That seems like a good place to start.”
West parked outside the repurposed house. The woman at the front desk looked at us curiously as we walked in. Her badge marked her as a volunteer for the Sunridge Historical Society. How much history could a town this size have?
We wandered between the displays: weathered newspaper articles, old black and white photos, pieces of clothing belonging to some particularly exceptional mayor who as far as I could tell had simply built a new bridge over the river. Not exactly gripping stuff. I was about to call it quits when my gaze caught on a painting that filled one corner of the back wall.
My pulse stuttered. I walked up to it, a strange feeling of recognition prickling through me. I’d never seen the image before, but somehow I felt as if I knew it.
It was a simple design showing the sprawl of the snowcapped mountains. But in the center, between two of the ridges, a spark shot up like a flame toward the sky. I reached for it, catching myself just short of touching the canvas.
“Do you like that?” the historical volunteer asked, coming up behind me. She gave me a soft smile. “It’s an interpretation of a larger piece in the town square, if you want to see the original.”
“Yes,” I said, so enthusiastically her eyebrows twitched up. “Where’s that?�
�
“It’s a quick walk from here,” she said. “Just take a left when you go out, walk two blocks, then another left and you’ll see the square.”
“Thanks!” I rushed for the door. The guys fell in behind me.
“Did you find something?” Nate asked.
“I think so. Come on.”
I hurried down the street along the route the woman had given me. We stepped into a tiny cobblestone square with only a few buildings on each side and an inn at the far end. In the middle of the square stood a dark gray stone obelisk, twinkling with specks of mica. It towered at least half again as tall as me. The same image from the painting was carved into its flat surface.
It drew me to it until I was close enough to touch. This time I let myself lay my hand on the cool stone surface. It seemed to tremble beneath my palm.
A crash of memory swept the world away.
No, not memory. Because the image of my mother that rose before my eyes wasn’t one I’d ever seen before. She was standing in front of that obelisk, her brown hair shining in the sun, wearing the same dress she’d had on the last time I’d seen her. My chest squeezed.
She’d left this message for me seven years ago, when she’d stood in this exact same spot.
“Serenity,” she said, her bright voice wavering from right inside my ears. “I wish I had more time to say everything I should, but I don’t know how far ahead of them I’ve managed to stay. So all I can tell you is this: I want to give you everything you need to survive the many challenges I know are ahead of you. Our people left a power in this place centuries ago. If I haven’t returned to bring it to you, there’s still a chance you can retrieve it yourself. For you to have made it this far, you must be so strong already.”
She touched the image of the flame between the mountains. “Here is where you’ll find it. Your dragon nature will help you follow the path.” Then she gazed straight into my eyes. “I love you. Never forget that.”
