by Leia Stone
Logan: A Prequel to SkyBorn
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Logan
Chapter Two: Logan
Chapter Three: Logan
Chapter One: Logan
THE SNOW WAS falling in soft white clumps, barely any light out yet on the dark winter morning. I took another sip of my black coffee and stretched my neck. For a little over one hundred years I’d never had a problem with sleeping and now … tossing and turning every night this week.
Because of the dreams.
God, the dreams seemed so real that I awoke so restless, nearly on the verge of shifting. It had been over a century since I last felt like I wasn’t in control of my dragon, but now … now I awoke and my first instinct was to shed my human form and take flight, to soar the skies, breathing fire and looking for … for her … the woman from my dreams, that bright red hair, those soft yet terrified green eyes. My body ached just thinking of her small pouty mouth. I’d been alone for so long, the only dragon left, that even a dream of another dragon was messing with my mind.
Maybe I need to see a shrink.
I chuckled at the thought. Even if I did ever go talk to a professional, which I wouldn’t, there wasn’t a human alive that could help me with my problem: last dragon shifter alive, in and out of superficial relationships and at risk of going extinct if I didn’t stay under the radar and away from the hunters—and the druids who sought to kill me and steal my magic. Keegan might understand, but he had enough on his plate with so many shifters under his command—all of them duty-bound to protect me.
Something had to change. I couldn’t keep living this life, day after day … alone. I’d heard rumors about what happened when immortals lived too long, and now I was witnessing it firsthand—affecting me so badly I was dreaming up another dragon, as if that would make her real.
I shook off the final remnants of the dream and crossed into the bathroom to brush my teeth. After removing the taste of coffee from my mouth, I took a swift glance at the mirror. I had looked in this mirror for the last century to see a twenty-five-year-old looking back. Not a wrinkle around my green eyes, not one gray hair in my trimmed beard; my hair, black and thick, would never bald or recede.
I should be grateful. Many would love to be gifted with immortality, but it was starting to wear me down. The endless years, the lack of purpose—and if I was being honest, the loneliness. Keegan had the pack; he was in charge of them and that was his purpose. They protected me and that was their purpose. What did I have? What was I doing? I knew I had a purpose, a big one. Without me, humanity would fall into disease and chaos; they needed my magic to survive. But I just didn’t know how much I cared anymore. I wanted something else to live for.
The moment I had that thought, guilt crashed over me. Ah man, maybe I was finally having that midlife crisis? Unfortunately, I didn’t think a new sports car would cure it.
“Same shit, different day,” I told the mirror. My own voice haunted me; it had changed over the decades. I’d become bitter, cynical. I was mad at the world. Why was it left up to me to keep all of humanity alive? To keep my half-human shifters alive? I knew the “why me?” argument was petty, but I didn’t give a shit. I wanted to go back to the old days where hundreds of thousands of skyborn roamed the Earth, bringing dragon magic to the human race and keeping the balance between the magic and non-magical beings.
As I stepped out into the living room, I saw Mittens, my orange tabby kitten, staring at the corner of the room with her fur on end. She backed up two steps, her body in a high arch, and then hissed.
“Get it, Mitsy!” I encouraged her, and she leapt up into the air, coming down hard on a chunk of fuzz and shredding it to bits.
I chuckled, feeling genuine happiness spread throughout my heavy limbs. God damn I loved that silly cat. Best thing to have come into my life in a long time. If she hadn’t showed up on my door a month ago, I don’t know what state I would be in. She appeared to be a stray, but when I took her to the vet he said she was recently spayed and seemed to have had all of her shots. I think Nadine left her for me; she knew I needed something to pull me out of this funk.
As Mittens tore through the chunk of fuzz like it was a deadly rattlesnake, my cell rang. I pulled it out of my pocket to see Keegan’s name flash across the screen. He was rarely up this early. As alpha, he usually slept in and made the rest of the pack get up early and do the grunt work. Not that there was much grunt work nowadays. We only had a run-in with the hunters a couple times a year, when a druid happened to scent me out. Not like in the old days.
“What’s up?” I greeted one of my oldest friends. “Hell must have broken loose to get you up before the sun.”
“Pretty close. Half a dozen hunters just walked into Eva’s bar,” he said in his typical no-nonsense tone.
Every muscle in my body clenched. Hunters worked for the earthbound. The druids. If they were here, they were looking for me. Wiping the last dragon from the face of the Earth would complete their sick pureblood race plan, and take all of humanity with me.
“Are you sure? We’ve been careful. I haven’t shifted. I—”
Keegan cut me off. “Danny texted me. He’s sure. But they aren’t looking for you. They’re asking about a girl. A redhead.”
The room spun; adrenaline rushed through my body. Danny was Keegan’s recent ex-boyfriend. He was a solid guy and I trusted him. He didn’t know what I was, but he wouldn’t lie about this. Any time hunters showed up anywhere, it was the gossip of the supernatural community. We all knew what they were looking for, the last dragon. Just no one knew it was me. To their supernatural noses I was a wolf shifter in Keegan’s pack and nothing more—thanks to Eva, a powerful witch who was an expert with this type of spell craft.
“Bring the pack over,” I told him. He agreed and we both hung up.
Holy dragon shifter. The girl from my dream. Was she real?
***
The moment the pack stepped inside, Sophie bee-lined it for me, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder to expose her perky cleavage.
“Do you really think there’s another one? A female?” She said the word “female” like it was a disease; jealousy rolled off of her in waves. I never should have dated Sophie. Keegan told me not to, but I went against my better judgment and did it anyway. We’d been a pack for about twenty years, and Sophie had joined more recently. She had been new, fresh, and the physical attraction had been undeniable. Unfortunately, it stopped there. There wasn’t much beneath Sophie’s surface. She was too catty and didn’t have an altruistic bone in her body. It made her a good hook-up, but I needed a woman with something more than epic cleavage and a venomous personality.
“I hope so,” I told her honestly, and her face fell into a mask of anger, and then detachment. She hadn’t taken the break-up well, even though it was over six months ago.
Nadine, my little sister for all intents and purposes, came up and gave me a side hug. I’d opened up a little to Nadine about my loneliness and loss of enthusiasm for life, but it only made her worry, so I never brought it up again.
I’d met her ten years ago; she’d been rummaging for food behind a supernatural bar. She was a twelve-year-old runaway then, broken free from a possessive and abusive pack. Orphaned. I’d brought her home and Keegan took her in and trained her. She’d flourished and grown up to be quite the little protector with quite the tattoo collection.
“If this is real, and not some hunters blowing smoke, then this girl might need our help,” Keegan told the group. We were seven. Six shifters of various animal races and me. Together we had killed dozens of druids and hundreds of hunters. All in the name of keeping me alive, and therefore the human race.
“It’s real,” I told them and Keegan looked over at me with confusion in his eyes.<
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I took in a deep breath. Dragon magic worked in mysterious ways, and it wasn’t unheard of for us to have prophetic dreams. I’d had a handful in my lifetime. I just thought I was dreaming about a hot redheaded dragon shifter because I was lonely, not because she was real.
“I dreamt about her. The past few nights…” I cleared my throat in embarrassment as Sophie’s jaw hit the floor and Nadine grinned.
“Holy shit, another dragon.” That comment came from the world’s most unlikely source: Dom. Dominic Rossi was the most quiet, mysterious person I had ever met. I nearly asked Keegan to kick him out of the pack the first year he joined because he was so private; it made me not trust him. Once I learned that he had been a slave to the underground fighting ring, I understood his silence all too well. That would make me stack brick walls around myself and never let anyone in too. A rare lion shifter, his captors had pitted him against hundreds of other shifters in a bid to make millions. Meanwhile, they’d half-starved and magically tortured him. He had turned out to be, hands down, the strongest fighter among us, and the most loyal friend.
I nodded. “If it’s the same girl … she’s a dragon.”
My mind went to my dream, seeing her small red dragon combing the skies, looking for safety—shifting into her petite nude form and running through snow and trees in search of clothes.
“How do we find her?” Keegan’s eyes were glowing yellow. Keegan was descended from a long line of skyborn protectors. His great-great grandfather had been around for the druid-dragon war of 1918 that wiped out most of our population. Keegan was a diehard dragon protector. I trusted no one in this pack more than him. He would protect me and this girl with his last breath if it came to it. They all would, but Keegan took it the most seriously.
I didn’t realize my hand was shaking until I brought it up to brush my hair away from my face. I couldn’t believe this was happening. “I’ve never sought out hunters before. Always ran from them. It would be easier to try and track her.”
Keegan nodded. “So … there’s a way?”
It wasn’t pretty but there was a way. Back in the beginning, before Keegan or any of the pack, I was on my own, too scared to tell anyone what I was. Only Eva knew. I was too scared to even look for a protection team. I still believed there would be more of me out there. That if I could just find another, we could band together. That’s when Eva taught me the dangerous art of “glimpsing.” I did it for years trying to find other dragons, but always saw nothing. Eva said in order to glimpse another of my kind, I would have to be near them.
So, I traveled the world doing the spell and never saw anyone. That’s when I knew I was the only one left. Nearly killed myself the last time I did it too, so I decided to stop, but if it would lead us to this girl, then it was worth the risk.
“I can’t detect the hunters, but I can detect the girl. It’s dangerous though. It can lead the druids to me.”
Keegan knew me, and knew I didn’t say “dangerous” unless it was damn near suicidal. Bringing the druids to us was damn near suicidal. Cooper gave a low whistle, his long red beard bobbing as he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever it is, I will help.” It was a nice offer, and I didn’t correct him, but this wasn’t something the pack could do together. It was all me.
Sophie was lingering close to me, trying to make me take notice of her perky chest, while Nadine was staring at Gear, probably unaware that we all knew how in love with him she was. He had a silly mohawk, but he was a good guy.
“We all will,” Nadine said, stepping forward, and the others nodded. Sometimes I forgot how much I loved these people. At times Keegan would call me, tell me hunters were in town and I needed to go into isolation and hide. Those periods, not seeing them for a week or more, were so lonely that I really missed this crazy bunch. We were family.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
In order to glimpse, I had to output such a large burst of magic that I passed out. It was only in that semi-conscious state, mixed with the magic floating around me, that my awareness superseded all possible laws of nature, magic, or physics. For a tiny second I became God. But the earthbound were always watching; the powerful druids had their magical hooks into everything.
Well, I had woken up this morning wanting a change. I hadn’t been expecting this. But if the beautiful woman from my dream was real, then anything was worth the risk to find her.
Chapter Two: Logan
WE ALL jumped into the back of Keegan’s pickup truck and he drove us twenty miles south to Kachina Village. I didn’t want to lead the druids to my own back yard, but I also didn’t want to drive too far; otherwise I might not be able to connect with the redhead from my dreams. If the hunters were at Eva’s bar, it was because the girl was in Flagstaff. Keegan pulled over onto the side of the road and drove about a half mile into the thick forest. The last thing I needed were some humans seeing my green dragon magic and calling the cops thinking they were illegal fireworks or something. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Keegan and I had an interesting pack hierarchy. He was the alpha and was in charge of the pack. He gave them orders, broke up fights, and dealt with their issues. I, however, at times gave Keegan the orders, paid the pack’s salary, and made all of the important decisions. I had never pulled rank on him, but if need be, I could. Dragons were … above shifters. I hated that type of purist bullshit thinking, but it was true. If Keegan and I ever went into a dominance fight, I would be the one walking out. Shifters were half human after all, and dragon shifters were not. Thanks to Fae magic, I was one hundred percent supernatural no matter how many times I wished I wasn’t.
But a dominance fight between us would never happen. We both liked our place and things ran smoothly that way. I was happy to stay out of the way while he ran the pack, and he was happy to have me pipe in when I wanted too. Keegan and I were a team and I was damn lucky to have him. He had saved my life more times that I could count, and vice versa.
He and I huddled at the back of the car while I told him my plan.
“I want Gear in the sky just in case the hunters are closer than I think. Let’s definitely get Dom to shift, and maybe Nadine too. I need you and Sophie human so you can watch my back while I’m out.”
Gear was a falcon shifter, and Dom was unmatched in his lion form. They would be good ground crew if this went south. On the way over, I had roughly explained that I might zone out or lose consciousness, so Keegan knew I would need protection in that case. Keegan nodded, rubbing the tip of his chin, lost in thought. “I think Coop should shift too. He’s fast, and if the girl is nearby he could get to her on foot before we could.”
I bobbed my head in agreement; he was right. Cooper was a red fox shifter and lived for the snowy winters of Flagstaff. He could pounce through this snow faster than any of us, save for Gear in the skies. Me shifting was never an option. I only shifted in a life or death situation. My shift left a magical trace that drew the hunters right to me.
Keegan called out the orders, instructing Sophie to load up with weapons as she would be the only one staying human with him. The rest of the pack slowly peeled off their clothes, standing naked in the freezing snow, and started their shift. No matter how long I lived, the sound of cracking bones never ceased to shock me. Nadine was the fastest. Her all-black wolf was beautiful and deadly. Dom’s cat chuffing behind me always elevated my heart rate a little. His sable and orange lion was littered with scars, and every time I saw them I wanted to kill the bastards who’d held him hostage. I made a promise to him once, that if we ever happened upon his captors again, they would die in a gruesome fight.
Cooper’s little red fox always made me smile, because out of all of us Cooper looked the most like his animal while in human form. He peered up at me now with silver eyes and that fluffy red fur that reminded me so much of his beard. Once I heard Gear’s cry from the sky, I knew we were ready.
As a pack bound in magic, we could speak to each others’ minds while in anima
l form. We rarely used it because it was rude and an intrusion, and we couldn’t read each others’ thoughts or anything, but when we were hunting druids or running for our lives, we used it constantly. I was the exception. Since I rarely ever shifted, and because the pack was bound to me as my protectors, I could communicate with their animal forms while I was still human. So if Gear saw something in the skies while I was doing this spell, he could let me know through our link. Not all Shifter packs could communicate with each other like this. Only those with very powerful sorceress friends like Eva.
“Let’s do it!” I clasped my hands together to pump myself up. What I didn’t tell the guys was that this spell was extremely painful. Expending enough dragon energy in one burst, all in an effort to make yourself pass out … it hurt like hell.
Keegan strapped two blades across his chest and holstered his weapon of choice, a sawed-off shotgun. Keegan didn’t mess around. If you went after the pack, he blew your head off first and asked questions later. That’s why I initially hired him. Sophie stepped forward then, holding her harpoon gun. Hunters had shot her with one once and now she tried to get them with it every chance she got.
“Be careful,” she told me in that whispery, have-sex-with-me voice.
I tried not to roll my eyes, and nodded, ignoring her half-lidded gaze. I thought sleeping with Monica from Eva’s bar would give Sophie the message that I had moved on. Instead, it only served to make her come after me more aggressively. Standing in the snow, holding his sawed-off shotgun, Keegan just gave me that look, that “I told you so—you never should have dated within the pack” look. I asked him once if being gay made relationship problems easier, because, ya know, you didn’t have girly emotions to deal with. He had laughed and laughed and told me there was nothing worse than dealing with a pissed-off male lover. I didn’t understand it. But now was not the time to think about that. I needed to know—to confirm that I wasn’t alone anymore.
