Chapter 1
It’s funny how easily the tide of a fight can turn once personal feelings enter the equation. One moment, you’re invincible, shocking even yourself with your ruthlessness and skill, and the next, you’re being brought to a grinding halt, eyes welling up with tears as dueling emotions battle for your attention, whatever soft spot you’ve had hidden within you the whole time suddenly being torn open and left to fester. What used to matter doesn’t matter anymore, and what you never thought would affect you has suddenly taken on more gravity even than the battle you’ve been fighting.
And I’m not even the one whose own parents are trying to kill me.
Silas, whose ability to take everything in stride, in spite of his own feelings and weaknesses, has always astounded me, is more than shocked as he stares down at the battered form of his mother, her eyes flashing with hatred and blood welling from her mouth. He looks shattered. The world around us has come to an abrupt stop, and not even the sight of the enemy shifters recuperating in my peripheral vision is enough to pull my attention away. It’s like looking into the eyes of a ghost I’ve never even met before.
“Mom,” Silas croaks, dropping to his knees in front of her. “You’re alive? How…? What happened to you?”
“Oh, Silas.” His mother turns to him with a loveless smile on her face, her eyes rolling in her skull like a rabid dog. “You were always so bright. Shame you’ve always had trouble seeing what’s right in front of you.”
“What did they do to you?” Silas persists. “Why are you helping them? I thought they killed you.”
The other dragon shifter, a man now back in human form and pinned down by Landon, spits out, “We had our eyes opened. That’s why.” He must be his father, some part of me thinks.
“Silas,” says Shade, moving to stand beside him, “we should really—”
“Shut up.” The dragon shifter doesn’t even look at him. “What are you doing here? What did Hawthorne do to you?”
“Are you deaf?” snaps his mother, struggling to sit up and clutching at a stitch in her side. “You might as well kill me now, Silas. It will save me from having to listen to anymore of your brain dead questions.”
“Mom, please,” Silas protests. “Let us help you. Tell us what you need—we can protect you from them. Whatever they have on you, it’s not going to…”
But his voice trails off as his mother starts to laugh, a bitter, ugly sound. “Doesn’t matter. Nothing you do matters.”
I realise that I’m shaking, and it has nothing to do with the adrenaline of the fight; my mind is already racing backwards to Edith, the fallen witch shifter who seemed to express regret for betraying me even as she took her last breaths.
Nobody can help me.
“Don’t say that,” Silas tells her, sounding desperate, before turning to his father. “Dad, please—tell her we can help you both.”
His father responds with a merciless, bloody grin. “Listen to your mother, Son,” he says, the tone of his voice grating and sarcastic. “Be a good boy and let us out of here before we kill all of you. Family or not.”
Silas looks as if he’s just been slapped across the face. “You don’t mean that.” But whatever conviction was left in him before seems to be bleeding out before my eyes.
“Oh, but we do,” says his mother, and before I have a chance to react, she’s shifting her dragon tail into existence and using it to slam me hard across the chest, sending me flying across the room. In spite of having my powers back, it seems my reaction time is the same as it ever was. Which is to say, not very good.
It’s still good enough for me to be in my vampire form before I even hit the ground, landing in a three-legged crouch just as the witch who had Josie paralyzed finally overpowers her, sending a bolt of energy straight into her body. She gets launched back, but my superior reflexes in this form are on my side, and in an instant I’m on the other side of the room, catching her before she hits the wall. She gives me a grateful look just as the chaos resumes, except it doesn’t take long to notice that what’s driving these hunters isn’t strength or even magic; it’s pure, unadulterated hatred, along with a sick conviction in what they’re doing.
It’s one thing to fight for a cause. It’s another to actually believe in it.
That’s the last coherent thought that crosses my mind before Silas’ mother opens her mouth and exhales a blast of flame directly at him. He’s not in his form yet, and the fire would be enough to immolate him… Except I manage to get my hands up just in time, conjuring a force field, much like how Theo did, in front of the man I love. It absorbs the full brunt of the heat and allows him time to shift, but I realise too late that it was all just a tactic to buy time. In the few seconds it took for us to regain our bearings, the others have already gotten up and changed forms, battered but otherwise full of fight. The next thing I know, his mother, now in full dragon form, dive bombs Landon and plucks her otherwise-helpless husband right out of his grip. “Hawthorne sends his regards,” she tells us, before turning casually away.
“Stop!” the siren shifter yells, but it’s no use; the command is impossible to hear amidst the commotion.
Then the enemy shifters, every single one, are leaving the way they came in, crashing out through the windows and disappearing into the still, blue sky.
“No!” Shade roars, bounding up to the window in pursuit, but it’s too late. They’re gone. “Fuck,” the wolf shifter says, raking his hands through his sandy hair. “Fuck!” His eyes have already turned the golden colour of his wolf form. “We have to go after them,” he says, rolling his shoulders back in preparation for another round. “If we leave now, we can take them out from the ground.”
Silas, who has been looking borderline-catatonic, turns his scaly neck on the wolf shifter. “Like hell,” he growls. “Those are my parents.”
“Not anymore, they’re not,” Shade argues. “Whatever they are now, they’re on the wrong side. If we let them get back to Hawthorne alive, we lose whatever advantage we had from them not knowing Boots got her powers back.”
“Not. Happening,” the dragon shifter hisses, staring down his snout at Shade.
“Silas,” Hunter tries to reason with him, “if we can just capture them, figure out what they want—”
“No!” Silas bellows, flapping his wings in agitation. “They’re my family!”
“Silas…” I shift back into human form and approach him like one might approach a wild animal, both hands in the air. For someone normally so stoic and unflappable, his agitation is heartbreaking. What would I do if I were in his shoes? I wonder.
Probably the same thing.
Slowly, I lift my hand to his snout and smooth my fingers along his bristling scales. The motion is gentle and slow, and I can feel him beginning to relax under my touch. “It’s okay,” I tell him, over and over. “No one’s going to hurt them, Silas. Right?” I look around the room. Hunter and Landon give reluctant nods, while Shade kicks the wall in frustration, but throws his hands up. Gradually, the dragon shifter’s tension eases, and he slowly transforms back into a human… only to collapse to his knees on the floor, silent and forlorn, his head bowed and his dark hair hanging in his face. I move to touch his shoulder, but he shrugs me off, looking utterly drained.