I leaned closer, nearly falling off my stool, unable to keep my eyes off of him. If I’d had my sketch pad, I would have been drawing what he said. A Fae queen climbing the highest mountain to reach a dragon commander. Twenty-eight years old was young, far too young. That was like … seven years from now for me. I motioned for him to keep going.
“The commander didn’t want to deny his queen, so he asked for her blood, her magic, to bind with his strongest warriors.”
My mouth popped open and I involuntarily stood.
The corner of Logan’s lips curled. “And that’s how we got the skyborn. Us. The dragon shifters.”
Whoa. I was … part dragon … part Fae? Chills crept up my spine at the thought. But my face quickly fell in confusion. “My mother was human so … I’m half?” I had accepted at this point that my mom slept with my dragon shifter father and never knew what he was. Nothing else explained what I could do.
Logan’s eyes quickly fell to my lips and then back up to hold my gaze. “I’m sorry, Sloane, but the skyborn are a pure race. We cannot procreate with humans. It only results in miscarriage.”
Panic gripped me then. The thought that my own mother wasn’t my real mother, or worse, that she was never human, it chilled me to my core and ripped the rug right out from under me.
“But some of them can procreate with humans—you said so yourself—in your story.” I was grasping at straws trying to think of a way that my mother could be my mother.
Logan nodded. “The other animal shifters, like the ones that saved you, they can procreate with humans, although it’s mostly against the rules now. And sorcerers, their DNA and human DNA seem to have no problem mixing. But earthbound and skyborn cannot have children with humans. Our DNA is too strong.”
My mind was whirling. I couldn’t even fathom the story he had just told me, and I didn’t want to think on it further for fear I might lose my mind.
“You need a drink?” He slipped one hand into his pocket and gave me an appraising look.
“I need all the drinks in this house,” I muttered. I wasn’t even a drinker, but tonight I would drink all the wine. He still hadn’t moved back away from me after I had stood; we were mere inches from each other. His scent wrapped around me like a blanket, sending a pleasurable warmth to my belly. His green eyes mirrored my own and I found myself fantasizing about what his dragon looked like. Was it black like his hair? Or green like his eyes?
The doorbell rang then, snapping me out of my Logan transfixion. I stepped back and shook my head to clear my thoughts, and I saw a slight disappointment cross Logan’s face. But then it was gone.
“That will be Keegan and the pack,” he said, as he spun to exit the kitchen, taking the heat from my core with him. “They’re thrilled there is another charge to protect.”
“Charge to protect?” I called after him.
He glanced over his shoulder, running a hand through his wild hair in an attempt to smooth it. “Hunters protect the earthbound while the shifters protect the skyborn.”
My eyebrows hit my forehead. “Of course they do.” I was a skyborn and came with my own protection detail of various circus animal shifters.
Holy hell, I did need a drink.
Make that two.
3
WE WERE ALL sitting around the pool table in Logan’s game room, scattered on barstools. Some of “the pack” were playing pool and others were talking to me. I had learned that Logan’s security detail was comprised of six animal shifters.
Cooper, a short, stocky redhead with a beard at least twelve inches long, was a fox shifter. He was playing pool with Gear, the punk-rock one of the pack. Gear fixed motorcycles, was a falcon shifter and had a lime-green mohawk to rival Cooper’s funky red beard. Between his nose was a septum piercing, and on his knuckles was tattooed “Stay True.”
Then there was Keegan, the tall, impossibly-handsome alpha. He was a wolf shifter like Nadine. I still wasn’t sure about the creeper standing in the corner. His name was Dom; he barely spoke and wore a hoodie pulled up over his hair, which looked like it might be blond. I couldn’t tell. He wore all black and was silently watching all of us with his ice-blue gaze. He hadn’t told me what his animal was, but I knew from taking away what the others were. He was the lion, the huge, menacing, freaky-ass lion shifter. When I had introduced myself to him he had simply nodded, keeping a hand on the black gun at his hip. He was closed off and mysterious, so naturally I wanted to know everything about him. Logan had put Mittens in the basement when everyone arrived and now I knew why. Dom must have seriously unsettled the poor kitty.
Lastly, there were two females in the pack, Sophie and Nadine. Sophie was a blond coyote shifter with huge breasts spilling out of her top. She had been shooting me eye daggers from across the room all night. Nadine was the dark-haired, tattooed-up wolf who’d saved me from the hunters. She and I had gotten along immediately and she was the one answering all of my questions as we huddled in the corner of the game room.
“Vampires?” I tipped my glass of red wine in her direction.
She snorted. “Nope.”
“Gargoyles?”
Nadine’s body was convulsing slightly in an effort to contain her laughter. “Gargoyles?”
I shrugged. “They could be a thing.”
Logan had simply told me that a land of Fae creatures used to exist, so my imagination was the limit. And as an artist, I had a wild imagination. I used to illustrate fairies in high school. I drew them with big wide eyes and gossamer wings.
Nadine shook her head, her black hair falling around her. She had fair skin, bright blue eyes, and her nose was sharp, giving her beauty uniqueness. But the tattoos covering her arms and legs made her look fierce. This was a woman you didn’t want to cross.
“No gargoyles. Just the earthbound, their hunters, animal shifters, sorcerers and skyborn. We’re all pretty much descended from the same magical soup.”
Right. Earthbound were druids and skyborn were dragons—I at least had that much. Had no idea about the magical soup comment, but thought I would leave it for later.
I nodded. “Okay, well, what powers do the hunters have? I mean, are they just regular humans?”
Nadine took a long swig from her beer. “No, they’re not. Hunters are druids in training. They fight in a pack, and that pack is tied to one druid. That druid, depending how powerful, can empower his hunters with certain gifts. Once a hunter advances to a certain level, the druid initiates them and they become an apprentice druid. The hunters we encountered going after you were a part of a pack that was linked to a pretty weak druid. You were lucky.”
I let out a breath. “So … all druids are bad?”
Nadine stopped chugging her beer and met my eyes. “They didn’t used to be, but the most powerful of their kind turned to darkness.” She lowered her voice. “His name is Ardan and he is a master druid. They are all connected, so each druid pulls power from his master, which leads all the way up to Ardan. Therefore…”
I nodded in understanding. “Spoil one and spoil them all?”
Nadine nodded. “Now the earthbound are power hungry and they will stop at nothing to have all of the skyborn magic left on this Earth.”
I frowned. “How? How do they get the magic?”
Nadine brought up her left index finger and ran it across her neck.
“Oh. So … they kill us and … siphon our magic?” I guessed. I hadn’t thought anyone was listening, until now. A warm, possessive hand landed on my shoulder.
“They try.” Logan’s voice tickled my ear, sending my dragon into a frenzy inside of me. Freaking hormonal dragon. Chill out. “But now there’s two of us and I won’t let that happen.”
His body heat pressed against my skin, making my dragon tighten within me, but his words had me on edge. “So, hypothetically, if the druids were to kill us both and drain our magic…?”