“We killed most of them in the struggle,” Thomas said. “The way they came at us, with no concern for themselves—they almost forced us to. It was a bloody night, I can tell you that much.”
We came up to the steps, his last words rolling through my mind, and I realized what all those kneeling shifters were doing. They were scrubbing at the tiles and the walls with rags. Scrubbing at ruddy patches that dappled the clay and the pale brown adobe.
Blood. All that shifter blood spilled here last night...
Suddenly all the blood in my own body seemed to be rushing past my ears with the thudding of my heart. My vision swam.
There had been blood—blood everywhere. Blood splattering the walls painted in the delicate shade of yellow my mother had let my sisters and me pick out. Blood pooled under my wolf-father’s slumped form. Blood gushing from the bullet wounds in my oldest sister’s chest. The boom of more shots echoing down the hall. My mother’s hand so tight around mine the bones pinched. The frantic patter of my feet down the hardwood floor.
The smell of it. Thick and metallic, saturating the air, mingling with the harsh smoky scent of the guns. It had trickled down my throat and filled my stomach, until my gut twisted and heaved—
No, heaving was happening now. I stumbled and bent down, clutching my belly. My pulse rattled painfully. The memories kept streaming through my head, the horrible smell sixteen years gone clogging my nose.
Temperance, my oldest sister, the one who’d always encouraged me to climb higher, run faster, even when I faltered. She’d shoved me out of the way as the rogues had opened fire through the doorway. And Verity, just two years older than me—Mom had tried to grab us both. That was when my eagle shifter father had thrown himself at the rogue with the rifle, talons gouging and wings shielding us. The bullets of a pistol had torn right through him, and she—and she—
“Ren,” someone was saying. “Ren!” A strong arm had wrapped around my trembling back.
A sob caught in my throat. Nate’s musky peppery smell followed it, chasing away the phantom scents from my past. I grasped his shirt, clinging on to him as if he were the only thing keeping me in place. At that moment, maybe he was.
I wasn’t in the dragon shifter’s estate. I wasn’t five years old anymore. I focused on the clay tiles under my feet, the warm breeze, the quiet murmurs around us—
Shit. I shoved myself upright with a quick swipe at my eyes. Nate kept his arm around me, which was probably a good thing, because my legs wobbled for a second before I found my balance. Aaron was standing at my other side, Alice right in front of me. She touched my shoulder, her tone light but her eyes concerned.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, willing my voice to stay steady. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect— It just reminded me of the attack on my mother’s—on my estate. When I was a kid. When—” My throat started to close up. Better not to go into any more detail than that. From the look on Alice’s face, she already understood what I meant.
And beyond her, the delegation of Nate’s kin who’d come out to meet us, the shifters working at washing away the mess of last night’s attack, they were all watching me. Watching me make a total fool of myself. How the hell were they going to trust that I could deal with this threat when just seeing the aftermath sent me halfway to a breakdown? My hands clenched.
“I’m okay,” I said firmly, squaring my shoulders.
“Your memories were suppressed for so long, it’s understandable that you’re not used to handling the more traumatic ones,” Aaron said. I wondered how much that reassurance was for my benefit and how much for the other shifters.
“Well, I’ll just have to get used to handling them,” I said. “Right now we have to focus on the attack that happened here, and how we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Thomas made a soft coughing sound. He directed his gaze at his alpha. “On that topic... I said we had to kill most of the rogues in the assault. But we did manage to capture one—and to stop him before he could end his own life. We had to subdue him with a tranquilizer for the time being, but we can wake him up when you’re ready to question him.”
Chapter 3
West
We kin groups had plenty of differences between us. There was no denying that. But at the core, in some vital ways, we were the same. A shifter kin funeral looked and sounded like a shifter kin funeral whether the dead being honored were canine or feline or avian—or something else, like today.
All the shifters who lived on the estate had gathered around the massive pyre. The sharp smell of fresh sap nearly overwhelmed the stink of death. Four bodies lay there to be laid to rest. Their loved ones had come forward to talk about the lives of the fallen. Now Nate was moving from one body to the next, flames hissing on the end of the torch he carried. His low baritone voice swept through the clearing.
“Brother of my heart, kin to your alpha. Your light has snuffed out, but now you will burn brighter. As we let you go, we swear to rise up stronger for you.”
“We swear to rise up stronger,” a chorus of voices rang out around the pyre. I added mine to it. A few bodies down from me, Ren startled and managed to join in for the last few words.
Just one more thing our dragon shifter didn’t know about her own kind.
She’d missed the funeral for her own fathers and sisters. The massive one kin from all across the country had arrived for. I’d only been eleven, but I remembered starkly the sight of the alpha before me, the man who’d mentored me for the past three years, lying limp and vacant on the heap of firewood. The bullet hole marring his skin had looked so unnatural, like some horrible disease and not a proper battle wound.
The rogues were fucking unnatural, the way they slaughtered their own kind for their selfish reasons. I gritted my teeth, thinking about the one Nate’s guards had managed to capture. Wouldn’t I like to be sinking those teeth into him right now. If we hadn’t needed the information he could give us, I’d like to tear out his throat for what he’d done here. For what they’d done back then. For all of it, really.
“We swear to rise up stronger,” we repeated for the fourth time. Nate bowed his head. Then he tossed his torch onto the pyre.
The flames crackled, sweeping over the heap of woods and the bodies lying on it in a wave. Smoke billowed up. It prickled into my eyes and down my throat, coating my tongue. And the memory that rose up then wasn’t of my mentor.
How many bodies had we sent back to the light the day I’d said good-bye to my mother? Eight. Eight loyal kin felled. I’d had to order my people to build two pyres to hold them all. My throat had been hoarse by the time I’d finished the rounds. One of my advisors had offered to share the duty, seeing as I was fifteen and not yet fully of age, but I’d told him no. It’d been my battle. The deaths had been dealt because of my decisions.