Skyborn(23)

I sighed. Of course I didn't want to know. I wanted to go on thinking I  was a dragon shifter, and that was enough crazy for one day. Logan had  expressly told me to never give a sorcerer my blood, but he also told me  I could trust Eva, and I did.

"I don't want to know  …  but I need to know," I told her, resigned, and extended my finger.

She gave me a sad smile. "I'm sorry you're going through this." She  grabbed a small vial and pricked my finger before quickly catching one  drop and releasing my hand.

I pulled my finger to my mouth out of habit and sucked it clean, then I  rested both hands in my lap and looked out the window at the house.

"What do I do?" I asked her, turning my head to face her. There was a  reason she'd asked Logan to stay inside and I thought I knew what it  was. If he knew I was half druid …

"Well, dear," she said, "you're living in a house full of diehard druid  haters, so perhaps it's best you make them all love you before revealing  this little secret."

My head whipped up and my mouth popped open. Oh God. It was exactly as I  thought. They were going to kill me. Logan was going to kick me out.

Her face fell and she reached her hands out to me. "Oh shoot. That was a joke, dear. I'm sorry. I'm awful at sarcasm."

I exhaled the breath I was holding; it may have been a joke but it was  half true. I gave her a fake smile so she wouldn't feel so bad.

She patted my hand. "Just hang tight until my friend can get in touch with me, okay?" I nodded.                       
       
           



       

After exiting the car, I stood there and watched her drive away. Once  her car reached the end of the property line, I stood there a little  longer, not yet ready to go inside. My brain had concluded that Eva  thought I was half druid. Druids were evil. I was half evil. Shit.  Somewhere in that conversation with myself I had started wondering about  the science of it. One of my parents had to be a dragon  …  and one was a  druid  …  so which one was my mother? And how and the hell did she die of  cancer? I was only one hundred percent certain about one thing: my  mother, Lilly Murphy, was my biological mother. We had the same hair,  same face-hell, I even had this weird birthmark on my left hip that she  had. She was my mother. Which meant she was a druid or a dragon, and  either way she had lied to me.

That's what hurt the most. She lied.

"Sloane?" Logan had come outside and I was too busy freaking out to even  hear or smell him. I spun around, hugging my arms to my sides as a  chilly breeze swept past me.

Logan was assessing me, lips pursed, eyes half lidded. If the man couldn't read minds, he sure was trying.

"What did Eva want?" He tried to sound casual but his voice was cloaked with interest.

Don't panic. I was honest to God the worst liar in the world. I hated  doing it and it made me so nervous I usually just blurted the truth out.  But this truth could get me killed or abandoned by my new "pack."

So  …  I lied. I shrugged, acting nonchalant. "She was just checking in with me. Seeing how I was doing."

He relaxed a little and then looked concerned. "How are you doing?" He  stepped forward two steps and then stopped as if he didn't want to spook  me.

I shrugged again. "I'm teetering on the edge of insanity. Ya know, the usual."

Thank God I was raised by a mother who had a healthy dose of sarcasm,  because humor and sarcasm were nice shields to hide behind sometimes.

Logan frowned slightly. "It's going to be okay." The typical lie to make  the scared female feel safe. I wasn't in the mood for bullshit.

"Is it?" I countered.

He sighed and threw his hands in the air. "How the hell should I know?  What I do know is that while I'm still breathing, you will be safe." The  moment he said it, he made a face as if he regretted it. His lips  tightened into a thin line and his eyes widened a little. "I mean the  whole pack. I'll take care of all of you guys."

God, he was sweet, sexy, and smelled good. I needed to find a flaw on  this guy or I might be in trouble. Maybe he was a bad kisser, sloppy and  teeth mashing. Yeah. That's what I would tell myself to calm the fire  that had ignited south of my navel.

But he wouldn't take care of me. Not if what Eva thought I was turned  out to be true. Maybe the purple magic was a one-time thing? Maybe next  time it would be green magic, just like Logan? My magic had been trapped  in my body for twenty-one years. No doubt it was a little rusty.

Logan was just looking at me, waiting for a response, and I didn't have  one for him. I didn't want to talk about him protecting me, because I  didn't know what I was.

Something occurred to me then. "So, shifters are part human?" I  remembered he had explained this earlier, but it all took on a much more  important meaning to me now. I shivered as another cold breeze rippled  through the front yard.

Logan nodded and slipped off his jacket, walking it over to me and  placing it around my shoulders. "Yes. The queen of Faery always said  they made perfect protectors for her skyborn because they were strong  and loyal, and being half human would have sympathy for the humans. But  two shifters cannot have children unless they are of the same species.  So, two wolf shifters could have kids, but not a wolf shifter and a  coyote shifter. The animal magic competes for the fetus and it ends in  miscarriage."

Weird and sad. I posed my next question: "But dragons? They're shifters too."

Logan lowered his voice. "The dragon shifters, like you and I, were  made, not born. At least originally. We are more magical Fae than human.  We've never been human. We're part beast, part blood of the queen of  Faery herself."

I don't know why but that terrified me. I wanted to be human, at least  in part. I swallowed hard and pulled Logan's jacket tighter around me  and tried not to focus on his scent.

"And sorcerers can have babies with humans … "

Logan nodded. "That's correct."

"But we can only have babies with another full-blooded magical supernatural?" I think I was getting it.

Logan nodded. "Exactly. Like if your biological mother was a  full-blooded sorceress like Eva, and your father was a skyborn, that  would explain our purple problem." He smiled.                       
       
           



       

I smiled back but it didn't reach my eyes. Biological. He didn't think my mother was my real mother.

"And after the Faery queen created us … " I let the sentence hang open.

He shifted his weight and I tried not to notice how his muscles bulged.  "The skyborn were bound in service to the human race. Simply by being  alive and on Earth, we help the humans live full and long lives. Well,  longer than the thirty years they used to get."

That wasn't the history lesson I learned growing up. "So what happened?"

Logan's jaw clenched. "The earthbound. In 1918, the druids came to Earth  en masse. They had learned that if they killed a dragon and absorbed  its magic, it made them stronger, all-powerful-able to regenerate after a  mortal wound, able to have the strength of ten men, and much more."

My brows climbed. "Nineteen-eighteen was the Spanish influenza."

He nodded. "We lost millions of kin that year. It was a genocide of our  people. That's when we went into hiding. What few of us were left."

Jesus. How awful. "And the humans got sick?"

He nodded. "All that dragon energy leaving the humans so quickly. Humans  that we were bound to keep healthy  …  it caused a pandemic."

"That's awful," I muttered.

Logan nodded solemnly. "When the queen of Faery bound us to the humans,  she never even conceived of a day when we would not exist. She couldn't  have known that if we were all killed, her spell would backfire, taking  all of the humans with us-taking the humanity of every shifter and half  magical being with us as well."

Oh God. It really sank in then, the enormity of what Logan and I had to  do. "No pressure." I laughed nervously before a thought struck me:  "Couldn't she undo the spell? The queen? Science can keep people alive  longer now, and that way, if we die, we don't take humanity down with  us."

Logan ran his fingers through his hair. "When the Fae royalty first  learned that the druids had started killing skyborn, a war erupted in  Faery. Sorcerers, shifters, and druids started trickling out of the  Faelands and into Earth, fleeing the war that ravaged the land. In the  end, the queen was destroyed, and so were all of the other royal  families. The entirety of Faery died and was closed off forever."

My eyes widened as shock ran through me. "How?"