He took another whiff, and this time a bright orange magic seeped from his hand and swirled up my arm.
Danny clapped loudly, breaking my silent awe, and I jumped.
"You're a hybrid!" Danny squealed in excitement. Damn, this guy deserved an Oscar. He looked like a genuine fan of these asshats. But Danny's exclamation made sense. The orange eyes, the smelling, this druid was half sorcerer-I was sure of it-something Logan said was impossible because of their creed. One race, one blood, or something like that.
The druid looked mildly annoyed by Danny's interruption, but nodded. "My father's a druid, my mother was a pureblood sorcerer." He said the word pureblood with such pride, it made me sick.
Danny looked impressed. "A rarity. I didn't think your … people allowed such crossing of the breeds."
Steven chuckled deeply on the porch. "We don't. That's why his mother is dead, but he is of use to us, so we keep him around. Especially since our truth witch mysteriously fell ill when we started questioning about this missing redhead."
His words made the bile rise up in my throat. They killed his mother just for sleeping with a druid? Why not kill the druid? Freaking double standards.
Steven took a step closer to Danny and pinned him with a half-lidded gaze. "What is a pureblooded sorcerer doing hanging out with a bunch of half breeds?"
Behind me, Dom gave a low growl in his throat, and it was a dead ringer for his lion.
Danny shrugged. "I'm sleeping with the alpha. The sex is too good for me to leave," he confessed, and I found myself fighting a grin.
Super-big badass druid got really uncomfortable then. Like the fact that he was in the presence of not one, but two gay men was too much to handle. He backed up a step, looking at Danny with a disgusted look, and I decided right then and there that I would train to be a badass druid killing machine just so I could wipe people like this from the face of the earth.
The orange misty magic crept back down my arm and into the hybrid druid's hand then and he let go, looking at the king of steroids.
"She ain't a dragon. I dun know what she is, but she ain't skyborn." He concluded.
I released the breath I had been holding, but Steven was still eyeing me with speculation.
"She a mutt?" Steven asked, and I tried to suppress a growl.
The smaller man shrugged. "She ain't pureblood. Les go."
Keegan was back at the doorway with Gear, both holding guns. Keegan looked to be masking his pain, but I could see sweat beading his brow.
"Have a nice day," Keegan called out as the men retreated into their black sedan and peeled out of the driveway.
We all sighed then, taking a moment to just breathe.
"Keegan, are you alright?" Logan asked.
Danny stepped up to the porch and Keegan waved everyone off. "He broke my collarbone. It will heal."
Danny put on hand on his hip and glared Keegan down. Finally, Keegan walked out from the doorway and I noticed he had a slight limp. "I wouldn't say no to some of that healing magic."
Danny made a humph noise. "Well, I am your employee now."
Keegan growled lightly. "It's not like that," he whispered to Danny, but Danny just ignored him and rubbed his palms together, making some yellow misty magic rise up, before laying it on Keegan's chest.
The moment Danny's palms touched Keegan's chest, his face relaxed and he sighed in relief.
"Won't he need to see Eva? To take a scale for healing like Nadine?" I whispered to Logan. I had remembered Logan telling me in Nadine's loft that she would die without a healing.
Keegan had excellent hearing, because he was the one who answered: "He didn't hit me with magic intended to kill. It was more of a shock, a slap in the face for cocking my gun. I'm not wasting a scale on this, and neither of you can shift to get a scale with druids in town. I'll be fine. A bit of pain won't kill me."
"It might knock some sense into you," Danny muttered.
Keegan just grinned. "So you're staying with me for the sex? Guess we better start having sex."
Danny smacked his collarbone lightly and Keegan winced. "Please. You know I just said that to get that big homo hater's panties in a bunch."
I laughed at "homo hater." I liked Danny; he was a breath of fresh air.
Logan shook his head in disbelief. "They had a hybrid."
Danny chuckled and left Keegan on the porch, waving a hand at Logan. "That old thing. Oh, honey, he wouldn't know a donkey from his own ass. He didn't even notice that when I clapped loudly I set off a counter spell. He's harmless."
I grinned and I looked over at Keegan to see that he was staring at his ex-lover longingly.
"Thank you for that," Logan told him, and Danny simply nodded.
"Do you think they know anything?" I asked the group. Sophie and Nadine must have gone into town, because they were nowhere in sight.
Dom was the one to speak: "The big guy wasn't completely sold, but he didn't want to start a fight on a hunch. They make me sick. Every single last druid needs to be hunted and burned."
Logan and Keegan nodded their agreement, and I found myself shrinking back.
Dom's declaration was like ice to my heart. I mean, I understood. Hell, I agreed. They were racist murdering assholes, but … I think I was one of them. What if I … turned dark and attacked Logan or something? At that thought, I realized we were still holding hands, so I pulled mine out of his grasp.
"I'm tired, I think I'm just going to shower and take a nap," I told the group.
Keegan and Logan shared a look, and then Keegan nodded. "Of course. There's pizza inside. Help yourself. Nadine and Sophie are shopping in town, but I want everyone back for dinner, because the two new packmates are coming to meet everyone. I think you're going to like them."
I nodded and started walking inside. As I passed, Danny's arm snaked out and caught my wrist lightly, forcing me to turn and look at him. "It was really nice to meet you today, Sloane."
My heart was beating like crazy because I was ninety-nine percent sure Danny knew my deep dark secret. But damn I had a good feeling about him, that he wouldn't rat me out. "You too, Danny."
He released my hand, and with one last look I walked inside, grabbing a slice of pizza on my way up the stairs. Those men were awful, the way they spoke about my friends as if they were less than them because of their magical lineage. It made me feel dirty. And to think I might be one of them … it made my skin crawl.
I didn't really want to nap, I just needed to think, to wrap my head around everything that had happened the past few days. After closing the door to my room, I plopped on my bed, and at the same time Mittens shot out from underneath it and jumped on my lap. She coaxed a smile from me with her incessant purring as I rubbed the length of her back and got lost in my thoughts. The fingers of my free hand curled into a fist as I absent-mindedly rubbed my palm where the knife had singed it. Clearly, I wasn't even dragon enough to touch the knife, wasn't full of enough good. A horrifying thought came to me then-what if I touched a red druid's knife? Would it not harm me? Would I be able to kill a dragon with it? Kill Logan with it? No-that thought was too much. I collapsed back into the pillows and raised both arms above my head to block out the stupid smiling unicorn that was looking down on me. Mittens was massaging my thigh as I started to feel the pull of sleep take me down.
Stuck between sleep and waking, I had a vivid dream that caused me to toss and turn. In my dream there was a man. He sat in a cave behind a waterfall, just sitting there calmly in quiet meditation. He looked to be about early forties, dark chocolate-colored skin, with a few grey hairs in his trimmed, well-kept scruff. His black hair was cut short, and although he seemed too old for me, I had to admit he was good looking. He sat erect in a cross-legged meditation pose, shirtless, eyes closed. And when I wondered why I would be dreaming of this man, his eyes snapped open and I felt a shock run through my sleeping body. His eyes were hauntingly beautiful. They were like a honey-colored sunset, like something I would paint.
Although his skin was dark, I could see the outlines of tattoos along his shoulder and neck, and my stomach sank. He was a druid. He was looking right through me as if I was there in the cave with him, but … he didn't scare me. Not like the other druids I had met. At that thought, his lips quirked into a half smile, and I was snapped awake as Mittens pounced on my head and attacked my hair with her claws.
"Ow! You crazy cat." I ripped her off and swatted her bottom before placing her on the ground. She took one supreme look at me and then retreated to her place under the bed.