Skyborn(6)

He smiled. "Earthbound."

"Whatever. The earthbound are the druids. And then you have animal  shifters? Anything else?" Three supernatural races were enough for me.

He reached out and pulled a fourth finger from my curled fist.  "Sorcerers. The most populated of all the races, although most are  extremely watered down with human DNA."

I dropped my hand and exhaled the breath I had been holding. "Sorcerers? Like witches? Damn."

He nodded. "The animal shifters are the second most rare of the supernatural species. Second to us of course."

I swallowed hard, trying to absorb this information. "Of course."

"There used to be over a thousand shapeshifter species, but they were a  part of the Fae-line, which has now died out. Now there's only a couple  dozen species and they are all animals from this world."

This world. And Fae. He said Fae.

"This world?" I cleared my throat because my voice cracked.

He looked me up and down, seemingly sizing up what I could handle. I  grit my jaw and was sure to give him my best big girl look before he  spoke. "A long time ago, magical creatures only existed in the land of  Faery  …  a world that contained all of the magic you have read about in  fairy tales."

I scratched my neck, trying hard to believe what he was saying. "Okay."  Maybe I was still asleep and dreaming, because this sounded loony.

"Until one day, the queen of Faery found a tear in the fabric between  the two worlds. She came to Earth and fell in love with a human."

I leaned forward, suddenly hanging on every word.

"She slowly began sending Fae to Earth and letting humans into Faery.  Fae and humans started falling in love, having families. She wanted a  world where we could all coexist."

I shrugged. "Sounds nice." Freaky but nice.

Logan's face grew dark. "Some felt that she loved her precious humans  more than her own people. When the earthbound found out, they created a  yearlong winter in their anger with their queen. The druids were one of  the highest born magical Fae creatures in the land. After learning what  their queen had done, they set out to become more powerful  …  to wipe out  the humans and any of the human-Fae mixed creatures that had been born.  They were only interested in a pureblooded society."

Bile crept up my throat. It sounded very similar to some history I had learned about in school. "What happened?"

Logan lowered his voice. "While the druids were off on their quest at  becoming all-powerful, the queen's human lover got sick and he died,  while she remained young and lived on."

My hand covered my mouth. I didn't even know these people or if this  story was even real, but it touched me. I felt for this queen and her  human lover. "Then what?" I was entranced. I needed to know this story  just as I needed to stay up all night getting to the ending of a good  book.

"So, in an effort to protect her beloved humans from disease, she  climbed to the highest mountain in Faery and found the commander of  dragons. It was long known that the dragons were the healers of the  realm. She ordered the commander to create her a protector for humanity,  a race of dragons that would be bound to the humans and feed them with  their magical healing energy, keeping them healthy and giving them long  lives. Back then, humans only lived to be about thirty years old. Her  lover had died at twenty-eight."

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."