1. Alexandra

Alexandra knew she was dreaming because she held an infant in her arms. A tiny little girl with huge hazel eyes and a bubbly laugh that made Alex's heart clench with love and fierce pride. A big personality in a small, delicate package. Alexandra didn"t have a baby yet, nor did she have a mate like the dream suggested. He stood nearby as a fuzzy shadow to her left. Just a dark mist of a protective, dominant dragon shifter.

She also knew it was a dream because she felt warm and safe. She felt comfortable. She wasn"t hungry or tired exhausted. She wasn"t run to the ragged edge of survival. She felt clean, refreshed, and ready to enjoy a day in the sun with her daughter.

Alexandra had been having this dream since she was fifteen. At least ten years now. It always started like this: warm and peaceful, with the infant and the shadowy mate. And it always went the same way, like following the script of a play: the infant grew up into a young lady, someone Alexandra knew she could be proud of. There was a period of bliss, followed by war with the vampires. The fate of Alexanda's world hung on the success of her future daughter.

What, exactly, her daughter needed to do to save the world, Alex never knew.

At first, the dream always ended the same way as well: with the world on fire and Alex bolting out of sleep with a gasp. She was always left feeling uneasy and she had resented the idea that her future was fixed.

For years Alexandra had tried to escape the plans Fate had laid out for her. She was a powyrful dragon shifter. She deserved to chose her own future. She wanted nothing to do with a mate or an infant or saving the world. For years she fought against it.

Now, though, she was never asleep long enough to reach the burning world or to flee into the mystery arms of her fated mate. And like every night for the last month, this one was no different. She stared into the bright hazel eyes of her daughter and her heart wasn't just full of love and pride, but also a new longing. A deep and wretched desire to see this future come true, even if she only glimpsed it for a moment.

Because the vampires weren't content to wait for her daughter.

Not when they could kill her first.

Alexandra woke completely and silently all at once. She went from prone, to her feet and already running, before she took her first breath. There was no transition, not anymore. She'd trained herself out of that initial fog through necessity and desperation. There was only instant flight.

The vampires had found her again.

Her entire body hurt, like she was nothing more than a throbbing bruise from head to toe. Her skin burned raw from exposure, filth, and dehydration. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a bath or a full meal. Her lips ached, chapped and bleeding, when she ran her dry tongue over them. Her hair was such a tangle she couldn't run her fingers through it anymore. She'd mostly stopped trying.

A few hours ago she had found temporary shelter in the back room of some artist collective. She"d fall asleep among turpentine and paints and stacked bags of clay. Less fallen asleep and more collapsed, the exhaustion finally forcing her to ground even with the vampires on her trail and the man they had hired to kill her once and for all.

He'd been on her tail for weeks no matter what form she took, and regardless of her attempts to shake him. She'd never seen more than a glimpse of him overhead—his big black wings casting shadows in the moonlight that seemed to swallow her whole.

Alexandra knew how to run and hide. How to survive. How to steal her next meal and keep going. But she was starting to doubt how much longer she could keep it up.

Something had to change. Or her dream-baby's hazel eyes would be the last thing she saw.

Alex darted down the hallway of the artist collective to the back door. Her sensitive eyes picked out racks of brushes and tools, wheeled buckets of clay and glaze. Shelves of half-finished work wrapped in plastic that fluttered as she rushed by.

The back door only had a deadbolt. She threw the lock, knowing the sound of it would alert the vampires—she was already prepared.

Alexandra had been on the run for years, but it was the kind of running she could sustain. She stayed in hotels. She could find a place stable enough to get a part-time job for a few weeks. She hopped from small-town to small-town, surviving on ramen and power bars. But six months ago something changed. The vampires had apparently decided they"d had enough.

They sent him. A massive black dragon shifter she only felt at the very edges, pursuing with relentless determination.

And since then, Alexandra hadn"t been safe enough to stop more than a couple of hours. She had instinctively moved deeper into the city. At first the bustle had given her some protection thanks to people being up at all hours of the day and night. Vampires didn"t like to be active around humans. They preferred to stay to the fringe. That reprieve had only lasted a day or two. In the last week, Alexandra had only stopped to sleep twice.

The only hope she clung to anymore was the promise of the dream. Her future that Fate had laid out for her. A future she didn't know how to reach, but had to believe was still out there. Somehow.

So she threw the deadbolt on the back door and shoved it open. There was no scrambling. No hesitation. She lunged directly into the fight she expected to find on the other side.

Surprise was her only weapon.

The vampire she crashed into was unprepared.

Vampires were fast. They were brutal, with long claws like knives. The only way to win against one was to be faster–not possible—or even more brutal.

Alexandra learned her lessons quickly. The door swung open and her hand was already moving in for the kill. She pressed her fingers together in a flat plane and called on just enough of her dragon to sprout claws as sharp as razors. The vampire had enough time for his red eyes to widen as he recognized her. Then she plunged her hand into the vampire"s chest, slipping between ribs with the ease of far too much practice.

This wasn't the first vampire Alexandra had killed. He wasn't even the hundredth. She grabbed the dead heart in his chest and yanked it out sideways so that his body fell out of her way and she could flee without a hitch in her stride.

The corpse collapsed behind her, true-death only moments away, his undead heart squished in the claws of her hand. If she put the heart back in place and gave him enough blood he could recover eventually. Vampires were hard to kill and harder to keep dead. It wasn't safe to just throw the bloody thing in one of the dumpsters as she ran past.

Instead, Alexandra took a bite of the undead flesh and did her best not to think about the slime of it oozing down her throat. Vampire heart. Zero stars out of five. Best meal she'd had in days.

And now the body would have no other choice but to burn in the dawn light.

Whenever that was.

It was hard to tell the time with all the street lights. The city was dark. The sky was dark overhead and it was a cloudy night. It could have been eleven PM, it could be four AM, Alexandra didn't have time to stop and check.

She fled down the back alley toward a more populated street. Overflowing dumpsters crouched on either side like, spilling their fat trashbag babies in every direction. She lept over an oozing smear, putting perhaps more faith than she should have in her beat up old sneakers.

Before she could make it to the sidewalk, another vampire fell from above. Bold of them to attack so close to humans. Even at night.

Alexandra twisted under blocked a handful of claws aiming for her throat. She exchanged snarls with the vampire woman who was thankfully distracted with the fang display and didn't notice Alexandra"s clawed hand sliding into her stomach and pushing up to puncture lungs. She raked her claws on the inside of the creature's ribs to cause as much traumatic damage as possible.

The vampire gasped and that was all the space Alexandra needed to plunge her other hand into the pale chest and remove the heart. Breakfast and elevensies? She was splurging today.

The only reliable way to kill a vampire was to remove the heart and destroy it. Removing the head could work if fire was also involved, but Alexandra couldn't breathe fire unless she fully shifted, so the heart would have to do.

She was back her feet, but the scuffle with the woman took too long and another vampire landed lightly at the mouth of the alley, blocking her way.

He was thinner than the others, Alexandra had a breath to note, before he zipped toward her faster than lightning. She knew there was no competing on speed and she didn"t even try to block his attack. He might be going for her throat or her heart, but vampires also enjoyed toying with their prey and Alexandra had survived more than one attack simply because they didn"t attempt to kill her first.

She took the risk.

She braced for the hit and swung her own claws up at throat level. The vampire flashed into position, skewering himself on her claws, but also plunging his own deep into Alexandra"s side. She grunted with the force of it, but knew better than to try and analyze the hit. Now was not the time for triage. She kept a hold of the vampire by his lacerated throat—he had no speed advantage if she kept a good grip—and plunged her other hand into his chest to finish the fight.

She had to shove him off of her when he died. His hand slipped out of the side of her body wetly. She consumed his heart automatically, and staggered on her feet. Her vision blurred for a moment, the warm yellow street lights ahead bleeding together and painting everything in a hazy glow. Her entire side was on fire with pain, the bright shock of it dripping down her hip and leg.

That was not good.

She had to risk shifting. She was in an alley; at worst she would fly away and leave any confused witnesses convinced they had drunk too much that night.

She collapsed to all fours, not entirely by choice, and pushed her dragon to the surface as rapidly as she could tolerate. Her scales didn't just flow over her skin, they ripped through her, bursting with fresh blood as her shape changed and grew. Her muscles strained to keep up with elongating bones and her entire body shuddered. A dragon wasn't meant to shift this fast. It was supposed to be an easy process, something smooth and full of the joy of stretching into freedom. Alexandra didn"t have the luxury for stretching. She swallowed her own humanity like the heart of a vampire, choking it down as fast as possible, and launched herself into the sky on wings that hadn't even grown to their full length yet.

She had to use the building as a booster. She dug her claws into brick-and-mortar and shoved herself higher, pumping her growing wings until she was finally strong enough to make it to the rooftop.

She startled a vampire there who skidded to a stop, surprised to see her in full dragon form in the middle of the city. Gleaming gem-green even as her ribs were visible with malnutrition. The vampires didn't like risking themselves in front of humanity, but Alexandra had been pursued for so long that a human seeing her doesn't rank as a risk anymore. Not when the other option is death.

Alexandra whipped her wedge-head forward and crushed the vampire between her teeth. She smacked the body against the roof of the building like a bird of prey killing a rabbit. Bones broke and old, coppery blood spread across her tongue. For good measure she belched a stream of dragon fire across her teeth. The fresh taste of ash was sweet like honey.

Alexandra ran for the side of the building and lunged upward into the sky.

Vampires were a lot of things. Fast. Inhuman. Immortal. Brutal.

But they couldn't fly.

In the last six months she had been driven to the skies over and over again. She fled from city to city, pushed to her absolute limit. She hadn't eaten in days and three vampire hearts weighed her down in more than just mass. She was a carnivore but she couldn't remember what a burger tasted like. Despair threatened to pull her out of the sky.

While the shift to dragon form sealed the puncture in her side, her scales were riddled with old shift scars. Both from vampire attacks and from pushing her shape far faster than it was ever meant to go. She had been solidly green once. Like a cut gem glinting under the light. Now she was nearing the edge of her desperate will. One of her dark horns was broken half way, she was nearly piebald with pale scarring, and an attack only a month ago had fouled up her right wing shoulder, limiting her range of movement without some serious physical therapy.

She wavered in the air. She had to force herself back up to altitude. She was exhausted and this time there was nothing left in the tank. There were no reserves to call on, not anymore.

The man sent to hunt her had done his job well.

When he finally decides to come out of the shadows, Alexandra was going to have nothing left, and she knew it.

Her wings faltered again and she fell beneath the cloud layer before she could correct herself. She tried, but she didn't have enough left to get back up. All she could do was hold them out stiffly and glide. She scanned the suburbs below her and found a park with some decent tree cover, but even banking toward that questionable shelter was more difficult than she expected.

She listed the air, over-corrected, and came crashing down into the park like an airplane without an engine. Her snout and shoulder ran a line through the beautiful grass, digging up soil and muck when she already felt like a pile of trash, and she collapsed a few feet shy of the children's sandbox with a climbing structure.

Worn down to her bones, all she could do was watch the swing drift forward and back for several cycles.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and shifted back to human. She might be staying the night in this park. She doesn"t have any energy left. But at least as a human she would be mistaken for someone homeless.

She laughed ruefully into the night. Not mistaken. She was homeless.

But at least there wouldn"t be a dragon sprawled out on the lawn.

She tried to push herself to her feet and collapsed immediately to her knees. Alexandra managed to crawl to the neighboring picnic table before she collapsed, completely spent. Her muscles twitched, protesting the abuse she'd thrown at them for weeks. Her eyes fluttered shut as exhaustion overtook her entirely. If he came for now she'd be helpless.

She hoped her death would be quick.

Maybe then she'd get to rest.

When she dreamed, she saw hazel eyes.