29. Tate

TWENTY-NINE

TATE

The early fall night was pleasant. There was a cool breeze coming down from the mountains, and it helped cool me off. Sitting on my back patio, I thought about all the time I'd spent with Harley and the girls. In some ways, it had been the best months of my life. Having people to come home to. People who wanted me around, and were, maybe, beginning to love me. There had never been anything like it. Now, all that might be over.

The guys and I had discussed things earlier. There might be a loophole to the spell Emily had cast. If I rejected my bond with Harley, I was as good as dead. Not just dead, but a painful, agonizing death. I didn't want to do that. Not only because, obviously, I didn't want to die screaming. That was a given. The main reason was that I loved her. Because I loved her, I didn't want her to turn into a shifter. Our loophole was that if Harley rejected me, maybe the spell would be broken. If she rejected me, and the spell was broken, then perhaps later on, we could get back together.

I would never walk away from her and my boy. That was non-negotiable. I would be there to help raise him. I would teach Harley about raising whelps—what we called child dragon shifters. She would need me. I, and my dragon, were sure the baby was going to be born a shifter. For the most part, raising a shifter child was the same as a human child. The issue came about when dragon shifters hit puberty. Our version of puberty, anyway. Sexual maturity still came at the usual time. Twelve or thirteen. Dragons hit shifter puberty at five years old. There was no way a human mother could handle that type of challenge. The eyes began to glow when their emotions got too high. They produced excessive amounts of heat from their bodies if they couldn't control it. I would have to teach him how to control all the things that would happen to him. Only I could show him how to ignore the base instincts that would be like a raging storm inside his mind.

That alone, even if I wasn't in love with her, would require that I stay in her life. She could reject me, and stay safe, but I would always be there for them. It really might be the best option. Life as a shifter was hard enough being born one. There was no way I could imagine living your whole life as a human, and then suddenly, without warning, becoming one. Would Harley go crazy? Accept it? Kill herself? Any scenario, and a hundred others, were possible. It was too hard to even think about.

I heard the front door of Harley's house open and close. My hearing wasn't as good as a wolf shifter like Miles, but it was still incredibly well attuned. My keys were already in my hand, so I stood and walked around my house to the front yard. My heart was hammering away in my chest, and it only got heavier when I saw Harley. She was walking toward me, her hands twisting the hem of her shirt.

"I'd like you to go somewhere with me," I said.

She glanced back at the house, then said, "I'm a little worried about leaving the girls. Especially with what happened today."

"I totally understand that. I took precautions. All the guys are nearby watching the house. Miles is upstairs in my room, Blayne is down at the end of the cul-de-sac in a sedan, and Steff is hiking the woods behind your house. They'll be even safer than if you were there. They will die for them if need be."

She sighed and shook her head. "Tate, how can you know that? Men don't usually die for people they barely know."

I looked her in the eyes. "They're more than just men." Without letting her respond to that, I said, "Will you come with me?"

Her face was a window to the war going on in her mind. I watched her weigh the benefits and consider the arguments. Thankfully, after a few seconds, she said, "Okay."

The drive was nearly silent, which was good. I wasn't sure I could have had a long conversation with the struggle going on inside me. My dragon was not happy with my plan. For the first time in my life, I could feel that it was angry with me. It was afraid that if I went through with what I planned, Harley would for sure reject us. Even the thought of that made my dragon almost jibber with panic. I had to remind it that all this was for Harley's safety––that doing this may be the only way to keep her safe. Sadness washed over me, all of it emanating from the dragon. I apologized to him mentally. I'm sorry. It's the only way.

We arrived at my usual shifting location. High up in the mountains. There was great deer hunting up here. It was a special place for me, and I couldn't think of a better place to bring Harley. We got out of the truck and walked side-by-side, not speaking. Once we got a little way into the woods, we found the clearing I knew well. Harley looked at me in a way I couldn't even describe. It was like she was trying to see through me, as if she was trying to see something deep inside me.

"Emily kept calling you a shifter. Is that… true?"

I nodded, too afraid to speak.

"What does that mean? Like, a shapeshifter? Like in some movie or something? Are you supposed to be a werewolf?"

"Not a werewolf, no. Not me, anyway. But yes, it's what you're thinking."

Harley stared at me for several seconds, then her face broke into a huge manic smile, and she started laughing. Blinking, I took a step back, not sure what she was laughing at. She continued laughing, big belly laughs, until she began crying. The laughter became almost hysterical. She put her hands in her hair, and took a huge deep breath to calm herself.

She walked in a tight circle, mumbling to herself. "What the fuck is even happening? Am I going crazy? Wait, that guy that captured me said he saw a dragon. Is that what you are? What's happening, what's happening, what's happening?"

Harley was on the verge of a breakdown. I couldn't let that happen. I stepped forward and put my hands on her shoulders. "Calm down."

Harley slapped my hands away, startling me, and pointed a finger in my face. Her voice was venomous. "Don't you tell me to calm down. Don't fucking do that. Do you have any idea what I saw with Emily? She held a car in the air like some goddamned wizard. I thought I was going crazy. You don't get to tell me any damned thing until I know exactly what's happening."

Harley was still crying, but this time it wasn't hysterical tears, it was tears of fear and anger. I was worried about the baby and what all the stress might be doing to him.

Holding my hands up, I said, "Okay… it's okay. I don't want to make you more upset. I'll just take you home. We can forget the whole thing."

Harley was only five-foot-six, petite, and unassuming. Still, when she took two steps toward me, snarling and enraged, I felt a twinge of fear. I resisted the urge to jerk back.

She slapped my chest. "You aren't taking me any-fucking-where until you tell me why the hell your eyes glow, and how Emily can shoot forcefields out of her hands."

Most of Harley's rage seemed to melt out of her, and she sagged in exhaustion. Now that she was calmed down, I took her hand and led her to a small outcropping of rocks and sat with her.

I took a breath and jumped into the story. "So, there are secrets about the world you and your kind aren't aware of. The unnatural is not easy to accept. I am a shifter. My kind have roamed the earth for centuries, thousands of years, really. We are magical creatures, and due to that magic and how dangerous we are perceived to be, we usually stay in our human form. We integrate into human societies. After some time, we really seem to be more human than beast."

"We actually changed to keep our secret hidden. We are born as human babies now instead of eggs. We don't even get to know our beast until several years after we're born. Our son will be born a shifter. I can already feel it."

Harley was trembling and put a hand to her mouth. "What are you talking about? How is this real?"

"There's more. There is a group, they've been around for centuries. We simply call them Hunters. Their creed, their very reason for being, is to eradicate every shifter on earth. They hunt us, and kill us like the animals they think we are. Emily is… Jesus, this is complicated… she's a witch."

Harley's eyes went wide. "A witch? Like, magic wand? Poof, abracadabra? Harry Po?—"

"Yes, and no. Emily is a witch but, as you saw, there's no need for a wand. Her power is from within. She's in league with a band of hunters. They've already captured and killed several of us in the surrounding area. We think she got close to you to kill me, Steff, Blayne, and Miles. We're all shifters. Miles is a wolf shifter, Blayne is a panther, Steff is a bear."

Harley said, "The guy who had me prisoner in the mansion, before he fainted, he mumbled something about a dragon. Was that you outside?"

I nodded. "We got to the mansion and were attacked. When I'm in my dragon form, my scales are impenetrable to man-made bullets. I shifted to protect myself as well as… get my rage out. Shifting hadn't been part of the plan. We'd intended to go in quietly and try to get you out without anyone knowing we were there. Things got out of hand."

Harley stared at me. The look on her face told me she didn't believe it. There was a part of her that wanted to, I could almost see it in her eyes. The problem was there was too much stuff in her head to keep her from fully accepting—thousands of hours of school, untold documentaries, hundreds of books, magazines, and articles, that claimed reality and the world were only what science said was possible. Everything she'd ever been told pushed her against believing. Witches weren't real, werewolves were the stuff of movies, dragons were myths. I had to show her. There was no other way.

I stood and took a few steps away. Looking into her eyes, I said, "Remember, I love you. I love you so much. My dragon loves you, too. We would never hurt you. Ever. Please don't be afraid."

Before she could say anything, I shifted. My arms elongated and stretched out into wings. My skin slipped away, replaced with bright scales. My jaw expanded, my teeth sharpened and became rows of fangs. In seconds I stood before her, a fully formed dragon straight out of a story book.

I could feel my dragon's excitement and also trepidation. It'd never been so worried. I could sense how terrified it was that Harley would run screaming. Rejection would be almost unbearable to my dragon—to me as well.

Harley looked up at me as I towered above her, and started laughing hysterically again. "I'm hallucinating. That has to be it."

My dragon leaned down and pressed his snout gently to her belly. She gasped, feeling his warm scales against her body. I waited there, with our head bowed, touching the baby inside her. I waited for her to call me a freak, a monster. Waited for the rejection I was certain was coming.

Instead, she placed a hand on my head, sliding her fingers across the ridges of scales, and with wonder in her eyes, she simply said, "Oh."