The silver spikes embedded throughout my body prevent me from shifting. Rivulets of blood trickle over my skin like miniature streams, saturating the wilted grass beneath me as the agonized cries of my clan members echo in my ears from all around.
Shifter clans, fae soldiers, starving vampyrs, and many more beings gathered in this place for one last battle. One final stand. Now they are slaughtered in droves as my breathing grows shallow. My view of the glowing white omen in the night sky above me dims.
If this is how it feels to die, it is not the pain I expected.
It's the dying unmated, unbound, and utterly alone that is the true pain.
When this burning comet first appeared, streaking slowly across the heavens over a week ago, all shifter clans celebrated. The elders decided it must be a good omen from the gods—a sign that the upcoming Mate Hunt would be filled with great joy, with many shifters finding their fated ones.
Though I am six months shy of the twenty-one years of age most shifters are when they join the Mate Hunt, the elders of the clans granted my request to join. They said that a warrior as mighty as I would find favor with the gods and be bound to my fate-decreed mates, which would please my clan.
But I stopped caring about pleasing my clan many moons ago.
My clan only came to love me after I became a warrior renowned throughout this entire land—after years of exhaustive training and voluntary experiments at the hands of the fae to change the frailty I was born with.
I have become far more, and now, I have little interest in pleasing anyone but my future mate or mates. Even as I feel my inner beasts joining me in this thrall of death, even as a chill settles on my skin and doom settles upon these lands…
All I feel is empty longing for the completion of my soul, whoever they may be.
The Mate Hunt would have been tonight. If such evil had not brought an end to my world, would I have found the other pieces of my heart under this same omen-filled sky?
Nearby, I hear a fae soldier chanting to prepare her magic. Her voice is pure terror as she faces the wicked hordes of darkness overtaking the land. The fae kingdom has already been conquered, and many of their people are fleeing into the land of mortals even as thousands continue to perish here, slaughtered in droves by the dark Conqueror.
There is a darkness falling upon this land, the likes of which no one has ever seen.
I scent a non-living drawing closer. An animated corpse. If I do not move, it will begin to feast upon me—or perhaps I will die and be brought back by the tide of necromancers who have been turning this once-thriving domain into one of ash and walking death.
Just as I feel myself fading, a familiar voice shouts nearby.
"Kaenon!"
A bright light surrounds me, holy magic filling the night air. The living dead one near me shrieks and crumbles to pieces in this bloodied clearing. My view of the gods' omen in the skies is suddenly blocked by Athanis.
My fae friend’s purple robes of the temple of Galene are ripped and stained with ash. I smell blood on him. Although he must be injured, he grips one of my silver-ravaged arms and begins casting a spell to take us away from here.
The dream cuts forward until I'm suddenly in one of the many fae laboratory rooms, trying to reason with Athanis as he heals me. His face is sullen as he pulls twisted shards of silver from my flesh. The entire laboratory shakes from the terrors ravaging this domain. Blood still drips from me as I lie weakened upon one of the tables. Tears drip from me just as freely for the many souls who are still falling to the darkness outside.
"You must flee," I urge hoarsely. "This final battle will be won, and not by us. Flee with the other fae and leave me to die with my clansmen."
Athanis scoffs. "After all you have done for my brethren and me? I would not dare leave a noble warrior such as you to die, lest Sachar curse my afterlife. You must be saved from this and set away wherehecannot reach you."
The dream wavers with pain, my body so damaged it is barely mending. I look over at one of the three sarcophagi nearby. Two are sealed, but the third is open, waiting for me. The other fae scientists crafted these when they began considering this last resort to preserve me and the other two surviving altered ones.
"No," I scowl. "I will not go under while this realm is yet drenched in the blood of all shifter clans. My fate will end with theirs."
He gives me a stern look. "Do not speak so brashly. You know Galene herself sends visions to me, Kaenon. I have seen your fate, and it does not end here—youmustbe saved to preserve our work. The knowledge of how to curear inanisshifters must not be lost, lest many more perish in a future filled with ignorance. Is that your wish?"
No. He is right, it is not.
Within each clan of shifters, some lead the others with dignity and ferocity. My parents and their mates led the largest and most powerful shifter clan. My many older brothers and sisters, all strong like my parents, had mates and younglings of their own, adding to the pride of our family.
My birth came as an unfortunate late surprise to my aged parents, especially because I was bornar inanis—the fae people's term for a shifter born without an inner beast.
Shifters born beastless usually die within weeks, too feeble to survive without the wild spirits meant to inhabit us. I survived my frail childhood by the grace of the gods, sheer willpower, and the magical aid of a kind, fair, good-hearted fae named Thalo.
Now, though, I am no longer weak or beastless.
My time volunteering at the fae laboratory ensured that manifold. Because of what they attained in me, they believe they can cure other shifters bornar inanis. It is the very reason I asked Thalo to volunteer at the fae laboratory as a child, to improve the future of others like me.
