Chapter One
Marcus
There are rules in the Appalachias. Things you hear—pretend they don’t exist. If you hear your name called out in the dead of night, ignore it. No, you didn’t. If you hear a woman screaming in the forest—nope. Especially if your heebies are jeebed. Of course, always do due diligence and call the authorities—or us. Calling us is always good. Why? Chances are, it’s a bobcat in heat or a mountain lion trying to lure in a family pet—or a person. And they like to drag their kills up a tree. Either you are the kill, or you’re the casualty of yesterday’s lunch.
The gorier rules?
Don’t whistle. Ever. I didn’t have to say it as often as I did, but it bore repeating. Things lived out there that even dragons feared. A whistle was an open invitation to things that even the gods forgot about. Things beyond time and reason, back when the evils of men were paltry compared to the wrath of the inky beasts with red eyes.
Then came the black dog, or dogs, as I knew them. Some called them emissaries of Satan, the devil’s prized hounds, but they weren’t as malicious as the stories told. I’d never spoken to one, but wherever they gathered, tragedy would soon strike. Their presence was to ward off the curious mortals, to keep evil at bay. Nothing resulted in more bloodshed than a curious human. Nothing. They echoed tales of the grims from far across the lands where my parents hailed from. Where they’d returned to a two dozen years back. Some people weren’t meant to be parents. Others were.
As the evening settled in, the winter’s chill cutting me to my core, I stared out from my perch in the fire tower we’d constructed, far more adapted to the cold than my omega dragonfather. My alpha father, a wolf, had given me several features that had melded into the dominant dragon within me; one of them was a resistance to the cold of winter, when fires were the least likely to ravage the land. But still, I watched.
“Child,” a soft voice called out, Lyphus, my baba, one of the dragon couple that had taken me in. His soft demeanor spoke of omega, and his gentle scent solidified that, but something wrong entwined within it. Possibly the reason he and Malkim had never had children. I turned my head in time to take in his gentle smile and golden eyes. “You’ll catch your death.”
“I’m fine.”
“Wear a coat, at least. The cold slows all reptiles down.” Baba gave me a judgmental look, and despite being half wolf, I was all dragon. My soul determined it. “It’ll make me feel better.”
I sighed as he handed me a leather bomber jacket, the insides all fur and down, kissing my skin with silken heat radiating from my own core as I slid it on.
“Out here shirtless like a loon.” Lyphus hefted himself up through the tower’s hatch, closing it behind him before perching on a bench. “You’re brooding.”
“My fire stirs. Something’s coming.” I stared out at the sea of trees, their limbs a peppering of evergreen and deciduous twigs reaching their skeletal fingers toward the sky with wanton grace, begging the moon for her kiss, I imagined.
“Or you’re hormonal and need to take a few days to yourself and shed.” The smirk in his voice crawled up my spine and all but flicked my ear to chastise me. A spark of his fire did, though, floating from his lips to crackle and pop with a little sting that had me swatting the side of my head with a huff.
“Maybe after tonight.” I crossed my arms over my knees and tucked them, refusing to even give Baba a glance. “Something isn’t right.”
“Something’s always going to be wrong, Marcus. Do I need to go get your father?” His teasing tone made me wary of another spark, and I flinched. “Honestly, you should go out into the world and find your mate, dear.”
“My mate is going to be here. Fate left me in your care. If my mate was out there, I’d be there already.” I clutched my knees and stared out. I had other siblings out there, more biological family. My birth parents being unfit to raise kids didn’t stop them from making them, apparently. I feared, always, finding one of them and making an incestuous mistake. It made me view all dragonkind as a potential disaster. Neurotic? Probably.
“Or you could—” Baba spoke, and his words drowned in the wake of a torrential boom like thunder shaking the mountainside. Smoke rose in a slow curl; the acrid chemical stench of illegal activities burned my nostrils not too soon after. Baba shook his head and scoffed, face a mess of disgust. “Let that one just burn. It’s too cold for a fire to take the mountainside.”
“I’d love to, but they’re going to draw in humans…more humans. Those bobcats need to be stopped.” I grimaced at the far-off village. The scent alone told me much; ammoniac, mentholated, acrid… A drug lab of some variety.
“Fine. I’ll tell Morris that you’re going to lay down the law. Try not to earn any enemies, dear.” Baba rose from his seat and strode over, squeezing my shoulders. “And do take a night off to shed. You’re uncomfortable in your own skin, and it does a dragon well.”
I grumbled. “I’ll think about it.”
With a quick gesture, I reached for the cold stone of the talisman at my neck, the one that stowed my clothes in a flash, and I leaped from the watchtower, falling bare and free into the cold below as my scales expanded and arms split wing from claw. Flying made my heart sing, moonlight sinking into the scales of my back, bathing me in its glow.
And where we lived, even if someone looked up and saw my shimmering form in the sky, they’d be none the wiser as to what I was. Humans had forgotten magic.
And magic? It had forgotten them.
Chapter Two
Whisper
Another day, another explosion. Bobcats ran like rats from a burning silo as Goober’s crew abandoned the warehouse where they’d been brewing up another batch of something that sure as fuck wasn’t rock salt. Trucker seasoning, they called it. A little sprinkle would pepper up any long-haul driver for hours. I avoided the stuff. It was expensive, smelled bad, and made a whole lotta the other bobcats real stupid.
The acrid stench crept along as the glow of fire danced in frost on dead, curled leaves on the ground. My breath joined the smoke in the air, a wedding of two things that shouldn’t have been as my eyes stung, urging twin trails to coat my cheeks.
“Wampus!” the gnarled voice of one of my many cousins-not-cousins snapped out at me. My parents had been from another clowder, an attempt to bring fresh blood into the mix that had failed miserably. But all of us were cousins anyway… Well, until someone had twenty dollars and I wasn’t busy with chores. Then I was ass.
I squinted into the night as I willed the smoke away from me. And it always listened. They said smoke always drifted toward the beautiful one, and it said a lot about me that the smoke drifted the other direction the moment I noticed it. I raised my hand to recognize his call and jogged up, wiping at my eyes with ratty sleeves. The stench of several days without a bath or fresh clothes made my nose burn more, and I shook my head.
