“Right. Brina sent me here the first time before I ever shifted into beast form. I’m sure she’d want me walking around telling everyone how she’d screwed me from day one.”
Evalle drew her knees up and dropped her chin down. That was what Tristan had said the first time she’d met him, and she could tell he believed what he said, so had Brina really put him away without reason?
“I understand, Tristan, but I wasn’t there when she sent you to this prison, so I can’t argue with you. I do know other Alterants have killed humans and Beladors after shifting into beasts. Maybe Brina was trying to get ahead of the problem before you shifted. I don’t have answers for any of that.”
“Then why didn’t they lockyouaway?”
The shade of hurt in his voice caused her to lift her head so she could look at him when she answered honestly. “I spent my entire life in a basement because I have a lethal intolerance to sunshine. An old druid came to me there when I was eighteen and told me of my destiny to be a Belador warrior. He didn’t know my eyes were an unnatural Alterant green because my eyes are so sensitive I always wear sunglasses, even in the dark.”
“But you could leave the basement at night, that’s more freedom than I’ve had here.”
She never talked about her life growing up, but Tristan had seen his own share of misery, and hewastalking to her. “No, I couldn’t leave that basement. I was adopted by my father’s sister, who kept me locked up. If I can believe anything that hag told me, when my mother died in childbirth and I had a severe reaction to sunlight the hospital ran tests that exposed that I was not her brother’s child.”
Tristan didn’t look at her, but the stern angles in his face softened some. “What’d your father do?”
“Basically, sold me to my aunt, who believed her brother could do no wrong. She offered to be the martyr and take me on. She didn’t want some mutant child to embarrass her beloved Army officer brother, so she legally adopted me, but, as she once put it, I was her retirement nest egg.”
Ironically, the hag died before she could retire.
Tristan asked, “What happened when you met the druid?”
She’d never been much for dredging up old pains, so she was glad to move on past family hour. “He offered me a chance to train as a Belador if I was willing to swear an oath to uphold their code of honor. I would have signed on with the devil to escape that basement and my aunt, but Iamloyal to the Beladors.”
At that she got an eye roll from Tristan, but Evalle finished explaining. “By the time the Beladors got a look at my bright green eyes, I was already training with them. They figured I might be different because I’m a female Alterant. That I might not shift involuntarily.”
She wasn’t sharing the fact that things had changed a few days back when another female Alterant had surfaced and killed humans. That was more of a need-to-know detail.
Tristan said, “I never saw a druid. Never got an offer to choose my destiny.”
“That just means you weren’t expected to be a warrior. Trust me, it’s not all fun and games.”
“Neither is this place.”
What could she say to that? Nothing.
She had to move the conversation back to finding the Alterants. If those three were together, she’d risk burning one of her Tribunal gifts to find them, but not if they were separated since she could only use a gift one time. “Are the three Alterants all in the same place?”
“Maybe . . . maybe not.” Tristan shrugged. “Tell me about Beladors. What made them send a druid to you?”
“They didn’t specifically send one to me. The way I understand it, Belador warriors are born under a star called PRIN, but I know nothing about astrology. A druid meets a child around age five to make contact, then goes away until that person turns eighteen. The druid that appeared in my basement said he was Breasel and that he’d met me when I was a kid. I told him I didn’t remember meeting him, but the weird thing is that I did recognize him when he spoke to me in an ancient language. He said he’d told me the same words when I was five.”
“Was it Gaelic?”
“Sort of, but older than that, a secret druid language. That’s when I recognized him as the guy I’d seen working in my basement on a hot water heater or something when I was little. I watched him from where I hid in a corner and remembered him talking some foreign language out loud, then leaving. When he offered me a chance to escape that basement at eighteen, I was in. I’d been afraid for years—”
Tristan cut his eyes at her, which she ignored, because she was not sharing why she’d lived in terror for three years.
“—but I had this moment of knowing for sure that old druid was no danger to me. I told him I’d go anywhere to get out of there but I couldn’t be exposed to sunlight. He smiled and said to hold his hand and close my eyes. Next thing I knew, I was in Alaska, wearing animal skins and heavy boots with a group of new Belador recruits being trained.
“We lived in a barn with little heat during the shortest days of the year, which worked for me. We had to fend for ourselves and learn how to live off the land in a frigid climate, but for the first time in my life I was free to go outside whenever I wanted.”
Tristan said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
She searched her mind for a way to find common ground with him. The more she learned about him and how they were possibly connected as Alterants, the better chance she had of proving Alterants were more than a bunch of mutant mutts.
That we deserve to be a recognized race.
She asked, “How did you know you had Belador blood if you didn’t meet a druid?”
