Ronan looked around the empty alley.
After a second of figuring out there wasn’t a chair nearby, he sat down on the ground and looked up with a hint of fear in his stormy eyes. “I’m scared to ask.”
“She’s Meara’s daughter.”
Ronan was glad that he’d taken Xaydin at his word and sat down. Because honestly, he would have fallen over had he still been on his feet.
Indeed, he was actually dizzy from it.
When he spoke, he enunciated each word carefully. “Let me make sure that I have this straight. You are traveling with Meara’s daughter who happens to be a shape shifter?”
Xaydin nodded slowly.
Ronan let those words seep into his own brain as he repeated them silently. “Just for my benefit, is there any part of that sentence that doesn’t fly in the face of everything I know about you?”
“Probably not.”
“Then can you show me your tongue?” He stood up.
Xaydin’s eyes flared. “Pardon?”
“I have to make sure that you’re you and that you’re not a shifter, too. Because none of this makes any logical sense to me.”
Xaydin would have been more offended if he wasn’t dealing with a shifter already posing as a family member. “Can you really tell?”
“Yeah.” Ronan lifted his tongue to the roof of his mouth so that Xaydin could see beneath it. There, toward the back on the left, was a peculiar black symbol. It was tiny and yet it was obvious that it was some sort of unique mark. “What is that?”
“Each of us is born with a unique mark and no matter what form we’re in, you can find it. It’s usually under a tongue, but if you don’t have a tongue for some reason, it’ll be somewhere else.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “All shifters have it, and the symbol is unique to each of us. No one has the same symbol, and we have no ability to change or hide the mark. It’s how we can identify each other.”
“And you never thought to tell me about this before?”
Ronan snorted. “Why would I? It’s not something you need to know, and given your unnatural hatred of us…why would I give you fodder for your fire? Or a reason to effectively find us.”
“Xaydin?”
He cursed at the sound of the imposter calling him from the street. He was just about to tell Ronan that was the other reason he’d sent for him…to deal with the fake Masakage.
As the imposter rounded the corner, Ronan vanished. Xaydin glanced around the alley, making sure he didn’t accidentally step on his friend who could be a spider or some other crawly creature.
The imposter drew up short. “What are you doing out here?”
Xaydin shrugged. “Thought I saw something, and I wanted to investigate it. What do you need?”
“The captain and his crew just left the inn. I thought you’d like to know.”
Not really.
But the less the imposter knew about his business, the better.
“Thank you.” Xaydin started back toward the inn.
The imposter glanced about the alley as if he detected something amiss.
Could shifters sense each other?
