Chapter One
WREN
The scent hit me first. Salt, yes, but under it, something coppery and burned. The tide had dragged his body into the narrow crescent of sand in between the rocks.
A dead draken had washed up on shore, unfamiliar, and strange in the midday sun. I stared at his scales, a color pattern of dark green and black with hints of purple I’d never seen before. If I blinked and squinted enough, I could almost imagine a young Benedict lying there like a dead fish.
But the draken wasn’t a fish.
The incoming tide washed cool water across my toes just like it did to his, the sun beating down equally on the both of us.
I swatted away the flies that had begun to gather on him, clutching at my swollen belly. I’d been told all the remaining drakens in existence were on my island. Clearly, we were wrong.
Then again, Thad had been out there. He’d been half-draken, but still. Clearly there were still mysteries about my people who didn’t have all the answers for.
You are queen now. You must have all the answers.
Everyone depended on me. I’d been hidden under an enchantment for so long, and when Benedict had finally released me, I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into. Being queen amongst a horde of rowdy, repressed draken males hadn’t been a direction I thought my life was heading.
Yet, here I was.
And now? Now that the war was over, our homeland reclaimed, and my purpose served?
What did I matter to anyone now?
I smoothed my palm over my growing belly. I was important because of the drakling young I carried inside of me—he or she would be the first true draken born in almost a millennium.
And what of after?
A distress call warbled in the base of my throat, but I held it back. Letting one loose now would bring the entire island down on me. I didn’t need that—not yet. The island with its refugee witches and our few drakens were rebuilding step by step.
Every morning I woke to the sound of saws and hammers, voices rising in song and happiness as we rebuilt our world. The drakens were rising … except for this one.
I looked closer, noting the strange draken’s scales were a deep obsidian green, otherwise I would have said his coloring was black as the night. His back spikes weren’t as large as Benedict’s or Kieran’s. His armor—if that’s what it was—had markings I didn’t recognize.
“Gods,” I whispered.
I let out a small call. Not of distress, but of concern.
It took only moments before a reassuring rumble of ourbond resonated through my chest. Benedict, Kieran, and Ronan landed roughly on the beach next to me minutes later, sand scattering around them as they stared at what I’d found.
Ronan bent over the body, eyes bright with that sharp scholar’s focus that meant he was cataloging everything, even the horror. His bronze and gold wings glinted as they twitched in alarm.
“He’s not one of ours,” he said quietly. “I don’t … understand.”
Kieran dropped to one knee beside the body, his red wings a beacon as he shook out his wild red hair and drew his dagger, just in case.
“He’s been in the water days at least,” he said. “Burns across the chest. No rot. Lucky he hasn’t bloated entirely yet.”
“That’s impossible,” Benedict said, staying between the body and me. His voice was steady, but his hands were clenched. Where Kieran and Ronan were the sun, Benedict was the moon. His black and purple coloring was a stark contrast to my other two mates. I wondered whose coloring the baby would have?
“There are no other drakens,” Benedict stated firmly, “and this one doesn’t have the half-breed look like Thad did.”
“Unless somewhere else thereareother drakens,” I said before I could stop myself. The wind caught my words and flung them down the beach. “The proof lies before us.”
They all looked at me.
Kieran’s brow furrowed. “Wren?—”
