Prologue
A rough hand shook Hadyn Reece awake. In an instant she was alert, eyes connecting with those of her adopted father, Chaghan.
“They’ve come. We need to move fast,” he whispered. Hardly a sound. Which meant he was worried that whoever was out there was a shifter whose enhanced hearing might pick up the words.
Fear spiked through her heart like a dragonsteel harpoon, but she’d been preparing for this most of her life. Using that adrenaline, she was up and following him down the hall to the kitchen. Rancid fumes—sharp and acidic—hit her nose and she put a hand to cover her face. What was that smell?
They rounded the corner to find Qara, her adopted mother, waiting, salt-and-pepper hair hastily braided rather than up in her usually elegant chignon, already holding the secret door open—the one that led down to a secret safe room below the house, built into the bedrock of the mountain they lived at the base of.
Hadyn stumbled to a halt. That’s what the smell had been. Gasoline. All over the house.
“No,” she whispered, not forgetting those outside.
She knew what that room meant, what the gas meant. Her parents were hiding her, but not themselves. She’d protested when they’d come up with this idea originally.
“It’s the best way. They’ve come for us.” Chaghan urged her forward with a hand at her back. “They won’t know about you.”
She whirled on him. “I’m not leaving you.”
He stopped and took her by the shoulders, the craggy skin around his eyes creasing in concern. “We can’t lose another child.”
His eyes took on an eerie glow, an even brighter green—the color of his clan. His and Qara’s. Hadyn’s, too, if she had been turned.
Hadyn felt the blood drain from her face, leaving her slightly woozy, both at the words and the expression in his eyes. They’d lost their son to dragon shifters who’d hunted him down as a rogue. That was almost fifteen years ago now, but they grieved his loss every single day. She couldn’t put them through that again.
With a swallow and a nod, she hugged Chaghan fast, then moved to hug Qara.
“We love you,” her mother whispered in her hair. “So much.”
“I love you, too. Always.”
She climbed down the ladder that dropped her into a room that wasn’t more than six by six foot. It was stocked with a small cot, food for one to last a few weeks, and monitors not yet turned on, black screens staring at her.
She waited until the blackness engulfed her as Qara closed the door with a soft thud. Then, feeling along the wall, she hit the switch that turned everything on—the lights, the air intake, and the video feeds from cameras placed all over the house and mountain, inside and out.
She watched as Chaghan, easiest to spot with his white hair, doused the room in some kind of flammable fluid, then inhaled and blew a stream of green-tipped fire from his mouth, igniting the blaze. He would burn down everything, including all evidence of her. Especially that. That’d been the plan, should they be discovered.
Quickly, smoke and flame filled all the feeds from cameras located in the house. Chaghan and Qara made a run for it, shooting out a back door and into the woods, and Hadyn had to move from screen to screen to track their superhuman speeds. Despite being June, where they lived in Alaska was still blanketed in snow, but even that didn’t slow them down.
Out of nowhere a black blur tackled Chaghan to the ground. Hadyn didn’t make a sound as she watched Qara launch herself at whoever or whatever had attacked them. But more came. The fight was over quickly, and, her heart turning to lead and dropping to the souls of her feet, horror filled her at the sight of her wonderful, loving parents on their knees, hands bound.
They’d taken her in the day dragon shifters had killed her parents along with their son. They’d raised her, loved her, nurtured her, and taught her to survive in a world most humans had no idea existed. One with the most incredible creatures.
A world deadly to frail humans like her.
“Tineen,” Chaghan snarled. “I should have known the Alaz enforcers would be the ones to come for us.” Then he turned his head to glare at another man. “And Roan, of course.”
He didn’t identify the other three, but he didn’t need to. That had been for her, so she knew exactly who’d come for them.
Rocking slightly, arms wrapped around her stomach, she waited for the final killing blow to come. After all, Chaghan and Qara were rogue dragon shifters. They’d abandoned their loyalty to their king and clan and gone off on their own. Rogues were supposed to be killed when captured. An instant death sentence.
Chaghan and Qara had survived without capture more than thirty years this way only by being smart.
Their son had gotten himself caught because he’d tangled with a bear shifter by sheer chance. One who’d reported his presence to the local dragon enforcers. He’d been staying at her human parents’ house the night they’d come for him. Which is why Chaghan and Qara hadn’t been killed that night, too.
But Chaghan had always said they would be caught eventually.
The first flash of memory came softly. An image—combat boots a foot from her face as she hid under her bed.
Oh gods, not now.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold the torrent at bay. Because she knew what came next. More memories followed by an almighty panic attack, only ever triggered by hiding. Even a game of hide and seek for fun used to bring these on. Years of counselling had only slowed the frequency. But once they started…
Maybe Chaghan had hoped for one to come on, so she wouldn’t have to see.
Her lungs tightened more as, instead of the images on the screens, all she could see was the night she’d lost her family. Her heart rate shot up, her breathing turning forced and rapid, the sound of it almost like scraping in her ears. She reached out for the image of her dragon parents on the screen, trying so hard not to give in to this, but the black dots consuming her vision coalesced and darkness took her under.
Chapter One
It might be early summer in Alaska, where Hadyn had lived last, but as far as the Andes mountains in the southern hemisphere were concerned, winter was just starting her reign.
And I’m stuck on the side of a mountain like a chump.
Hadyn banked that thought for later, needing every ounce of her focus. Aconcagua happened to be the tallest mountain in South America. Of course. Because that was her kind of luck.
She had made sure to wear her high-altitude, cold-weather clothing for this trek. Climbing mountains almost all her life—a skill developed at the insistence of her adoptive parents—she was well aware of the risk she’d taken by attempting this now. Winter on this mountain, with its haphazard weather, plummeting temperatures, and tearing winds, was definitely the off season when the weather wasn’t worth the risk.