Page 23 of Deadly Alliances

“Good evening, Arya.”Speak of the devil. “I have something for you.”

I rose from my window nook and slowly went to answer him, cracking open the door a sliver. “What is it?”

Hadrian held a thin, square box in his hands. It looked like a jewelry box. “Something that can help you with your current predicament.” He held up the box, looking at me imploringly.I sighed and opened the door wider, closing it behind him and taking a few steps back to maintain my distance.

My current predicament is that I’m trapped here. I don’t think you’re going to give me anything to help with that.

“I do believe I’ve been smelling ursa pheromones the last few days,” he said, at least pretending to respect my personal space by standing a couple feet away from me. “Your ursa DNA has been triggered, then?”

I crossed my arms. “Yep. Just over a week ago.”And it’s your fault I have it in the first place.

“Ah, what awkward timing,” he said with a nod. “And during a full moon, no less. It’s amazing you haven’t shifted and destroyed half the citadel by now.”

“It’s been tempting,” I said, boldly meeting his gaze.

He hummed a laugh as we stared each other down for a moment. “In any case, I brought you something that will put your were abilities under your full control, so you’ll never be a slave to those volatile urges again.”

He opened the box and lifted a clunky yet elegant turquoise necklace from it. Without asking for permission, he was behind me in a blink, fastening the necklace around my neck and gently lifting my hair up and over the chain. The motion startled me so much I didn’t dare move, let alone breathe, until he was back in front of me.

“The Navajo believed that turquoise warded off weres, which is the initial reason the stone ended up in so much of their jewelry. But that’s not exactly the case. Turquoise merely dulls the intense reactions of the hormones, so weres are able to keep their shifted form reined in more effectively, without the random outbursts.”

As Hadrian spoke, the coldness of the stone soaked into my skin. The fuzzy anxiety I’d been feeling the last few days dissipated, leaving behind a strange tranquility. I took a deep breath, savoring the absence of the static that had been sizzling across every inch of my skin.

Hadrian sniffed the air. “Ah, much better. The scent of angry bear really doesn’t suit you.”

“Thanks,” I said, uncertain how to feel about Hadrian’s gift.

“Anything for my daughter,” he said, the intensity of his gaze making me blush and turn away. “Only a week, you say? Then you haven’t been taught much about this side of yourself.”

I quietly shook my head, blindly fingering my new necklace.

“What have you been taught? Have you discovered your harpy abilities yet?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, remembering why I should be angry at him. “Just how many different species’ DNA did you put in me?” If there were any other shifters waiting to jump out of me, I had the right to know.

“Harpy and Ursa.”

“No others?” I interrogated, narrowing my eyes further, as if I could force the truth out of him.

“No. I’ve been splicing shifter genes for several decades, and those were the two that worked best together and were least likely to result in mitosis failure or prenatal death.”

Several things about that rubbed me the wrong way. “How many times did you run this experiment on unborn children?”

He brought his hands together in front of his waist. “Three hundred and eighty-seven times. Every single one of them failed. Except for you.”

Three hundred and eighty-seven forcefully mutated children died before drawing their first breath.

“Did their mothers volunteer for the experiments?” I had to ask.

“Most.” Judging by the wicked twinkle in his eyes, mercy had not been given to those who weren’t volunteers.

“And my mother? Did she volunteer to give birth to a monster?” There it was, the question that had been burning inside me since I found out I was Hadrian’s daughter.

His face softened, his lips parting slightly before answering. “It was different with Zaia. The other volunteers were just strangers to me. And, let’s just say that the insemination process was purely scientific.”

I grimaced at that bit of information, not wanting to envision any part of what that sentence implied.

“But Zaia and I had a true connection. She was a princess of her people, and she’d come to land right before she met me, trying to find a way to bring them up.”

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