Page 78 of Blood and Magic
“So, what’s his problem?” I stepped on a log to hop over it, waiting for her to do the same before we continued. The undergrowth crunched under my feet, and the birds chirped in the woods around me, the sounds of summer filling me with a new sense of life.
“He’s just overprotective,” she said. “Like most of the dominant males in the pack.”
Mill had talked about that before, dominant shifters and submissives. “Are all shifters either dominant or submissive?”
It was Holden who answered me.
“There’s a hierarchy and a place for everyone,” he explained. “We need submissives just as much as dominants.”
“The submissives are the nurturers,” Ginny added. "The proverbial mother bears, no matter their gender. And the dominants are the protectors, the ones on the front line. Everyone has a mix of both, but most usually fall on one side or the other.”
She pointed out a camping ground off to our left where I could come with Mill if we ever wanted to escape. After that, we kept walking, and she explained more about the dynamics of the pack. “We have a variety of different species. We’re the biggest one in the United States, and my dad takes great pride in keeping everything running smoothly.”
I had noticed that during the change at the full moon. I assumed it would all be wolves, and I had no idea so many different types of shifters could live together harmoniously. When I told Ginny that, she chuckled.
“Well, it’s not always a bundle of laughs.” She rolled her eyes. “Old prejudices die hard, ya know. It used to be that we didn’t mingle with humans, and if a shifter mated one, it was very taboo. Half-breeds used to face an incredible amount of stigma. Most of that has stopped, but you might still hear it around the pack. Especially since…” She trailed off, but I understood what she meant.
My father was a human. My mother was (likely) a shifter. Which made me and my sisters half-breeds. I opened my mouth to ask more questions, but Holden froze in front of us as a rotten stench made my stomach sour. My knees locked into place. I grabbed Ginny’s shoulder to stop her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, glancing in the same direction as me and Holden. It was coming from the south, super close, much closer than I would have expected.
“Do you smell that?” I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry, my heart pounding. The scent nearly made me retch; it was so overwhelming and disgusting. It could only be one thing…one terrible thing.
Vampires.
“Yeah,” Holden said, reaching for his pistol.
“How far away are we from the perimeter?” I glanced at Ginny, her features tightening as she read the panicked look on my face.
“A mile…maybe half a mile.”
“Holden, call it in,” I said. “We need to—” My words died as snapping twigs to my right caught my attention. I whipped my gaze in that direction, gasping at six vampires dropping out of the trees like they weighed nothing.
“Well, well, well,” said the big one at the head of the group. “Isn’t this a feast for the senses?”
I recognized him from the photos Sol had shown me. She’d once been engaged to him, but thank heavens that hadn’t gone forward. This guy reeked of sulfur and decomposition, his hair graying at the temples. He wore a leather cut with Marx on one side and Bloody Scorpions on the other. But what shocked me, what had me rooted to the spot, was the man standing to his left, a few feet behind him.
Percy.
My eldest brother. His skin had turned gray, and his cheeks were sunken in, like he’d lost twenty pounds he didn’t have in the first place. His eyes were dark and menacing, and he, too, wore a leather vest, labeling him as a Scorpion.
“Percy?” I whispered.
“Hey, little sister,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “It’s been a while.”
“What happened to you?” My heart broke. He’d always been a spoiled bratty shit, but he was my brother. I grew up with him, and even if we spent most of our time in separate boarding schools, we’d been together in the summers. We were family. Blood.
But now, we were on opposite sides of a war. I was a shifter, and he’d been made into a vampire.
How did this happen?
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters.”
“Enough,” Marx cut in, holding up a hand.
Holden had reached his limit and fired his gun at Marx’s chest, but the vampire only stumbled back as the other vampires attacked, launching themselves at our would-be protector. Holden went down under their weight as I took off in the other direction, back toward the homestead.
“Take them,” Marx commanded, and footsteps stomped behind us as they descended. We made it a few feet before a heavy weight landed on my back, and I dropped, screaming at the top of my lungs.
