Page 255 of Shifting Hearts 1
“No,” Ivan said quietly. “He was someone she couldn’t have.”
I frowned but let it go; it didn’t matter.
“And when you warned her the Sentinels might intervene… who did you mean? Is there someone out there more dangerous than me?”
“Not more dangerous, you’re unmatched there. Just… more powerful. And no, you won’t get the chance to change her. Ever.”
My attention snapped to Ivan. Morgan leaned forward, curiosity flaring.
“Who is she?” we asked simultaneously.
Ivan’s brow furrowed. His eyes glimmered with something like reverence. “Mother Nature.”
For weeks,my thoughts circled one name: Mother Nature. A real person. The only one who could rival the Sentinels in power.
A myth, Ivan had seen her with his own eyes. She was real.
Something told me she had been the force behind that witch trial Julian mentioned. She had the strength to stop it, and that meant abilities beyond anything I’d imagined. And then it clicked.
The way Morgan bent the elements to her will. The way she vanished, reappeared, moved through space as if it belonged to her.
She lay on her bed, motionless, staring at the ceiling. What thoughts ran through her mind?
I had that power too.
I felt the weight of a promise I’d made long ago sliding off my shoulders. Everything snapped into focus. Where she belonged.
Morgan wasn’t meant to stay as she was. She was supposed to become her. Mother Nature. To take her place. They didn’t own immortality, it wasn’t theirs.
I locked onto her.
Did she still possess the other abilities? Were they merely suppressed? Was her memory the reason they didn’t surface?
A vampire with that kind of power could destroy the world. I was relieved she didn’t remember… yet at least I understood her purpose now. It made sense. The reason she was both devastatingly powerful and unbearably… human, trapped in this form.
She was the balance.
So why had no one guided her? Told her what she needed to do, what she had to become? And why had I locked onto her in the first place? Was I even meant to?
Doubt clawed at me for the first time since I knew her. Was she truly my mate, or had it always been about power? What if she had forced herself to bond with me, bending me to her strength? What if I was never meant to be tied to her life at all?
Tears burned my eyes. Betrayal sank deep, this time from the one I loved with everything I had, the one I thought I’d follow anywhere.
The daysafter I discovered what Morgan truly was blurred into one endless stretch of nothing. I was fading into nothing, too.
One night, she found Bibi and Babilon in Adrienne’s room. She was a masterpiece of malice, a predator in flesh. She would sleep with anyone, use anyone and anything to assert dominance.
Morgan lost it. She chased them out and tore into Adrienne with a rage so raw it made me shiver. Disgust painted every movement of hers. And I… I didn’t care anymore.
I loathed her. Deeply. Every part of me recoiled at what she had become.
The twins fled Case’s room, and Morgan followed. Weeks passed again. Cassandra wanted another pair of werewolves. I hated it—the cruelty, the ritualized torture of the parents. But Morgan confirmed there were two pairs of twins.
I numbed myself further. Nothing shocked me anymore. I turned my back on the torment, the toying, the endless cruelty.
Matt—one of the vampires—paid the price for her games. Her manipulation had cost him his life.
“I’m sorry,” I heard, soft, almost fragile. I looked up.
