Page 39 of All's Fair in Lion and War
It was too important. It allowed her shift, no matter what she was wearing. Carry supplies with her in her beast form.
But that male had parted with his without hesitation. The trust between members of this Tribe was beyond anything she’d ever witnessed before. They were different species. They’d been strangers.
They’d made a family.
“Mama, I’m not completely human. Not anymore. And the guys aren’t human at all. They are from a different planet. Remember the silver portals that everyone saw about a year ago and then the government hid that it’d ever happened?”
Henrietta nodded, but didn’t speak. Her eyes were widening behind the pink frames on her face.
“You can’t tell anyone, Henrietta. Not a single soul. Our lives depend on it. The lives of our children.” Naomi’s voice was dragging with exhaustion like her arms had to be after trying to care for three infants all day.
Lorelei couldn’t imagine. The one called Penny had four younglings at once. Between the two of them, there were seven infants in this small mix-matched tribe.
“This isn’t real,” Henrietta said, finally able to speak. “You’re lying. This is all a trick.”
Naomi knelt in front of Henrietta and heat flooded the room. “It is very real and you will do as we ask.” Her voice deepened and the fingernails on her hands darkened and grew into claws. Her fangs extended below her top lip and she growled and rattled the way a shifted dragon would before it ate its prey. “Am I being clear now?”
Henrietta nodded, struck silent or finally seeing reason. Or both.
“I have babies. Penny has babies. Your own daughter will likely have babies soon.” Naomi’s voice slowed and sharpened, like a knife sliding on a whetstone. “We won’t let anything endanger our tribe’s children.”
“The man who came looking for Col today…he was talking about dragons and lions.” She looked from Naomi to her daughter. “Did he mean people that were those animals? Like what you did just now?”
Tara nodded. “Yes. There are many different shifter tribes from Reylea. They came through the portals to earth to escape. Their world was burning.”
“He called Col a dragon, does that mean your husband is a big lizard?” Henrietta took another look at Naomi. “How did you handle finding that out?”
“He would lose his shit if you called him a lizard. Please don’t do that. And if he shifted into his beast form, his front teeth would be nearly as big as your body.”
Henrietta gave an audible gasp. “What about your children? What are they?”
Naomi’s eyes widened and her chest rattled. Lorelei could hear the female’s dragon pushing at the edges of her control. TheVrakasmate’s eyes were gold. Heat sweltered the room and all the babies cried at once.
“Woman, please. It’s the middle of winter in Alaska, we’re not supposed to sweat like we live in a Mississippi swamp.” Penny pulled her sweatshirt over her head and then took a swig of water from a thermos she had sitting on the floor next to her foot.
Lorelei couldn’t stand it a moment longer. She ran to the ladder and climbed to the top. She turned the wheel the opposite way they’d turned it to close it earlier.
“Lorelei, wait,” Naomi shouted. “You can’t leave. We’re safer here together.”
The bear female was on the ladder behind her a moment later. Penny and Dawn and all the others were crowding around the floor, most of them holding a baby.
“I can’t stay. I’m sorry. I’m not part of this tribe. You need to figure this out between yourselves. But I have to say to Tara’s mother.” Lorelei met the older female’s gaze. “You are being selfish and terrible. Your daughter was terrified of what you were going to think. How you were going to take this. And you took it badly and said nothing to assure her that you still love her. You insulted herVraka’smate. You put your own comfort above the infant young in this room. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Henrietta didn’t speak. She stared back at her, silent, eyes glassy.
“That woman is a dragon shifter. A fire breather. She could crush you with the snap of her fingers. Burn you to ash with a single breath. Instead she is standing there listening to your drivel because your daughter is a part of her tribe. Your daughter is family to her and that means something to a Reylean.”
“You’re part of this tribe too, Lorelei, whether you know it or not. The second Saul brought you to our door. You became ours.” The sincerity in Naomi’s voice made Lorelei pause.
Tears streamed hot down Lorelei’s cheeks. They’d just met her. They didn’t know anything about her. But the sincerity in Naomi’s tone was indisputable. “I understand why your men put us here. My Tallix would’ve done the same. He died trying to save me from his brother. I remember that now. I remember the despair etched into his beautiful face when he realized what Rivian had done. What he was going to do. Tallix begged for my life.”
A grating laugh escaped between her lips, shaky with pain and grief. “Rivian laughed in his face and then tortured me in front of him until I was almost dead. Then he waited until I healed a few days later and did it again. And then again. Over and over until my Tallix broke. He became his beast and he lost his mind and then and only then did Rivian put him out of his misery.”
Sobs strangled her breath.
Her whole existence had been torn apart.
Destroyed.
