The rest of us backed out of the room. “You’ll have to ask most of the questions,” I said to the other alphas. “I can’t carry on much of a conversation while I’m busy spewing flames.”
“I think we can handle that, Princess,” Marco said with a grim smile. He brought his hands together, one clapping over the other in a fist. “There are an awful lot of things I’d like to find out from that asshole.”
Nate and his guard marched the rogue out of the cell, Nate holding the chains for the prisoner’s left arm and leg and the guard those for the right. The dog shifter walked sluggishly. He glanced over his shoulder at me with a flash of the whites of his eyes. Nervous.
We tramped back up the stairs. Just as we reached the hall, the rogue wrenched at his arms. He threw himself forward and around, putting all his strength into breaking his captors’ hold.
Fortunately for us, Nate and his guard had plenty of strength on their side, and the rogue’s was muted by the drug. Nate wrestled the dog shifter still with a quick jerk of the chains. Alice stepped closer, her hands fisted.
“You can walk, or we can carry you,” Nate said. “Your choice.”
The rogue grimaced at him. Then he started walking again.
Our strange procession took a sharp turn and ended up out behind the estate house in a small yard of hard-packed earth and tufts of grass. “This field is usually for outdoor sports and training,” Nate told me over his shoulder. “We’ll have plenty of room. And we can make use of this.”
He hauled the rogue over to a rectangle of metal jutting out of the earth. A mini-sized football goal, I realized after a moment.
Nate and the guard attached the chains to the sturdy posts. The rogue tugged at his bindings, but only feebly. Then he shrank down as close to the ground as he could get in a cringing pose. I guessed he’d given up.
I walked up to him until I was just a few feet away. He just looked at the ground.
“I won’t be doing this to torture you, but I don’t get the impression it feels all that great either,” I said. “If you want to skip that part, you could start answering questions now. Tell us why you and your ‘friends’ attacked this estate.”
Not a peep.
Fine. We’d do this the dragon way.
I backed up a couple steps to make sure I didn’t trample him as I shifted. With a nonchalance that was becoming easier every time I had to do this, I pulled off my shirt and kicked off my pants. I’d already ruined enough clothes with impromptu shifts over the last few weeks. The warm evening air washed over my bare skin. I leaned forward and let myself fall into the shift.
Reaching down and bringing forth the dragon side of me was coming easier every time too. I didn’t have to struggle at all now. The scales and talons were waiting just on the other side of my skin, itching to break free. I opened myself up to them, and, with an exhilarating tingling, my dragon shape expanded through my body.
Literally. My neck extended, my eyes sharpening, my teeth rising into points. My limbs steadied beneath my lengthening torso. A barbed tail lashed out behind me, and vast wings sprouted from my back. I stretched them over me, taking a little of the edge off the urge to soar up into the sky. I wasn’t needed up there right now. My business was right here on the ground.
Flames tickled the base of my throat. A deeper heat filled my dragon lungs. I dragged in a breath, sensing the difference between the two flames I could cast down. The scorching destructive burn of my usual dragon fire—and the bright, crisp blaze that could cut through to the truth. As much as part of me wanted to unleash the first for what the dog shifter had done here, it was the second I drew into my mouth.
With a hot gush, I let those violet flames pour down over the rogue.
A yelp broke from his throat. He thrashed at his chains, an incoherent mumbling spilling past his lips.
For a second I thought my power hadn’t worked. That somehow this mangy shifter had enough will to resist where even the queen of the fae hadn’t. Then his mouth burst wide open to answer my earlier request.
“We knew the dragon shifter was coming here with all of the alphas,” the rogue gasped out. “The kin-groups are starting to rally. We had to show that even with the alphas united, we rogues have more power. We can destroy you if we want. The alphas no longer get to call all the shots. They have to bend to our will.”
Yeah, we’d see about that. As my flames streamed on down, Nate stepped forward, his arms crossed over his brawny chest. “Are there more of your group nearby? Are they planning another attack?”
“There’s a large bunch of us gathering in the south. I don’t know exactly where. I wasn’t told, so that I couldn’t tell you. And we’ll keep attacking until the alphas and the dragon shifters no longer control shifter kind.”
“What exactly do you think is going to be so great about that situation?” Marco put in.
A whine crept into the dog shifter’s voice. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it much. But I don’t like that we all have to kowtow to your rules, and everyone who doesn’t is kept on the outside. If there were no alphas, we’d all be the same, making our own rules.”
Somehow I didn’t think it’d happen exactly like that. Whoever was in charge of the rogue group, they must be awfully persuasive.
An uncomfortable prickling was starting to fill my lungs. I couldn’t sustain these flames for much longer. I scraped my talons against the ground in what I hoped the alphas would realize was a warning.
“How many of you are there still?” Aaron asked quickly.
“Maybe twenty that I’ve met. Dozens of rogues throughout the country. We recruit more of them every day.” The dog shifter clutched his head, shaking it but unable to stay silent.
“What do you have planned as your next moves?” West said.
“I don’t know. We don’t know our instructions until right before we act.”
My chest was outright aching now. I aimed one final blast of violet fire at the rogue, and Nate got in one last question.
“How did you get past the guards to break into the estate?”
The rogue chuckled. Actually chuckled, as if the question was funny. “Oh,” he said. “We didn’t have any trouble there. We had someone happy to help us. A raccoon shifter named Keith—one of the guards. He let us right in, your precious kin did.”
Chapter 4
Ren
The truth-seeking flames drained me faster than any of my other shifter powers. I tried to hold on a few seconds longer, to give my alphas a chance to push the rogue for more answers, but my body crumpled. The fire snapped out. I collapsed in on myself, into my human form.
Aaron was at my side in an instant, handing me my clothes. His jaw was tight. As I reached for my shirt, Nate lunged past us. He shifted into his grizzly form, charging up to the rogue.
The dog shifter recoiled instinctively. But when Nate opened his jaws threateningly, he sagged into the hold of his chains.