“More what?”
“Time. I want you to kiss me, hold my hand, take me out for coffee, and stay up all night talking while you’re actually lying beside me. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. It was instant for me. I should’ve been scared of you, right? Well, I wasn’t. You always make me feel safe, even locked in here. I want to see Mr. Diddles and see your mountains. I want to be part of your crew. I want you to stick around because, to me, it doesn’t matter if you have the dragon or not. To me, it only matters if you’re here. With me. The princess and the dragon. A fairytale…except that’s not us, is it? Not really. We were built in similar ways that made our edges too rough for anyone else to handle or they would get cut. But we don’t cut each other. We fit. Now you go. What do you want?”
Vyr ran his hand over his hair roughly and then leaned forward, grabbed her chair, and pulled her close. The camera changed angles, aiming at both of them as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“What do you want, Vyr?” she asked.
“I want my dragon back. I want to be whole because I want to keep you.”
Riyah put her hands up, and then Vyr slid his much bigger hands against hers and intertwined their fingers.
“I have a surprise for you,” she whispered.
He frowned. “What is it?”
“Come lay on the floor with me.”
The scene cut to a shot of the cement ceiling, covered in black scorch marks. The words appeared on the screen as she and Vyr spoke. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“I’m ready,” Vyr answered.
The lights cut suddenly, and the scene was just pitch black with hundreds of plastic glowing stars. And their words appearing in closed captions.
“Riyaaah.”
“Remember when you told me what you missed the most?”
“The sky. The stars.”
“Yeah, and you said you liked to imagine them smiling down on you, even if you couldn’t see them. And that they were smiling because they could see better things coming for you.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Vyr. I’ll be your star. I believe in you. I’ll wait with you while better things are coming.”
“I’m yours,” he read aloud.
There was a pause, and then in an emotional voice, Riyah murmured, “You just said you wanted the dragon back so you could keep me. Well…dragon or no, you have me.”
Slowly, the glowing stars faded to black.
And just like that, whoever had edited this video had humanized the most misunderstood shifter in the world. They had turned him from monster to man.
The scene cut to a pair of news anchors. A pretty blond woman was dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex, and the man asked if she was okay.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, it’s just sad. Shifters really and truly are people, with feelings and fears and hopes and dreams just like humans. When my crew and my husband, Boone, were coming out to the public all those years ago, it was so scary for us. It was terrifying. We were scared for our families, and now it feels like that’s been revived. That fear of shifters. And because of that fear, you have these underground, secret operations that pop up and experiment on shifters, abuse them, torture them, steal their animals, and who is holding them accountable? Who? Whose place is it to stand up and say it’s not right what they are doing?”
“The public,” the man answered somberly.
The woman—Cora Keller, the name read along the bottom of the screen—turned to the camera, and her voice went steely as she said, “I agree. It’s up to us to stop experimentation and involuntary cleansing of shifter animals. The suicide rate of shifters who have been cleansed is horrifying. I want the New IESA brought down. I want it annihilated, and I think we should revisit Vyr Daye spending another six months of his sentence in that godforsaken place. The government already seized all his assets, and he has paid to rebuild Covington, and now his dragon has been tortured to death. To death. I think he’s suffered enough. I’ve started a petition online. You can find it at www-dot-stop-the-new-IESA-dot-com. Join me and thousands of others in making a positive change.”
Cora continued talking, but Riyah turned off the phone and stared in shock out the front window. Well, that was one way to do it. Too bad it was still up to her to keep Vyr and Nox and Torren protected on the inside of that prison until a decision about Vyr’s sentence could be reached.
“Vyr?” she asked. He’d been quiet all morning, and that hadn’t bothered her because it was early, and she’d thought he was probably still sleeping. Now alarms were blaring inside her head though, and this newfound feeling of uneasiness just wouldn’t go away.
“Vyr?” she tried again, but she was met with silence.
“Shoot,” she murmured, grabbing her purse and clipboard. She faced the gold star toward her and said, “Something feels wrong, and I’m so busted they probably won’t let me in the prison, but I have to try. Damon, you said I could have the crews if I needed them. That I’m not alone? Well…I have a really bad feeling, and I think I need help.”
Riyah slid out of her Xterra and slammed the door, then bolted for the prison entrance, grateful she’d had the foresight to wear sneakers again today. When she made it through the first security checkpoint with nothing more than a harried, “Hurry up, it’s chaos in there,” from one of the new daytime guards, Riyah was shocked. She’d been sure they would stop her from even getting this far. Okay, one checkpoint at a time.
The second and third went off without a hitch too, but when she got inside the prison walls, the new guard had been right—it was utter chaos. Rows of inmates were chained at the ankles and wrists in neat lines, waiting to leave through the transportation doors.
“What’s happening?” she asked Euless, who was hanging against the back wall, watching the guards yell orders to the inmates.
“You sure do know how to make an entrance, don’t you?” he asked. He gestured toward the masses. “All them boys have been pumped full of meds to keep them from shifting and they are being transported to different shifter prisons.”
“Different ones? Why?”
“Because you got this one shut down. I’m pretty damn impressed. Except now I’m out of a job, so thanks for that.”
“You deserve better than to be mopping up peas after grown men anyway.”
“Yep, I do.” He lowered his voice. “I ain’t seen a soul from the lower levels. I’ve been watching for ’em. See that lady guard over there?” He jerked his chin toward a stout blonde with a nametag that read Tominson. “She’s one of ours, and she just told me the lower levels ain’t even on the transportation lists.”
“What does that mean?” she whispered.