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“Thank you, Evan,” she whispered, taking a bite of the sandwich while she stared out at the cloudless sky. “I haven’t really wanted to think about it, much less talk about it. But with Jax coming home, I don’t think I can keep avoiding it. He was there. He knows what happened. I know I need to talk about it, especially after the point you made about my blood being usable…” She broke off when her voice caught.
I ground my teeth together, barely able to keep the growl out of my voice. That wouldn’t exactly be helpful in getting her to open up. I reached for her hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay. Take as much time as you need.”
She took a deep breath. “As you know, Tomas became obsessed with figuring out how to make dragon shifters. And I mean obsessed. Every day that went by while I was there, he seemed a little madder. He believed I held the secret to manipulating the genetics to achieve his goal.”
He wasn’t wrong. He’d figured it out somehow.
Mariah took another breath before continuing. “He had a doctor who would take my blood and run tests on it. Every single day. Sometimes multiple times.” She shuddered. “They would strap me down to a table and insert needles into my veins. It was painful, and sometimes…” She stopped and closed her eyes as she swallowed hard.
Rage coursed through me, but I fought to keep it contained.
“Sometimes I think they took too much. I felt weak all the time. After a while, the days blended together. He would say things to me about my heritage and my family, but I wasn’t ever sure if I was hallucinating or not by the end.”
Her words had sent my dragon to the surface. When I finally got my hands on Tomas, I'd make him pay for harming my mate with his life.
“What about your family? Did he tell you why he was doing this?” I said, trying and failing to remain calm. She’d never mentioned any of this to me before.
Her voice was barely audible when she spoke again. “Tomas said they were studying my blood, hoping to find the key to unlocking the dragon shifter gene.” Mariah's eyes filled with tears before she looked away.
“Gene? What do you mean?” It took all my strength to keep my voice steady, knowing she needed me to be her rock right now.
“Tomas said I had dragon shifter DNA running through my veins. On my father’s side, going back generations. It was dormant, though.” She swallowed. “It’s sometimes hard to know if what I remember was real or imagined.”
I unclenched my fingers one by one and gently said, “That’s okay. Just tell me what you do remember. We can sort the truth out later.”
She nodded and continued. “Tomas said this ancestor had married a human, and the shifter trait should have died out in my bloodline, but it didn’t. It was still there, running through my veins.”
I rocked back, blinking. That wasn’t possible. Mariah was right; she must not be remembering correctly. It was a known fact that shifters and humans couldn’t produce offspring. But the look on her face… The last thing she needed was for me to doubt her. She’d never open up to me then. My mate was dealing with this as best she could.
“What do you think?” I pressed gently. “Do you believe him?”
“Maybe? Yes?” She shrugged, her voice trembling. “I guess I don’t have any reason not to believe him since it worked. How else do you explain what happened to me? But honestly, I don't know much about my father. I never met him or anyone from that side of my family. I don’t even know his name. And you know I didn’t have enough of a relationship with my mother that she ever felt inclined to tell me anything.”
Her words struck like a bolt of lightning, and I saw the truth in them. Mariah's father must have had the shifter gene in his bloodline. That was the only explanation for how the serum had worked on her, and that’s why Tomas had been so desperate to steal her away from me a second time. It wasn’t just to torment me or use Mariah as a weapon, though he’d managed to do both. He’d needed her as a vital part of his experiments.
I dragged my fingers through my hair and sighed, remaining focused on what I could control. If this was true, no one I knew had heard of it. I needed Jax home now more than ever.
“You don’t know anything about your father's family?” I pressed. “Not at all? Did you ever hear any stories about them? Strange occurrences, unusual abilities, anything like that?”
She frowned while she searched her memories. “No. My mother never talked about him at all. Do you think he was a shifter, or was it dormant in him, too?” Her eyes widened as she made the same connection I just had, her hand coming to rest on her belly. “You think my bloodline is what Tomas was after the whole time?”
“It makes sense,” I said, my mind racing. “It would explain why the serum worked on you when it’d failed all those times before, and it explains why Tomas was so interested in your blood.”
“God, Evan, this is bad,” she whispered, and her face paled as she gripped my hand tightly. “Tomas ran off with all those vials of my blood. Who knows how much more of it he already had stored away before you guys found me? What if…” She broke off, swallowing hard. “Do you think he can use my blood to create more serum?”
That’s exactly what I was worried about. I grimaced. “If so, then Tomas could have everything he needs to create more shifters.” My fists clenched, my blood thrumming as the full implication hit. “We have to stop him.”
“But how?” Mariah said fearfully. "We don't know where he is or what he's planning.”
No, we didn’t. That was exactly what I’d been working out the past couple months, but we hadn’t known where to start, especially with Jaxon going to ground.
“I need to talk to Lucas. It can’t wait,” I said, and Mariah nodded, already packing up the food. I reached for her, capturing her hand, and giving her as much of a reassuring smile as I could. “Thank you for telling me this. We’re going to figure this out.”
She nodded, determination flashing in her eyes, which was so much better than fear. “We will. There’s no other choice.”
I would do whatever it took to put a stop to this man, for the sake of our family and our clan. We made our way home in record time, then I led Mariah upstairs.
“Do you want to rest? I’m sure dredging all that up today was a lot for you.” On some level, I was frustrated she hadn’t told me this sooner. We might have been able to pursue a different lead, and already been further ahead in stopping Tomas. Nevertheless, she’d been through a traumatic experience and was still dealing with the ramifications. It was entirely possible she hadn’t thought of it at all.
