“We have the choice your father gave us,”she replied to Tréan. If she knew nothing else, it was that words alone wouldn’t bring Aodh back to them. If she had a special touch with animals, a more powerful touch, then she needed to lay her hand on him, and Liam had just afforded her the opportunity.
Before any could stop her, she kept to the shadows and headed Aodh's way. Prayed to King’s Heart it would aid her in saving something far bigger than anything she’d ever saved. Something far more lethal yet still deserved help. Something she needed to save since she had lost so many animals over the years. Had put so many down. Could she do this? Was she able when she felt like she had failed so many?
All she knew was she had to try.
So she thought nothing of crouching down and hiding herself between Aodh’s great head and his shoulder, where he could kill her in an instant. Nothing of resting her hand on one of his cool scales, closing her eyes, and...trying.
At first, she felt nothing until she experienced the same sensation she had over the years when animals were terminally ill. When more clients than she could count denied their pets were sick. The heartache of them finally accepting it. Worse yet, those who refused to be there when their animals took their last breath.
She bit back tears and rested her forehead against where her hand had been, losing herself in memories she’d long suppressed when she should be fighting them. Staying strong. Focusing on Aodh.
Instead, something about touching him, and feeling his terrible angst, brought all of hers to the surface. Every last animal. Every last face. Every bit of heartache she’d had to take home night after night.
“There was joy too, though, ta?”Tréan asked.“Those ye healed? Those ye helped bring into life?”
Tears spilled because there were. So many.
She smiled as she saw and remembered every last one of them too. From the wounded she had healed to those she helped birth. More lives gained than lost, though it had long felt the opposite. Lives brought back when the odds were against them.
Lives she fought so incredibly hard for.
“But I am not one of those,”a deep rumble came within her mind from what sounded like a great distance away.“’Tis impossible. I am too far sinned.”
She marveled at the feel of Aodh’s dragon voice. How unique and powerful he felt. How tremendously humble at the moment when she swore he would communicate with pure rage. Sound like he looked. Massive and ferocious.
“Your sins are that of your masters,”she replied firmly yet gently. A tone she had used when speaking to animals in her care over the years. “You’re innocent and must feel that. Know it, to break free.”
“Free to what?”he wondered.“Witness all the pain I’ve inflicted? The destruction?”
She mourned that he felt it.Knewit.
“Free to unleash your wrath on your enemy,”she corrected.“Free to have your revenge. To stand strong alongside yourpeople. Me and my sisters. Your brothers. To end Siobhán for all she’s done. For all she made you do.”
She felt his struggle. Confusion. The war between Siobhán’s hold over him and reality.
“’Tis true, my King,”Tréan said, waiting in the shadows, ready to pounce in a moment’s notice if it meant defending her.“Search my mind. Know who I really am. How far I have come. What those like us are capable of.”
Shannon pulled back when Aodh’s great golden eyes slid open and locked on Tréan. When his pupils flared, and he seemed to understand her son in an instant. The eye closest to Shannon slid her way and focused on her.“It cannot be.”
“But it is.”Acutely aware of just how dangerous a position she had put herself in, she nodded.“Anything is possible when part of our prophecy. Especially when it comes to Siobhán and what she’s capable of.”
Aodh’s pupils flared again as though he fought that. Fought Siobhán.
“Stay here and keep reaping destruction on her behalf,”she said, thankful her internal voice didn’t shake.“Or break free from her hold over you. Leave this place and fight alongside us. Take back who you were whether you liked your inner beast or not.”She kept her hand on his scale, determined to ground him. Keep him with her.“Forgive yourself for falling under her spell and fight with us, Aodh. Help save Ireland.”
Fortunately, the more she talked, and the more she and Tréan’s mind connected with his, the clearer Aodh seemed to become. The more he appeared to understand everything that had happened in his absence.
Moreover, the lengths Liam had gone to for him.
“Where is he now?”he rumbled, looking from Declán and Riona, still standing a ways off, to Shannon and Tréan beside him.“Where is my troublesome brother?”
“About to die for you,”Riona said.“So if you don’t want his death to be in vain, I suggest you break free from these bonds and come with us now.”
“How do I,”Aodh began before he trailed off.
Before he felt something Shannon hadn’t even felt yet.
Freedom he had found all on his own thanks to her and her son. To magic she hadn’t even realized she used. To Tréan’s assistance as a fellow shifter.
