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The three of us were staring at my mother—my mother and the rugged, barrel-chested man who was arguing with her. I knew that low, hoarse voice had usually wrapped me up in comfort, but now it only made my pulseskitter.

“You have to go.Now.”

“I have to stay and fight for what’s mine,” my mother insisted, her eyesflashing.

An agonized cry rang out. My mother flinched, and the man’s expression shuttered. “There are too many of them. If you try to fight here, you’ll lose your chance to fight your way out. Go. Forthem.”

He swept his arm toward us—and the memory flickedaway.

I slumped forward on the sofa, dropping my head into my hands. The immediacy of the moment was gone, but my sense of it was still trickling in. That man—he’d been one of my fathers.Daddy, some part of me called out with a pang. And the girls besideme...

I looked up, bracing my hands on either side of my neck. The guys had all fallen silent, watching me. My mouth was dry. I swallowedhard.

“I had sisters,” I said in a ragged voice. “Two of them, older than me. Didn’t I? Why did my mother run away with me and not them? Whathappenedto them? What happened to myfathers?”

Nate and Aaron exchanged a glance. Marco opened his mouth and hesitated. West looked as if he’d swallowed his tongue, the one time I actually wanted him to let itloose.

“Tell me,” I snapped. “Why do you keep trying to hide it? What are you all so afraid will happen tome?”

“Ren,” Nate said roughly. He sank onto the sofa beside me. “It’s not that we wanted to hide it from you. We just wanted to give you a chance to adjust before you had to deal with thattoo.”

“With what?” I said, my voice suddenly small. It was horrible, whatever it was. I didn’t need him to tell me that. The memory and their reactions stunk ofit.

Aaron drew in a breath. “A band of rogue shifters attacked your family one night, sixteen years ago,” he said quietly. “As far as anyone knows, their goal was to kill you, your mother, and your sisters—all of the dragon shifters—and the four alphas, who were there with you that night. Your fathers died trying to stop them from getting to you. The rogues caught your sisters and murdered them too. Your mother barely made it out alive withyou.”

I’d been braced for his explanation, but the words rocked me anyway. My stomach churned. Nate offered his arm, and I scooted closer to him, letting him pull me into an embrace. The reassurance of his strong body barely took the edge off myhorror.

“And then she ran,” I filled in. “All the way to New York City. She was afraid they’d try again.” That was why she’d tried to keep us so invisible. Why she’d been so scared she’d felt she had to block my memories and mypowers.

“From what you’ve told us, we have to assume that’s the case,” Aaronsaid.

“And I for one can’t blame her,” Marco put in. “She kept you safe—and hopefully herself too. She did what she had to do.” He shot West a sharp look as if daring him to argue, but the wolf shifter had withdrawn to the doorway, his faceshadowed.

“Butwhy?” I burst out. “Why would anyone want to hurt us like that?” The remembered cry rang in my ears—the horrible pain in it. The image of my sisters’ faces... Neither of them could have been older than ten. And these rogues had justslaughteredthem?

“No one knows for sure,” Nate said, rubbing my arm. “Your fathers and your mother killed a bunch of the rogues defending themselves, but of course the dead can’t say anything. The ones who survived got out of there before anyone else realized what was going on. They were nevercaught.”

“Most likely it was a power grab,” Aaron said. “Most of the shifters who refuse to ally themselves with their kin-group are carrying a lot of bitterness and anger. They don’t like the way the rules are made or who carries them out. Maybe they thought they could set themselves up as the new alphas. Maybe they just wanted to sow disorder. If we’re lucky, we’ll never encounter them again, so we’ll never need toknow.”

“But if that group is still out there, and there’s no reason to think they aren’t, the first thing they’ll want to do if they find out you’re alive is finish the job they started,” Marco said in a darker tone than usual. He lifted his chin toward Nate. “Which is why bear boy has gone into overprotectivemode.”

“I don’t think there’s anythingoverabout it,” Nate muttered. “Do you see why I’d rather you stayed here, Ren? No one except us and Marco’s few people here know we’ve even found you yet. The longer we can keep it that way, the more time we can buy before we might have to deal with the roguesagain.”

Right. More time for me to come into the powers that seemed stubbornly locked inside me, so I’d have any hope at all of defendingmyself.

A shiver ran through me. There were people out there who hated me so much they’d wanted to kill me when I’d been a helpless five-year-old.

And if they succeeded this time, what would happen to the shifters then? If I was the last dragon, and I died without passing on that line... My kind would be extinct. There’d be nothing left tying the kin-groupstogether.

My sense of shifter society was still vague, but that thought chilled me to the core. I wrapped my hand around Nate’s. I did understand why he was so worried, why Aaron had argued in favor of caution too, why Marco hadn’t spoken up for me. They needed me... and the alphas before them had already failedonce.

I needed them too. I felt a connection to all four of the men around me, humming through the air. Even as the chill prickled through me, that connection steadiedme.

I wasn’t alone anymore. I had them now, like I was meant to. I couldn’t keeprunning.

Mom had taken my memories, but not forever. I knew what I was now, and I needed to keepremembering.

I was adragon.

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