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Prologue
Snow littered the cold and uneven ground of the scrap yard where the brothers Wessex often went to work out. Too powerful to be contained indoors, their training had to be done stealthily.
The human world was not aware of Wyverns, or anything supernatural, for that matter. It preferred to live in ignorance, and the brothers were happy to oblige. They knew firsthand what the government did to anyone they saw asdifferent.
Centuries being peddled back and forth in their eggs, they’d finally been hatched to spend the next decade being studied, poked, prodded, by idiot scientists until their father had enough.
General Arthur Wessex was ex-Army, but he’d earned that title, and no one forgot what he had given to his country in terms of service. He was the one who found the key to hatching the brothers. In the end, he took them from the cruelties of the facility where they were being kept and brought them to his wife and home to be raised as a family— taking them under his wing, no pun intended.
“Father is pissed again—agh,” Heliodore grunted as he lifted the old cargo van up and over his head before dropping it back down again.
“Yeah, what else is new?” Jasper replied, his eyes trained on his target as he worked on trying to control his flame.
When done right, he could release a precise laser-like beam of pure Wyvern fire more powerful than any human-made beam he had ever encountered. He’d currently been focusing his fiery breath on a rusty old bolt he’d placed some 7000 yards away.
It was one of several dozen he’d burnt to ash that very afternoon. But it was more than just disintegrating things. He also focused on the intensity of his flame. Sometimes ash was too much, and his Wyvern needed to learn how to control the temperature of his fire. It took training and work.
None of which he wanted to do just then. After all, it was the holidays. Jasper was not a huge fan of the season, but he loved the seasonal drinks and discounted wings atMcCool’s Bar & Grillover on Grand Street.
The place was a favorite haunt of Jasper and his brothers, and Crystal was bartending this weekend. He knew that because the buxom blonde had sent him a selfie and a text telling him exactly where he could place the shot of chilled cinnamon vodka she planned on saving for him that very evening.
Yowza.
What could he say? He was a sucker for a woman who knew what her body was for.
“Hey! Watch it,” his brother snarled, and Jasper stopped shooting his flame.
Whoops.
His aim had gone off track along with his thoughts. It was a good thing the Sloth Shifter who ran the junkyard didn’t mind when he and his brothers got rough with his inventory.
They’d started working out there just after puberty hit, a suggestion from their dad who had seen firsthand how much damage four growing Wyvern Shifters could wreak.
The owner, Hector, was a friend of General Wessex. A fellow Shifter, he understood the problem and had gladly offered his place. In fact, he’d often joked about putting the boys on the payroll since they saved loads of electricity running his wrecking machine by demolishing cars into tidy cubes with their might.
During puberty, they had managed to rid the Sloth of half his stock without him having to lift a finger. Fun times.Not.
Jasper did not relish thinking of those angsty teenage years where he’d spent more time using pimple cream and jerking off than he’d care to admit. Exercise was a great way to channel their sudden bursts of aggression, and hefty influxes of testosterone. He was glad they had this place.
Where else were a couple of Wyvern Shifters supposed to burn off a little energy without fear of being seen?
“Why do you think Dad is pissed again?” Jasper asked without waiting for an answer.
He dropped to the ground, flipped backwards, landing hard on the floor just to bounce back again, the entire time keeping his target in sight. He then aimed his fire at the small hunk of metal, tempering the flame to melt not disintegrate. It took heaps of effort, and despite the freezing temperatures, he was sweating balls.
“Lucky shot.”
Heliodore smirked. He stretched and nodded at the puddle of metal, and Jasper saw his admiration in the action. Brothers could be rough on each other, but each had their own talents and were supportive when it counted. They had to be, since they were the only ones of their kind they knew of.
“Larimar and Zircon gave Jennifer a hard time with their last assignment.”
“Yeah, well, she should’ve known better than to have the two of them working with the security bigwigs at the Shifter Leagues during playoffs.”
“I know, I told her that myself.”
“What’s the big deal, anyway? I’m sure the job was accomplished, otherwise we’d have heard about it.”
“Yep, another one done and done. They’re both flying home today. TheNew York Sharksbeat theCalifornia Claws, so now Conny is claiming Lari’s new Harley as his prize.”
