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“I don’t know,” I said. The climb had left me dizzy. This belly needed food ASAP. “It’d probably be better if I talk about it with all of you atonce.”
“I can summon a littlepatience.”
He paused, giving me a once-over. I guess I looked about as rough as I felt. The feline alpha’s expression softened. He cupped my face, cradling my jaw, and pressed a butterfly of a kiss to the middle of my forehead. “If you’re not there yet, you will be soon, princess. I’m sure ofthat.”
Good. Someone really should be, and it sure as hell wasn’tme.
The hearty smell of freshly grilled steaks reached my nose. By the time we arrived at the dining room, my mouth was full ofsaliva.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Marco announced with a smirk as the other alphas glanced up where they were standing around thetable.
Kylie was there too. She bounded over first. “So what’s the big secret? Can you even tell us what’s down there? What have you been doing allafternoon?”
Everyone’s eyes trained on me. Waiting to hear that this trip had been worthwhile. My gut knotted. “It’s… kind of hard toexplain.”
Marco rested his hands on my shoulder. “I think our Princess of Flames needs to get some nourishment into her. Where’s thatdinner?”
As if on cue, a couple of the kin emerged from the kitchen then, carrying plates. Nate motioned for them to give the first one to me. I dropped into the nearest chair and grabbed the waitingcutlery.
It only took a couple of bites before my head started to clear. I gulped water from the glass someone had brought me and looked around the table. My alphas and Kylie were all eating, the rest of the kin having left us someprivacy.
But their attention was still on me. As soon as my hands stilled, West looked up, catching my gaze with a question in his. Aaron raised his head, his own eyes glinting with enthusiasm. He must have been dying to know what dragon shifter secrets I’ddiscovered.
Nothing down in that archive felt all that top secret. I had the feeling no one except the dragon shifters was meant to go down there and handle the tablets directly, but nothing about them told me I shouldn’t share the information I’dlearned.
The hard part was figuring out how to explain all that information without the helpful murmur of a voice in my ear and mental images forillustration.
“I haven’t found out anything specific about the vampires,” I said slowly. “There’s—it’s basically a records room. Pieces of history past dragon shifters saved for the ones who came later, about what happened in the past. I ended up spending most of the time on records about thefae.”
West’s eyes narrowed. “How do they fit in? Do you think they’re helping thevampires?”
“No, not at all,” I said, waving my hand as if that gesture would dispel any wrong impressions I’d given. “One thing I know from what I’ve heard is there’snoway the fae would ever ally with the vampires. They’re pretty much opposites. But I guess you all already knowthat.”
I rubbed my face. In so many areas, I was still just catching up to basic paranormal knowledge. There was one thing they didn’t know much about, though. “I was more interested in the ways they used to work with theshifters.”
“So the records talked more about that association?” Aaron leaned forward. “I don’t know why our own histories are so sparse on thatsubject.”
“It seems like the fae leaders mostly preferred to deal with the dragon shifters,” I said. “Something about… feeling the closest kinship with us, because they’re all about light and energy, and that’s kind of the same as our fire? So I don’t get the impression they interacted with the other shifters a whole lot even backthen.”
“And better for us that they didn’t,” Westmuttered.
I hesitated. I knew better than maybe anyone here what a sensitive subject this was for him. “They weregoodallies, at least in some ways, back then,” I had to say. “It’s thanks to them and one of the past dragon shifters that I’ve been able to draw the truth out of our enemies. They created that power so it would be ready when there was a time of great need… It took themyearsto perfect it and contain it. The fae didn’t get anything out of that effort except knowing they’d given us a newstrength.”
“That and a handy way to tempt shifters up the mountain where they could pick us off,” Marco pointedout.
I glowered at him. “That obviously wasn’t the originalplan.”
“What was the plan?” Nate asked in his low baritone. “Why did they think someone would need that power? Why not give it to the dragon shifter alreadythere?”
“I guess that dragon shifter didn’t need it. The impression I get is that it was, like, an ace for us to have up our sleeve. Seeing how quickly the world was starting to change, how much territory humans were claiming here… Little did they know it’d be partly our own people causing the chaos.” I grimaced. “But that’s not thepoint.”
“Something about this alliance seems meaningful to you right now,” Aaron prompted, his gaze intent on me. “Why did you focus on that thread of ourhistory?”
“Partly I just happened to stumble on it. And after that… I get the sense that it’s all tied together somehow. The relationships between the different paranormal communities. The way we’ve clashed. I can’t pin it down yet, but I feel like there’ssomethingimportant in all those past events that might help us see what to do.” I paused and sighed. “And also I haven’t come across many records about vampires at all. It seems like we’ve mostly steered clear of eachother.”
“That sounds accurate,” Marco said. “If only they’d keep steeringclear.”
“If there’s anything to learn about the fae, it’s that they’re backstabbing bastards,” West broke in. “Maybe they pretended to ally with us before, but everything they’ve done since…” He swept his arm through the air in a violent motion that made me think of his mottled scar. “You follow whatever paths you want, Sparks, but I can’t see us gaining anything from the fae we’re dealing withnow.”
