Page 249 of Secret Shifters Next Door

Mariana held her head between her hands like it was about to explode. “What’s happening? How is this possible?”

Not taking my eyes off Tate and Jared, I said, “You really had no idea this guy was a shifter?”

“He can’t be…that’s not possible.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your bodyguard just turned into a three-ton, fire-breathing dragon. I don’t know how much more evidence you want of what he is.”

“He’s my brother, not my bodyguard, and I’ve never seen him do that before. How could he hide it all this time?”

“She’s telling the truth,” Celina said. “I saw her shock when she found out. She really didn’t know.”

I nodded, watching Tate ascend into the sky, his wings making big booming sounds as he rose. The other dragon saw him rising into the air and screamed a hiss of rage, and blasted the sky with a gust of flame. I flinched back. Even two hundred feet away, the heat was intense enough for me to think my eyebrows were going to get singed. I ducked back down.

“I have a theory,” I said. “I think Antonio created a drug of some kind to suppress the shift. Something that prevents a shifter from changing. He experiments on them constantly. The only way to do that safely is to control their shifting.” I looked at Celina. “Why did he attack you? When Tate and I pulled in, he was choking. He could have killed you. That wasn’t the deal.”

Celina glanced at Mariana, then back to me. “He lost it once I figured out that Antonio isn’t his biological father.”

Mariana went silent. The screeches and roars of the dragon fight the only sounds around us. Finally, she shook her head and whispered, “That can’t be right.”

Leaving her to contemplate the implications of the news Celina had just given her, I looked back over the truck’s hood again. Tate and Jared were back on the ground. Tate swiped at the smaller dragon with a talon and opened a four-foot gash in its side. Jared shrieked and shot a stream of fire across Tate’s chest and face. Tate closed his eyes and brushed off the flame like it barely fazed him, then shot forward and latched his jaw and teeth into Jared’s left arm. Things were getting rough. Even this far back, I didn’t think we were safe.

“Celina? You two get in the truck. The keys are still in the ignition. Get the hell out of here. Blayne and Steff are at the office, waiting on word from us. Go.”

I looked down, and Mariana had a strange look in her eyes. She was muttering something I couldn’t make out as Celina dragged her up to her feet. She was almost limp, and Celina struggled to get her to her feet. I stepped forward to help, and Mariana burst into action. She pulled a gun from the back of her waistband and pressed it against Celina’s head, her other arm wrapped around Celina’s neck. I froze, the fight behind me forgotten. All I could see was the woman I loved seconds from death. I held my hands up, showing Mariana that I wasn’t doing anything.

“He’s a traitor to the cause,” Mariana said, nodding toward the dragon that had been her brother a few minutes ago. “I need to finish the job myself.”

I growled at her menacingly, but she shook Celina and jammed the gun into her head hard enough for Celina to wince and whimper. “Stop that shit,” Mariana hissed. “Give me the files.”

She seemed out of it; her eyes wouldn’t stay focused on anything, and her lips kept twitching like she was on the verge of saying something but kept stopping herself. Her unstable condition sent my wolf and me to the edge. We were both ready to attack, and the only thing holding us back was the gun against Celina’s head. Every second that ticked by made it more likely Mariana might shoot her—either on purpose or accidentally. Her finger was on the trigger and tightened and released every second. I was fucking terror-stricken.

Mariana tugged Celina toward the door of the truck. “Get in.”

I nodded to Celina, urging her to comply. I didn’t want her to get shot for not listening. My brain was running through a thousand plans of attack. Each thought I had ended with Celina on the ground, her brains blown out by the psycho with the gun.

Behind us, Tate had Jared on the ground and was biting him in the throat. It wasn’t hard enough to kill him, but just enough to subdue the other dragon. Tate seemed to have things well in hand. I wished the same could be said for me.

Mariana opened the passenger door, but instead of shoving Celina in, she turned back to me and put her hand out, keeping the gun on Celina. “The drive and any copies.”

Snarling, I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out the thumb drive. The heat and smoke from the fighting dragons made it difficult to breathe. I coughed and wiped at my eyes. “This is it. All I’ve got.”

I tossed it to her, and she snatched it out of the air, then looked down at the small piece of plastic and metal. “Are you sure this is all of it? You better not be lying to me.”

I wasn’t lying. Even if I were, there was no way she would be able to tell. I nodded. “You’ve got everything we were sent.”

From behind us, we heard a human scream of pain. We turned to see that Jared and Tate had both shifted back tohuman form. Jared was on the ground, writhing in pain. Tate knelt above him, a hand pressed on the younger man’s chest.

“It’s all right,” Tate said. “I know it hurts. Breathe through the pain. You’ve gone too long without ever shifting. The pain will fade…just focus.”

Jared cursed but nodded and closed his eyes. “I didn’t know it would hurt this much.”

Tate shrugged. “It usually doesn’t. But most of us do this a lot younger than you did. I’ve never heard of a shifter going this many years before their first change.”

I’d been too distracted by the scene to notice that Mariana had released Celina. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mariana walking toward Tate and Jared. Her gun was out, and the barrel shook as she aimed it at her brother.

“Jared?” her voice cracked as she screamed. “Are you a traitor? Have you been working with them all along?”

Tate and Jared snapped their heads in her direction. Tate stood and backed away, getting out of the line of fire. Jared rolled over onto his stomach and put a hand out toward Mariana, as though that would stop a bullet. “Put the gun down. You don’t need to do this.”

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