Page 36 of Broken Kingdom

“There you are,” my father calls out, his deep voice booming across the expanse. “I hoped you kids wouldn’t keep us waiting too long. I promised our new friends phoenix blood, but I know they prefer blood that comes with actual feathers.” He lifts a hand into the air. “Take her.”

I sense movement behind me and bolt toward Ford and Catherine, but it’s too late. I’m already being grabbed by both wings and pinned against two massive male bodies. I struggle and start to spit fire, but one of the men locks his fist around my neck, squeezing so tight the world instantly starts to go black.

I have time to see Ford and Catherine being tackled to the ground before the black spreads and I lose consciousness.

When I wake up, my head is pounding, and I’m trussed up like a turkey ready to be popped into the oven.

I’m on my stomach on the platform, with my claws pinned together by some kind of string. My wings are held tight to my side by thick scraps of the same white fabric that’s wrapped around Coralie’s mouth, and my beak is pinned shut by more of the same. But even if it weren’t, and I were in my human form, I don’t think I could talk if I tried. My throat is so swollen and bruised, it feels like I’ve swallowed an eggplant whole.

Thank Goddess for telepathy and that I’m finally able to use it.

Ford? I ask, doing my best to reach out to him and only him, but failing.

They’re tying him up in the audience, a voice I recognize as my mother’s whispers into my head. You’ve only been out about a minute.

I shift my aching skull to see her seated just behind me, close enough for her to reach out and rest a hand on my feathered back if she weren’t tied up, too. And if she were a normal mother, who cared about the fact that her daughter is about to be sacrificed to a small legion of dragons for some unknown reason.

Don’t talk, she says. Everyone can hear you, and you’ll attract attention. Just listen and get ready to move on my signal.

I glare in her general direction, but I can’t move my neck enough to make sure she sees it and unfortunately, she’s right. Some shifters can direct their telepathy to one person in particular, but I’m not one of them.

First, I’d like to apologize, she continues. I’m sure you’re a lovely girl, but I didn’t want children. Hammer forced me to get pregnant, and I can’t love something that’s forced upon me. Even a child. But I’m sorry for any pain that might have caused you.

Might have caused me? Goddess, this woman is even more emotionally stunted than I am.

I sigh and wince, torn between telling her to stuff her apology where the sun doesn’t shine and the sneaking suspicion that I’d be the same way if I’d been through what she’s been through. Like at the circus when Gorey planned to sell me to a shifter breeder. The thought of being forced to have children made me want to jump off the nearest bridge.

I would rather die than be out of control of my body, my life.

Add in being helpless to keep those forced babies safe—as I’m sure Coralie knew she would be helpless—and it’s a recipe for pain and trauma on both sides.

This is why I wanted you to keep your tracker in and stay away from your shifted form, she adds in a firmer tone, clearly finished with the touchy-feely portion of the conversation. Phoenix in the bloodline is dangerous enough. A shifter who can actually access her phoenix is catnip to dragon shifters and those who serve them for access to their magic. The Dragomere clan has hated our kind for millennia, since we escaped this dying world, and they were trapped here without enough food to sustain their ravenous children. Only a handful survived, and they’re trapped in their dragon forms, making it much harder for them to move between worlds. If we could have remained hidden for even another year or two, the last of them would have died off, and phoenix shifters would finally have been safe.

But I had to go and fuck it up, I get it, I shoot back. But I wouldn’t have fucked it up if someone had stuck around and told me the truth. I didn’t even know dragons were a real thing, let alone—

Quiet, she barks into my brain, making me wince again. In the event we survive, you should make directing your telepathy your top priority. Your lack of control is embarrassing. Before I can shoot back that this is another issue that would have been a non-issue if I’d had an invested parent teaching me to use and control my power, she pushes on, The ritual requires someone with knowledge of archaic magic to serve as a conduit for the dragon’s power, using spell work to transfer their strength and relative immortality to the gathered supplicants. Hammer thought his priests could pull it off, but they failed, and I refused to work the magic on myself. But now that you’re here, he’s offered to set me free as long as I work the spell on you. I won’t, but this gives us a chance to turn the tables on him before it’s too late.

I grunt, and the mother of the year continues, I understand why you’d be hesitant to trust me, but you don’t have a choice. Working together is the only way we’ll save ourselves, your friends, or the innocent people Hammer dragged down this twisted road on his quest for power. This is what we’ll do…

She quickly and efficiently outlines a plan that sounds fairly doable until we get to the “dealing with the dragons” part.

Then, I become fairly certain we’re going to die.

But at least we’ll go out fighting and maybe some of our people will survive.

I hope Ford’s one of them. And I hope I get the chance to tell him I love him one last time before all hell with a side of giant, fire-breathing monsters breaks loose.

Twenty-One

Ford

I’m tied up with thicker fabric than what we used to bind Catherine and Juliet’s hands and shoved down onto the grass beside a young woman with giant, liquid brown eyes and the palest skin I’ve ever seen.

She hunches lower, her hands trembling in her lap as Hammer towers over us, and an even bigger, meaner-looking man comes to stand beside him. I’m pretty sure it’s Abraham, the Alpha of San Diego, though he looks a lot older than I remember from his one visit to Zion pack lands when I was a kid.

“You’d better have a plan for getting us out of here once the ritual is over,” he rumbles softly to my stepfather, but still loud enough for me to hear. “The transportation spell only works one way, and I don’t want to be stuck here when those dragons realize the portal isn’t going to stretch wide enough for any of them to get through.”

“Don’t worry,” Hammer says. “My priests will open another portal as soon as the ritual is finished. Just have your people ready to move.” He glances down to the grass. “And don’t forget Ophelia. Her ankle is still swollen, and I’ll be too busy with Coralie to carry her.”

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