Chapter 9
Maya
The room we walked into was massive, some type of dining hall if I had to guess.
Five long tables were pushed to the side to make room for the group gathered.
I had assumed the group would consist at least partly of the dragons that had stayed, but if any had, they weren’t here.
Every face in the room was one I recognized, even if some were surprising.
For example, I could see Eleven near the back of the room. My chest squeezed happily, hoping that the fact she’d shown up here meant there was a possibility of us being true friends.
“You showed up right in time,” I said to my mom, who was watching me with soft affection and curiosity.
“We wanted to show up sooner—far sooner—especially once we received word you were traveling because of the attack.” My mom frowned, lowering her voice. “Are you okay? I know Ry’s death was violent, but the attack on Halloween…the surprise ones are sometimes the ones that leave the worst scars.”
“I really am okay—Az saved me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was the one who killed Lorn—he created an illusion and made me believe that I was the one who did it.”
My mom’s gaze moved towards the angel in question. He was standing near the edge of the room, watching me with a dark but warm gaze that had my toes curling. “Your mates were unexpected, but an angel…I’ve never heard of that before.”
I stopped and turned towards her, examining her face for judgment and finding none.
“He sacrificed his life for me. For all of us trying to escape. Ry had his immortality bound, so when he broke the stone containing the magic that kept us captive, it should’ve killed him…
but my magic and I weren’t okay with that. ”
Realization filled my mom’s gaze as she looked back towards the man, nodding.
“Ah, that changes things. A sacrificial bond is unbreakable; I can understand now why he’s stayed so near.
The entire time you were unconscious, he sat outside of your room when he wasn’t running around helping your mates. ”
I blushed at that. “That’s sweet.”
“That’s one word for it,” a masculine voice muttered. One of my dads, Con, had stepped away from the large group of males talking—a mix of my mates, my brothers, and my fathers. Honestly, I was trying to not pay too much attention to it because it was overwhelming to say the least.
“What’s another?” I asked curiously.
“Obsessive,” he growled and looked over me with a frown. “Are you okay?”
“Tired but okay,” I promised with a smile that I hoped would appease his concern.
“How is the tiny feline?” he asked, my mom letting out a sound of amusement as I realized the stoic man was talking about Bella.
“Wonderful. She’s with the little ones in the nursery,” I explained. “I think she was protecting them.”
He nodded in understanding, as if it wasn’t amusing to say a kitten was protecting dragon and phoenix shifters.
“You fully came into your powers,” Fuji said as he approached, his calm, grounded mannerisms instantly making me relax. “How does it feel?”
“Honestly, I didn’t love the part where I died?—”
“You died?!”
I winced as the room came to a complete stop, the space suddenly filled with awkward silence. Ignatius stared at me like I was both crazy and about to disappear, panic infusing his expression.
Crap. They hadn’t known. Marco immediately moved to my side, his hand running over my hip in comfort. Ignatius narrowed his eyes on him.
I knew where this was going.
“I stepped into the line of Ry’s fire to protect one of my mates and to make sure Az didn’t die.
Don’t be mad at them,” I said firmly. Ignatius’s eyes moved back to mine, looking conflicted.
“They’re already upset about it as it is, and it’s not their fault.
This is completely on me, and I’m going to be really upset if you make them feel more guilty than they already do. ”
“You should listen to her,” Pele suggested, his warm brown eyes making me relax a smidge. “It makes sense, Ignatius. How else would she have come into her power?”
“I don’t fucking like it—” one of my brothers began, but he was interrupted by a feminine whisper I had to assume was from Eleven. Though I couldn’t worry about that yet, instead far more focused on my dads’ and mom’s sad, concerned gazes as I felt my mates stand near me, not liking the tension.
“There is a much bigger explanation,” I admitted. “I don’t mind giving it, but it’s a lot more complicated than me dying.”
“We will listen,” Haco insisted, stepping forward and smoothing a hand over my mom’s back.
“Everyone sit down,” Nuriel demanded, motioning to the chairs behind him. Everyone followed orders slowly, my mates dragging chairs to be closer to me.
“Okay, now I’m nervous,” I whispered to my mom once everyone was seated and looking at me expectantly.
I began to feel better as I looked at my mates and Az, all of whom were staring at me with confidence and affection that was echoed through our bond.
Even Eleven, who was sitting away from my brothers, gave me an encouraging smile, and I realized that these people cared about me.
Even though everything I had to explain was complicated and surreal, I instinctively knew they would believe me.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” Henry suggested. “After we left the realm.”
I nodded and let out a shaky breath before I began.
“When we came back from Dreki, Pastor Malcolm was waiting for me.” I took another deep breath, steeling myself for the explanation of who he was.
When we’d visited Dreki and I’d first met my parents, I hadn’t been ready for this discussion, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Malcolm is someone who I thought was my father until?—”
A savage growl came from one of my dads, and I offered a slight wince. “I know, it’s bad. But he was the reason for all of this. He was the one who shot me down and kidnapped me. He was the one who encouraged Tina to torture me, the one who locked me up in our church’s basement?—”
My voice hitched, and I tried to recenter myself, focusing on the far wall so I wouldn’t get caught up in their reactions.
“Of course I didn’t know at the time that he was a witch—he just told me I would eventually help their church.
So when Tina, the woman pretending to be my mother, told me he died, I was honestly thankful.
Until I realized she was essentially abducting me again, taking me across the country to Washington with her creepy boyfriend Jed. ”
“Jed’s dead, and so is she,” Marco assured my parents.
I let out a small breath. “That was when I met them”—I nodded to my mates—“and things got way better. Well…I guess I did die that one time, but that was the night Jed and Tina died as well.”
“Shouldn’t have happened,” Sai rumbled.
“I also wasn’t telling you how bad everything was,” I whispered to Sai. How could he have known I needed help when I hadn’t given them the whole story? When I’d been unwilling to admit that I needed protection from Jed and Tina?
“Anyway,” I continued, addressing the group, “after that we realized that Pastor Malcolm hadn’t died, because he literally showed up at my job.”
“You have a job?” one of my dads growled, and I had to keep myself from smiling.
“Yep, at a craft store. It’s super fun.” My mom made an amused noise, but I refused to get sidetracked.
“He kept telling me that he wanted to take me back, and that was when I realized he knew I was a phoenix. It wasn’t until later, when he used magic to lure me out of the house, that we realized he was a witch—it was also the first time I’d shifted that I could remember. ”
“Oh, you shifted a ton when you were little,” Pele pointed out. “In fact, you spent most of your time shifted when we let you.”
I smiled at that, wishing I could remember those times better. “I didn’t know anything about the supernatural world. I just knew that I healed whenever I bled.”
“Did that happen often?” My mom’s voice sounded choked.
I nodded and intertwined my fingers, looking down at my boots before continuing.
“So we realized he was a witch, and Croy helped us figure out why he would want me and how it would fuel his coven, and it was right around that time that we came to visit the Dreki realm.” I smiled at all of them.
“Where I realized I had an entire family I didn’t know about. ”
“So how the hell did we end up here?” Con demanded, despite trying to keep his voice soft.
“When we returned to Earth and came out of the portal, we realized councilwoman Anna had forced councilman Larry to redirect the portal to open on a cliffside—all with the goal of kidnapping Maya,” Atlas said. “I tried to explain it in the letter, but honestly it was a bit of a fucking mess.”
I nodded in agreement. “Pastor Malcolm was saved, which we learned later was because of Ry,” I said, omitting Az’s involvement with it, which I had to assume was how he had disappeared so easily before Marco could kill him, “and we managed to escape and go home. The young flight you sent is still with us—which, by the way, they’re safe with a local pack of shifters. ”
My mom nodded, looking relieved.
“We thought that it was over at that point, that Malcolm had been scared enough to stay away for a good while, at least…” I sighed.
“We didn’t expect him to work with Ry, and his men caused a massive distraction at the event we were at, and I was nearly taken.
” Again, glossing over anything to do with Az…
“So we decided to leave town and went to France. When I marked Anani, my magic must have done something?—”
“It sent out a signal,” Az said, looking directly at me. “I informed them of my involvement.”
Oh, thank the Maker.
“Right, it sent out a signal, and that was how we got captured by Ry until Az sacrificed himself to get us out. Then Az, Anani, and I were killed.”