Free Layla Nash - A Valentine's Chase (City Shifters: the Pride) by Unknown

"Not entirely human, my dear."
    "Right, my mistake." I struggled to sit up and still keep my leg elevated, so many questions swirling through my thoughts to land on one or even prioritize. "So what the hell am I? What's going on? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
    Smith sighed. "You are a muse. The reincarnation of a muse, that is. The powers pass to another only after one muse passes away. I started looking for you when the last muse died, but I did not find you soon enough."
    "What do you mean?" I tried to filter through the painful fog in my head back to the first few times I'd met Smith, shaking my head. He looked for me. Which meant he didn't really know my parents.
    "Your parents had a bit of fae blood, and somehow that combined to make you a receptive host for the muse powers. But they didn't know anything about fae or magic or anything. They just wanted normal. They didn't know how to deal with your powers, when they started to manifest."
    My heartbeat echoed slow and loud in my ears. I felt as if I stood on the edge of a cliff and he would reveal a secret that would push me over the edge — it would either kill me or give me the wings to fly. I didn't dare hold my breath. "So what did — what do you —"
    "I used some of my magic to convince them that I was an old friend. If they'd known anything about us, about how to protect you, I would have moved on. But they didn't. And by the time you were four and could convince them not to punish you for small things, they had you in therapy and considered committing you."
    I shook my head. "They wouldn't have —"
    "They nearly did," he said, gentle. Almost kind. Apologetic. I couldn't think, couldn't concentrate as he went on. "You saw other fae, you knew perfectly well there was magic in the world, but they convinced you it was only your imagination. You started to shut down."
    My vision blurred until he disappeared into a watery smudge. "So all of that was real? Everything I saw, it was real?"
    "Yes." He inclined his head and waited.
    I couldn't breathe. I'd daydreamed about pixies and fairies and little creatures who shimmered and danced around me, who waited on my windowsill until I got home from school. I talked to them, told them stories, and envisioned complex histories and dramas around them. Until my parents and teachers and every adult in my life told me I needed to stop living in my head, needed to make real friends, needed to move on from childish daydreams. My chest hurt until I could hardly feel anything else. Anything except betrayal. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
    "I saw how much you struggled to be normal," he said, and reached to touch my hand, a glancing reassurance that almost pushed me off the cliff and into the abyss below. "How terrible the price to your mental health. You convinced yourself magic did not exist, Meadow — how could I have taken that from you, when you worked so hard? I feared it would push you into a true panic. I didn't want to risk it. And since you seemed happy enough, until you got to school, I thought it better to leave well enough alone."
    I covered my face and closed my eyes, wanting to ignore everything he said. Life would have been easier, if I was just a little bit crazy and magic didn't actually exist. If there wasn't really a glowing green symbol on his wall to protect us from marauding werewolves. "Right. School."
    "Yes." Smith took a deep breath, and the sound of his clothes rustling almost distracted me from the terrible words. "I'm glad I was there for that. I'm glad you've nearly recovered, Meadow."
    "Nearly recovered? I have a shitty apartment with a shallow roommate and a job reading tarot and stocking incense at a hippie bookstore. How is that nearly recovered?"
    A hint of a smile touched his face, then Smith looked at me impassively. "My dear, I thought you'd tried to kill yourself. Everyone thought so."
    "Well, I didn't." My cheeks burned and I wanted to hide my face again, but he needed to see the truth of