Free Fierce Dawn by Amber Scott

on her, feeling unreasonably possessive of Sadie. The shifter dropped to a crouch, as if she would spring on him. He had no intention of hurting her. But she didn’t need to know that. Not yet. “What do you know about her?”
    “ Enough.”
    “ Do better than that or I’ll transport you into High Council itself here and now,” he said, iciness making his words sharp.
    “ She’s a changeling,” she spoke again, her voice crisp in the quiet hum of the barren landscape. “I hoped if I pushed her, she’d be forced to shift, or fight back. I just want to know what kind she is.”
    He narrowed his eyes on her. Changeling? Holly had never used the term changeling. She’d implied a half - breed who didn’t know. Never changeling. “She’s not a changeling.”
    But as he said the words, the feeling in his gut changed and he knew the shifter was right. But it shouldn’t be possible. Immortals sometimes bred with mortals despite realm lines and strict laws, but humans did not become immortals.
    “ She is.”
    Humans couldn’t change. Changelings were nothing but myth, immortal fairytales. A chill ran over him despite his logic. Mortals weren’t genetically equipped to withstand the necessary evolution. Elijah closed the distance between them. “What do you know of it,” he hissed.
    The shifter stepped several feet back but didn’t back down. Her gaze dared him. “I know plenty.”
    Had this shifter sensed something in Sadie? The fact incensed further hope in him and Holly’s first words echoed through his mind. I think she’s a messenger, or could be, somehow .
    If Sadie was a human changeling, becoming a messenger…Crusoe could be found. If she could be fully transformed, taught to see…. The Illeautians might be stopped before it was too late. But if humans could or were evolving — no. Impossible. That would be too close to the very prophecy that had supposedly inspired the Illeautians in the first place.
    The lost verses of the Book of Sorrows predicted the marriage of the mortal and immortal realms, once cleaved in two to protect each race. The missing pages supposedly foretold of the collapse of realm lines.
    Elijah’s mouth went dry as his neck flushed with sweat. His gut felt hollowed out.
    He couldn’t believe it.
    The shifter was just lying to get free. “Who ordered you to watch her?”
    “ What? No one. I found her. No one else.”
    Liar. Elijah paced a slow circle around the girl. A faint coyote howl pierced the silence. The bitter scent of the brush prickled in his nose. It masked the shifter’s scent but she wasn’t cloaking her signal.
    “ Okay, okay,” she said, fidgeting under his scrutiny, showing him her palms. “What do I know? She’s not a changeling. Happy? I’ll leave her alone”
    If other immortals discovered what Sadie potentially was, be it half-breed or changeling, she would be in danger. If a single Illeautian found even a trace of evidence that the prophecy was true, Elijah couldn’t begin to appreciate the consequences.
    Would they push the collapse of realm lines and annihilate mortals completely? Or settle for enslaving them? Use them like cattle for their blood and energy, breeding with those who could?
    What would they do with a changeling? Particularly a potential mess e nger?
    He wouldn’t let it happen. He’d hide Sadie in the epicenter of the most remote vortex forever before he’d let an Illeautian have her. “I don’t believe you. Last chance, shifter.”
    “ You don’t have to believe me. It doesn’t make it a lie, though.”
    It was all he could do not to grab her by the throat. She’d done nothing provably wrong, though, outside of antics. Elijah snapped the space between them closed.
    She stumbled back. “How’d you do that?”
    He cocked his head, wary but curious. Did she not know what he was? He grabbed a fistful of her billowing shirt, unfurled his wings and launched skyward.
    She screamed, kicking, holding tightly to his arm.
    “ Tell