Regent Witches (Supernatural Shifter Academy #5) - G. Bailey Page 0,1

a cause. It’s another to actually believe in it.

That’s the last coherent thought that crosses my mind before Silas’ mother opens her mouth and exhales a blast of flame directly at him. He’s not in his form yet, and the fire would be enough to immolate him… Except I manage to get my hands up just in time, conjuring a force field, much like how Theo did, in front of the man I love. It absorbs the full brunt of the heat and allows him time to shift, but I realise too late that it was all just a tactic to buy time. In the few seconds it took for us to regain our bearings, the others have already gotten up and changed forms, battered but otherwise full of fight. The next thing I know, his mother, now in full dragon form, dive bombs Landon and plucks her otherwise-helpless husband right out of his grip. “Hawthorne sends his regards,” she tells us, before turning casually away.

“Stop!” the siren shifter yells, but it’s no use; the command is impossible to hear amidst the commotion.

Then the enemy shifters, every single one, are leaving the way they came in, crashing out through the windows and disappearing into the still, blue sky.

“No!” Shade roars, bounding up to the window in pursuit, but it’s too late. They’re gone. “Fuck,” the wolf shifter says, raking his hands through his sandy hair. “Fuck!” His eyes have already turned the golden colour of his wolf form. “We have to go after them,” he says, rolling his shoulders back in preparation for another round. “If we leave now, we can take them out from the ground.”

Silas, who has been looking borderline-catatonic, turns his scaly neck on the wolf shifter. “Like hell,” he growls. “Those are my parents.”

“Not anymore, they’re not,” Shade argues. “Whatever they are now, they’re on the wrong side. If we let them get back to Hawthorne alive, we lose whatever advantage we had from them not knowing Boots got her powers back.”

“Not. Happening,” the dragon shifter hisses, staring down his snout at Shade.

“Silas,” Hunter tries to reason with him, “if we can just capture them, figure out what they want—”

“No!” Silas bellows, flapping his wings in agitation. “They’re my family!”

“Silas…” I shift back into human form and approach him like one might approach a wild animal, both hands in the air. For someone normally so stoic and unflappable, his agitation is heartbreaking. What would I do if I were in his shoes? I wonder.

Probably the same thing.

Slowly, I lift my hand to his snout and smooth my fingers along his bristling scales. The motion is gentle and slow, and I can feel him beginning to relax under my touch. “It’s okay,” I tell him, over and over. “No one’s going to hurt them, Silas. Right?” I look around the room. Hunter and Landon give reluctant nods, while Shade kicks the wall in frustration, but throws his hands up. Gradually, the dragon shifter’s tension eases, and he slowly transforms back into a human… only to collapse to his knees on the floor, silent and forlorn, his head bowed and his dark hair hanging in his face. I move to touch his shoulder, but he shrugs me off, looking utterly drained.

Landon approaches me and begins checking me methodically for injuries, his hands working from my scalp down to my shoulders. “I’m not a fragile flower anymore,” I joke dryly.

“Believe me,” the siren shifter says, planting a kiss on my forehead, “I never thought you were.”

“You were unbelievable back there, Boots,” Hunter says, his face lit up with admiration.

And at last, with the heat of battle finally dying down, I’m able to look around and see that he’s right. The carnage before us catches me off guard; while the room was mostly clear before, now it’s a veritable battlefield, with overturned potion bottles and destroyed books covering the floor, loose sheafs of paper fluttering down from where they were tossed up in the air. That’s all secondary to what my eyes settle on next, though: a large smear of blood on the far wall, right where I flung the wolf shifter who was going after Landon. Did I do that? some part of me wonders, almost afraid to take in the sight. I was so caught up in the heat of the moment; I wasn’t even paying attention to the damage I was doing.

That’s never happened before. Not when I was fighting for my life against humans and shifters