Reclaimed (Shadow Beast Shifters, #2)(87)

“How long have you been here?” Ixana asked Dannie, clearly giving zero fucks about my state of being.

Dannie’s eyes shifted color, gold bleeding into the familiar blue. I’d never seen that before… Had the gold in Shadow’s eyes come from her?

“I’ve been here since the day my son was stolen from me.”

I had the sense then that she didn’t really like Ixana, and I was stupidly pleased by that. Why had she helped her escape from Cristell, then? Out of loyalty to her son?

Dannie sighed. “It’s time for me to explain everything, and it’s going to be difficult for some to understand their role in all of this, but I would appreciate it if everyone could just wait until the end to yell at me.”

My lips twitched. That last part was definitely directed at me.

“I was not born a royal.” Her first statement was a fucking doozy. “I’m not even from The Concordes.” Shadow’s chest rumbled, but he remained quiet, as she’d requested. “I was born in this land. Right here, actually.”

Shadow jerked back, his face wreathed in confusion. “Only shadow creatures are born here.”

Dannie smiled, her expression much darker and fierier than I’d ever seen before. Shadow clicked on first, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s not possible,” he shot at her. “The Danamain is a myth, and your energy is that of a royal’s.”

Those flames in her eyes spilled out onto her skin, and she lit up like Shadow. The heat was intense, buffeting against us, pushing all of us back. I wondered if these flames would burn me or not. They felt the same as Shadow’s, but also different somehow.

“I’m like nothing that any of you have known,” she said, her voice deeper than I’d ever heard. And then, like a snake shedding its skin, she tilted her head back and spread her arms to the side as her body melted away.

In the place where Dannie had stood, there was a very different being. A creature? She was bird-like, with a long, flame-colored plume, and tail feathers that had to measure six feet in length. She was also covered in very real red and gold flames.

From the ashes, the phoenix will rise.

Dannie was a freaking phoenix, or at least as close an equivalent as I could think to a mythical creature who didn’t actually exist. But every image I’d seen back home of a phoenix was so close to Dannie, it was almost scary.

While I was having my freak out about what I was seeing, the others were as well, but once again, they had more information than me.

“It is the Danamain,” Angel breathed before she shook her head like she couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “No. Seriously. You’re a myth.”

Ixana breathed heavily. “You’re the original creature, Mainey? How? The literal Mother of Creatures?”

They knew her as Mainey. I knew her as Dannie. Between all of us, she’d been the Danamain. We just hadn’t had all the puzzle pieces to put it together.

Unable to stop myself, I stepped closer to my old friend, running my hands through her flames. As always, anything fire dragged me in and never let go.

The burn was pleasantly warm, and comforting, like I was the one coming home to my own mother. Once again, I panicked at the thought that Shadow and I were somehow related, and apparently only one person had the answer to that.

The Mother of Creatures.





43





Dannie, having proven her point, shifted back. Unlike me, her red robes appeared the moment she returned to her humanoid form.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was talking directly to her son. “For keeping this from you. But you were so young when they stole you from me, and I could not escape this realm until I figured out how to release Mera into your world.”

“Excuse me,” I cut in, blinking near a million times as I tried to figure out what she’d just said. “You released me into… What the actual fuck, Dannie?”

Now it was my turn to get an apology. “I have a lot to tell you, my sweet little wolf. And I’m sorry for the many years that you didn’t know your true self, but you are exactly the magnificent creature I expected when I sent your energy into a shifter pup.”

I shook my head, waving both hands in front of me as I refused to believe what she was saying. Shadow’s nearby rumbles were ominous; he was absolutely unhappy with his mother. “You better tell us everything from the start,” he said. “Leave nothing out.”

Dannie nodded, and then she directed us to sit at the water again. “The mists will restore your energy,” she said, “and this is a long tale. Take the restoration, trust me.”

Nobody was trusting her, that was for sure, but in this regard, they complied, sitting. I placed my feet into the Jell-O water and almost instantly felt better. Dannie and her freaking remedies.

“I was the first to emerge from the Nexus,” Dannie said, getting right to the point. “The first creature. The firebird. My place here was one of guidance. I brought the creatures into the world, a mother of sorts, and every single one has some of my energy in it. Only a sliver, though; most is the raw power of the mists. Here they do not fight or battle, they are not opposites.”

She waved her hand. “Once upon a time, everything in this land looked like this, but then the leicher mists in the chasm created the royals and all the beings under them, and after that, we have known no peace. The royals stole my children, controlling and using their pure energy, and there was little I could do to stop it. I was duty bound to stay near the Nexus and maintain the balance.”