Skyborn (Dragons & Druids #1)(37)

Logan was just looking at me, waiting for a response, and I didn’t have one for him. I didn’t want to talk about him protecting me, because I didn’t know what I was.

Something occurred to me then. “So, shifters are part human?” I remembered he had explained this earlier, but it all took on a much more important meaning to me now. I shivered as another cold breeze rippled through the front yard.

Logan nodded and slipped off his jacket, walking it over to me and placing it around my shoulders. “Yes. The queen of Faery always said they made perfect protectors for her skyborn because they were strong and loyal, and being half human would have sympathy for the humans. But two shifters cannot have children unless they are of the same species. So, two wolf shifters could have kids, but not a wolf shifter and a coyote shifter. The animal magic competes for the fetus and it ends in miscarriage.”

Weird and sad. I posed my next question: “But dragons? They’re shifters too.”

Logan lowered his voice. “The dragon shifters, like you and I, were made, not born. At least originally. We are more magical Fae than human. We’ve never been human. We’re part beast, part blood of the queen of Faery herself.”

I don’t know why but that terrified me. I wanted to be human, at least in part. I swallowed hard and pulled Logan’s jacket tighter around me and tried not to focus on his scent.

“And sorcerers can have babies with humans…”

Logan nodded. “That’s correct.”

“But we can only have babies with another full-blooded magical supernatural?” I think I was getting it.

Logan nodded. “Exactly. Like if your biological mother was a full-blooded sorceress like Eva, and your father was a skyborn, that would explain our purple problem.” He smiled.

I smiled back but it didn’t reach my eyes. Biological. He didn’t think my mother was my real mother.

“And after the Faery queen created us…” I let the sentence hang open.

He shifted his weight and I tried not to notice how his muscles bulged. “The skyborn were bound in service to the human race. Simply by being alive and on Earth, we help the humans live full and long lives. Well, longer than the thirty years they used to get.”

That wasn’t the history lesson I learned growing up. “So what happened?”

Logan’s jaw clenched. “The earthbound. In 1918, the druids came to Earth en masse. They had learned that if they killed a dragon and absorbed its magic, it made them stronger, all-powerful—able to regenerate after a mortal wound, able to have the strength of ten men, and much more.”

My brows climbed. “Nineteen-eighteen was the Spanish influenza.”

He nodded. “We lost millions of kin that year. It was a genocide of our people. That’s when we went into hiding. What few of us were left.”

Jesus. How awful. “And the humans got sick?”

He nodded. “All that dragon energy leaving the humans so quickly. Humans that we were bound to keep healthy … it caused a pandemic.”

“That’s awful,” I muttered.

Logan nodded solemnly. “When the queen of Faery bound us to the humans, she never even conceived of a day when we would not exist. She couldn’t have known that if we were all killed, her spell would backfire, taking all of the humans with us—taking the humanity of every shifter and half magical being with us as well.”

Oh God. It really sank in then, the enormity of what Logan and I had to do. “No pressure.” I laughed nervously before a thought struck me: “Couldn’t she undo the spell? The queen? Science can keep people alive longer now, and that way, if we die, we don’t take humanity down with us.”

Logan ran his fingers through his hair. “When the Fae royalty first learned that the druids had started killing skyborn, a war erupted in Faery. Sorcerers, shifters, and druids started trickling out of the Faelands and into Earth, fleeing the war that ravaged the land. In the end, the queen was destroyed, and so were all of the other royal families. The entirety of Faery died and was closed off forever.”

My eyes widened as shock ran through me. “How?”

Logan just gave me a look, a look that said take a guess.

I swallowed hard. “The druids?”

He nodded. “The earthbound are powerful. They can command trees, water, wind, and sky. They turned the land of Faery into a weapon that destroyed itself.”

And I might be half of one of them. The thought made me involuntarily shiver.

“So … the druids? Are they half human?” I tried to segue this into what I desperately needed to know.

Logan sighed, looking tired. How long had he been fighting them? “The druids are one hundred percent highborn Fae. Pureblooded born of magic. They only ever breed within their own race. It’s a part of their creed.”

Interesting. Now for the question I had wanted to ask all along…

“But … hypothetically, the druids could mate with … like, another pure magical being. Like a full-blooded sorcerer … like Eva?”

Or a full-blooded dragon, I thought.

Logan laughed. “Hypothetically yes, but they wouldn’t touch another supernatural in that way. They’re all purists. It’s ingrained in their training. ‘One race. One blood.’”

I shivered. “Sounds pretty racist.” It also sounded possible that I could be half druid…