Skyborn (Dragons & Druids #1)(47)

I pressed the green circle and held the phone to my ear. “Hey, Eva.”

Her voice was warm and polite but there was an underlying tone I couldn’t read. “Hi, honey. Are you alone?”

Oh shit. “Yes. I’m up in my room.”

She was silent for a moment and I knew then without a doubt—I was half monster. Then she confirmed it. “Sweetheart, I took your blood to my friend and he confirmed that you are in fact half druid.”

Tears pricked my eyes; my throat tightened with emotion. “How?”

Eva sighed. “Well, If I had to guess, I think it was your mother, sweetheart. She was a druid and fell in love with your father, who would have had to have been a dragon. She probably left the druid clan and they magically stripped her of her power, making her essentially human.”

I gasped. “They can do that?”

Eva gave a sarcastic chuckle. “They can do almost anything, dear.”

Frick. I was in shock. “My dad … a dragon. How?”

“You’re twenty-one years old. Twenty-one years ago, there were two dragons alive, Logan and Marcus.”

I gasped. “Logan … could be my father?” I couldn’t breathe.

Eva rushed her words. “Of course not!”

I exhaled all of my breath in one rush, unable to handle the kind of mental torment that would have held. “Who is Marcus?” Where did I know that name? It hit me then. Logan had mentioned a Marcus. He’d said he was a sucker for redheads … like my mom.

Eva exhaled and I could tell this story hit her personally. “He was Logan’s mentor. They had a falling out. Marcus started talking crazy, talking about having sympathy for some of the druids. How not all of them were bad. Things like that. They had a disagreement and Marcus left. Logan looked for him for a few years, but finally only found him when he died. Killed by druids when you were probably a baby.”

“Shit.” I couldn’t take any more; I couldn’t breathe and it felt like a five-hundred-pound rock was sitting on my chest. Maybe I was having a heart attack. My mother … my sweet mother, who gardened and dedicated her life to teaching children … a druid. A dragon killer.

“You’re sure? You’re sure that your sorcerer friend is one hundred percent certain I am half…?” I couldn’t finish.

Eva’s reply shocked me. “Oh, honey, my friend isn’t a sorcerer. He’s a druid, and yes he’s one hundred percent sure.”

What did she just say? “You’re friends with a druid?” Maybe it was wrong of me to trust Eva. She could be working for the other side. How stupid and na?ve I was to give a sorcerer my blood!

“He’s not like the others. He’s the last of his kind. He takes magic from the earth, not from dragons, and he wants to meet you, honey. I can come over in the morning and we can tell the pack together. Then I can take you to meet my friend.”

Oh. Hell. No. I was not meeting any more druids, even if they claimed not to be the dragon killing kind. “Sure,” I lied.

Eva paused. “It’s going to be okay, Sloane. I’ll make the pack see that you’re nothing like those monsters.”

But I was. I was like them because my freaking blood said so. “Okay … thanks, Eva.”

She was silent for a moment before saying goodbye and hanging up.

I sat there in a numb silence for a minute. My mother was a druid … either that or she wasn’t my biological mother, and I couldn’t take the latter. I knew nothing about druids, but my mother did have a special affinity for gardening and that sort of thing. Maybe that was her druid heritage. Some kind of earth power. Still … I couldn’t see my mother associating with those people from today. I couldn’t see her killing Logan—or any other being. She was gentle and kind—fierce when she needed to be, but kind at heart. Had she given me hints along the way? She’d always said my father was one of a kind and died protecting us. I figured he was a cop or something by the way she spoke about him. Maybe he was this Marcus person. She’d shown me a picture once—tall, with light brown hair, and a chiseled jaw. And … he had fierce green eyes, like me, like Logan. What Eva said had to be true. Either way, the most important part was that I was a druid with freaky purple magic and I needed to get the hell out of here.

I crossed the room and started shoving things into my duffle bag. I couldn’t stay here anymore. Not now, not after this. There were a room full of angry druid-hating hunters downstairs, and I’d seen the way Dom had looked at those men today. When the pack found out I was half druid and not half sorcerer, they would never look at me the same, and I couldn’t bear it. Dom would be the first one to put a bullet between my eyes.

I had a hundred grand in the bank. I could start over, lay low. I’d been with Logan and the pack for a few days now and my dragon hadn’t shifted—I was getting more in control of it. I was going to be fine.

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and I slowly crossed the room on my tiptoes to turn out the light. Shadows danced under the door and I heard a soft knock. “Sloane? You awake?” It was Logan. It was 9:09pm and I was twenty-one years old—who would believe I was asleep? But I didn’t answer, and after a moment the footsteps retreated back downstairs. The thought of leaving the pack … It made me sick. They had become my friends, especially Nadine and Danny and … Logan. Logan was literally the only other person in this world that I could relate to. But still, I couldn’t stay. What if my purple magic started lashing out and hurt Logan? What if I started turning bad and tried to kill him or something awful?