In a way, it be reassuring. This be about energy. Because of my sensitivity to it, I be as lured to her as them. Perhaps Fate be not part of this equation.
But what kind of Cryptids generated offspring with this power? With all the interbreeding they’d done with humans, the powers be combining and manifesting in unusual ways. Yet her parents seemed lost to time. The Watchers be looking into them, but so far, they’d found nothing.
According to Cara, mysterious hybrid powers be cropping up over the last few years. Some believed there be cosmic, realm-wide implications to it—that such things happened because they beneeded.
If that be the case, were we poised on a cataclysm? I’d been in a position to know that we’d come closer than most realized over the last few months. Somehow, we’d scraped through it and come out the victors.
Powerful essences intruded on my troubled thoughts. I opened my eyes to my fellow instructors—Cody and Tyrez.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” the big Dragonshifter rumbled.
“We apologize, but intrude anyway,” Cody added, lowering himself down on the other end of my bench.
My lips twitched. The Sabre amused me more than I let on. “It be all right. I welcome distraction from my thoughts.”
Tyrez crossed his arms over his broad chest and tweaked a brow. But both he and Cody knew of the past for which I be trying to atone.
“So what be bringing you out here, away from your dinner?” I asked.
“We want to compare notes on a student,” Tyrez answered.
My heart did a weird double flip. But it surprised me when Cody added, “Have you noticed anything strange about Talakai?”
Talakai? The other Dragonshifter? I frowned as my brain refocused. “He’s very fit,” I hedged. I’d been so distracted that the big shifter had barely entered my realm of consciousness today. Not an impressive lapse for a trained warrior. I cleared my throat. “What concerns you?”
Tyrez swayed from one foot to the other. “He’s a very good fighter.”
A good fighter? My attention sharpened. Why would Tyrez and Cody be concerned about such? “How good?” I asked.
“I teamed him up with my best student today,” Cody said. “Matt’s good, almost my level. I expected him to put the Dragon in the dust. But Talakai could have beaten him.”
“Could have?”
“Matt bested him, but I’m pretty sure Talakai let him win.” Cody shook his head. “But that Dragon moves like lightning. And someone only gets that good by being trained young and drilled daily.”
I understood that well because that be how all Bellatis be trained. But we be unusual in that regard. I looked at the Dragon. “Legion?”
Tyrez rubbed a big hand along his jaw. “It’s not Legion training. He’s underworld, not Empire.”
Now I saw where they be going with this. “What be he before he came here?”
“That’s the question,” Cody agreed. “His application states he was a weapons dealer in the black market. Amadeus barely conceded to let him in, and only because Cara argued that such experience would be useful for a Shade. But that doesn’t explain his ability to fight.”
“Could have had private tutoring,” I said.
Tyrez shook his head. “Maybe if he was the son of an underlord. That kind of extensive training is costly.”
My mind cataloged and dismissed most situations, including the unlikely scenario where an underlord’s son would apply to the council’s academy.
Of course, we also had an alpha. I grimaced. “So what be your thoughts on it?” I had my own idea.
Tyrez uttered a rumbling growl and then spoke a single word. “Guild.”
It meshed with my own thoughts. The Black Guild trained and hired assassins out to anyone willing to pay for them. Their operatives had an unrivaled reputation for efficiency, lethality—and total lack of conscience.
If the Guild sent him, who be their target?
If he’d fled the organization, that be big trouble, too. For him, and for us. Members be slaves until they bought their way free. If he be bonded, and he was running—the Guild would come for him. The fact he be on council grounds wouldn’t save him—or anyone who got in the way...
