“You are not some child anymore. You want to play in the field, to fight the monsters that go bump in the night, and save lives? You want to play hero? Then,act like it.You’re the First Blade. You have a duty, Quinn, especially in this family. You have a role, and instead of fulfilling it, youfuckingran away from it.”
“I-I was scared,” I whispered, unable to meet his gaze.
Silence answered me. It lasted for so long, I wondered if my father had left. I looked up, and I saw that he was very much not gone.
He was getting ready to explode instead.
“¡¿Estabas jodidamente asustada?! You were fucking scared?!”He bellowed, spittle flying, veins bulging, and face turning red with anger. “You don’tgetto be scared,mija!Fear gets your team killed! Fear makes you hesitate, and hesitation gets huntersmurdered!”
My father crossed the room in two long strides. I sank deeply into my bed in fear of what was to come. Dad had never hit me, Mama would fucking kill him if he ever did. But it made me wish he would. If he hit me, I would have something to show what he did to me when he got like this. It would make sense why I carried so much fear when it came to my father, why I never wanted to see him, and why he made me feel so small and insignificant. The worst part? His yelling wasn’t when he was at his most dangerous. No, it was when he was waiting, calculating. It was when he was searching for the best time to strike and do the most damage possible. My father was an opportunistic motherfucker, but that didn’t feel like enough justification. His shouting and wrecking my room were loud and annoying, but I knew kids whose parents abused them. This wasn’tthatbad. My father was an asshole, but at least he wasn’t that bad. I just wish he were so it would make sense why I wished him nothing but the worst.
Dad leaned down toward me. It was so close that the scents of smoke, blood, and death took over my nostrils and I fought not to cough them away.
“If you had been there,” His voice trembled with fury. “He wouldn’t be dying,huevóna.”
“D-Daddy, please. Wh-what—I-I mean, w-who are you talking about?”
“Get. Out. Of. Bed. Now.”
I scrambled to toss my sheets back. I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough because he grabbed my wrist in his gloved hand with a bone-squeezing grip that made me cry out. Still, he pulled me along out of my room. We moved so quickly that I barely noticed the sharp sting on the bottom of my feet as shattered glass went through my bare skin. I was sure my blood was dripping onto the carpet, but we didn’t stop for me to see.
My father wasn’t even supposed to be here.
He and Uncle Harry were supposed to be out on the field on a mission. For the first time since before I was born, their mission was to kill a dragon. The dragon-shifter was meant to be a large flame-breather. It was dangerous as fuck, and it was nothing more than a revenge plot. Her bounty was as fat as it was because she had killed other hunters.
Dragons couldn’t be taken down by just one or two hunters, even those like my family who were built to hunt them with our larger amounts of strength, faster speed, and tougher skin. So, Dad and Uncle Harry had assembled a huge team to go with them. They had been briefing and prepping for months, planning their attack, observing the target, researching dragon-shifters, and waiting for the perfect day to coordinate their ambush. I was there during the meetings. It was supposed to be my first dragon hunt, my coming-of-age trial by literal fucking fire. It was well past time for me to kill my first dragon-shifter. This was going to be my chance to begin my steps toward my legacy, to prove that I deserved to be a First Blade, and maybe I could be a Huntscomander someday.
But I had backed out.
I’d hunted before—a rogue witch, wolf-shifter, vampire, fairy, wendigo, and even banished a poltergeist from a house. I wasn’t afraid of killing. No, I was damn good at it, even from ayoung age. It was something I was proud of. There were times when I even liked taking out creatures who killed those who couldn’t protect themselves; they were legitimate monsters.
Yet, I was terrified of killing a dragon-shifter.
Dragon-shifters were built differently. The only thing they had in common with other shifters was their ability to shift into a different creature. But the beast that they could shift into was an enormous predator with scales that could only be penetrated with a certain weapon, claws and fangs that could tear through armor like tissue paper, a size that made them impossible to take on alone, and unforgiving power that they could use against foes. They had the mind of a human, making them cunning and hard as fuck to take down. Even if they didn’t shift completely, they were still the strongest shifter you could ever take on. Worse of all, despite being endangered, there was rarely just one of them.
Hunters from certain families like mine were the only beings in existence that could take them on. Putting aside our enhanced bodies, we were the only ones who could make weapons that could combat them. Little hunter kids grew up hearing stories about ancient hunter-knights taking on dragon-shifters to save villages and kingdoms, but they always ended in the hunters dying or becoming greedy from the hunt and its spoils. Maybe it was self-preservation, but that always scared me. It didn’t help either that dragon-shifter missions didn’t go through the same rigorous screening process that other supernaturals did when they were marked for the hunt. I never understood why, but it was too easy to have a bounty placed on them with little to no evidence. Once an assignment was created, they were offered to the highest bidder or the most bloodthirsty crew. When I asked Mama about it after learning about it in school, she snorted and called it hunter-population control.
Only dumb hunters take on every single dragon-shifter assignment they can find. Killing a dragon is not only a hard task, even for our family that is made for it, but it is a heavy weight to carry. The Hunter Council and I share this opinion, I’m sure: Send out the dumb ones, so the strong, smart ones live on and pass on their genes.
My father, on the other hand, liked the challenge. He liked the idea of glory.
Yet, when I was faced with the chance to kill a dragon, I couldn’t do it. I had begged my Mama to help me find a way to get out of it. She had relented easily, understanding my apprehension.
When we hit the bottom of the stairs, my father flung me toward the formal living room. I almost tripped over my feet. Once I regained my footing, I saw the couch.
The world stopped dead for me.
My Uncle Harry lay sprawled across the longest of the couches. For a second, I didn’t recognize him. The man I remembered—tall, lean, sculpted like a statue—looked thinner and smaller now, like something had drained the life right out of him. His broad chest, usually proud and straight, was rising slowly in shallow, strained breaths. Muscles that once flexed with coiled energy were slack and trembling beneath the torn fabric of his T-shirt. His blond hair, always neatly combed back like he was posing for some magazine cover, was now matted with sweat, streaked with ash, and singed on the ends. The golden strands clung to his forehead, plastered down like wilted straw. His skin had turned the color of wet paper, ghost-pale and clammy, almost translucent in the early light streaming in. A faint tint of blue danced along his lips and fingertips. His eyes were closed, hiding his stark blue eyes, lashes twitching. Yet, even in unconsciousness, his face was twisted in pain.
Because of the stones.
Shards of pink crystals jutted out from every direction from his arms and legs. Their jagged edges sticking out from his limbs were sharp and deadly in their own right. Some of them were no bigger than arrowheads, but others were large and pierced straight through muscle and bone. The biggest one protruded from his thigh, surrounded by a halo of inflamed and blackening flesh. It pulsed faintly like it was alive and feeding on him. The scents of blood, burnt hair and flesh, and the sickly-sour stench of sweat and infection mixed together. My stomach churned so violently that I nearly bit my tongue to keep from gagging.
I had no love for my Uncle. He was neither kind nor warm to me. With his icy blue eyes and movie-star jawline, he was a clout-chaser, always smiling around other Hunters and chasing the next promotion. I had to concede that he was a natural-born killer and a relentless climber. He was a man who’d rather be respected than loved, and for the most part, he got what he wanted.
But now, he looked like a fallen statue. Even though I had hardly spoken or interacted with him because there was never a reason to do so, I still wasn’t ready to see him like this.
I wasn’t ready to see himdying.
