“I am the First,” he said. He had walked about twenty feet from me before turning. Behind him, outside the circle, more shifters closed in, though none came within a foot of the barrier.

  “You’ll be the Last,” I said, not one to leave low-hanging fruit untouched.

  The First laughed with a harsh bark. “I have seen our futures, Jade Crow. You are not in them.”

  That was not a comforting thought. But I knew from my own brush with time manipulation and the Pattern that the future wasn’t set in stone. It was malleable, changeable, every choice branching into new futures.

  I spread my hands and thought again of my dragon. I visualized her from the tufts of my ears to the tips of my black wings and long tail. Fire burned in my belly, warming me from the inside, but my dragon form did not manifest. It felt like my skin was too tight, as though stretched to contain the dragon but not yielding to let her out.

  The First shifted into a giant golden eagle and shot upward with heavy beats of his wings. Grit flew into my face and I ducked instinctively. He flew high and circled.

  “Oh, so you get to leave the arena?” I muttered. I bent and found two good-sized rocks, hefting one in each hand.

  The First dove for me, as I’d guessed he would. I hurled the rocks at his incoming shadow, both missing terribly. Throwing had never been my thing, but I scooped up more gravel and cast it at his wings as they spread to arrest his dive.

  His claws raked my arms, tearing into me as I dropped to protect myself. White-hot pain seared down my forearms. I threw my body weight into the eagle, bringing us both to the ground. I’d seen videos of fish drowning eagles and wished in that moment I had a lake. But all I had was rock.

  Still, rocks and feathers seemed like they’d be a terrible combination. Using my body weight and trying to breathe through the pain, I rolled onto the eagle. Grounded, his wings beat against the gravel, kicking up dust and grit. Then the First shifted again, becoming some kind of huge snake, a python perhaps, his scales sharp and cool beneath me. He writhed, his thick, muscular body tossing me like a twig away from him. I rolled, trying to remember all of Alek’s lessons in hand-to-hand combat, and made it back to my feet.

  The First slithered away and reared up. Not a python. He was a cobra, the wide hood spreading as he hissed at me, forked tongue flicking out. The dust we’d kicked up swirled in the breeze and coated my bleeding arms. A weak cheer went up from the First’s side of the arena, not nearly as many voices as I would have expected for the numbers he had. I hoped that was a good sign for us.

  “Jade?” Harper’s voice cut through the cheering. I heard someone, a man, say something to her. One of the twins, probably. I didn’t spare a glance behind me, my gaze locked on the cobra.

  My magic whispered in my veins and begged my hurt body to use it. Not yet, I told it. The First was toying with me, but it was buying Freyda’s people time. Everyone was watching us. I wasn’t losing too badly, yet. A little blood and pain was nothing. The deep gouges in my arms didn’t feel like nothing but mind over body and all that.

  Breathing deep through my nose, I circled toward where I knew Alek watched, wanting him at my back, wanting the reassurance he was there.

  “Shift, Jade,” Alek murmured as the First circled with me, slithering closer. Gravel crunched beneath my feet and blood slid down my arms, spattering the rocks.

  “I can’t,” I whispered, knowing he would hear me. “I tried. It isn’t working.” I wished more than anything to turn and look at Alek’s face but I didn’t dare give the First my back.

  The First didn’t like us talking. He struck faster than I could track, his fangs slicing into my left shoulder as his muscular, scaled body wound around me. I was yanked off my feet, my arms locked to my sides with crushing force as the First dragged me into the center of the arena. Ice flowed from my shoulder wound as the First let go with his fangs. Venom. I hoped I was immune though from the intense, paralyzing cold spreading down my left side, I was guessing I wasn’t. My sorceress healing would keep me from dying, but it wasn’t a miracle working at the speed of injury.

  The snake’s coils pulled tighter. I felt my ribs crack. The air in my lungs wheezed out of me and I couldn’t stop a pained cry from escaping my lips. The First coiled tighter and tighter as I struggled. Red dots danced in my vision and darkness and pain narrowed my world to the fight to take just one more breath.

  Play time was over.

  I reached for the ocean of power inside me. I’d known I couldn’t win without either figuring out how to shift into a dragon or without cheating and using magic. I hoped I’d bought enough time for Freyda’s people to help. I hoped I wasn’t dooming everyone I loved to die in battle. I hoped I still had enough strength in me to finish this one way or another.

  A roar split through the rushing of blood in my ears. A deep, coughing tiger roar. The coils around me loosened and then dropped me. I crawled away from the First, toward that beautiful, familiar roar. Alek. The sound vibrated into me, my skin tight and growing tighter. I sucked in a painful but beautiful breath of fresh air.

  Alek’s roar sounded again, more forceful this time. A shadow fell across where I lay gasping on the sun-warmed rocks as the First shifted into a huge tiger and stalked over me, his mouth full of teeth as long as my forearm. He also roared, but his was weaker than Alek’s. My mate’s voice was inside me now, deep in my bones, in the rush of my blood, the beat of my heart.

  My skin was too tight. Heat bloomed inside me, pushing back the paralyzing cold in my shoulder, burning away the pain of the wounds in my arms. My arms. Scales. I saw them beneath my skin, deep purple and silver.

  Alek’s roar, his power, was calling my dragon.

  I reached for her again, and it felt like a membrane broke inside me in a burst of heat. The pain of my broken ribs, torn arms, and damaged shoulder went from doomful to merely aching. My vision sharpened, my breathing evening out as I gained my feet. Paws. My paws!

  The First sprang back and shifted again, this time into his human form. “No,” he yelled, his face twisting with rage.

  I knew what he saw, what they all saw as his people, all shifted into their animal forms by Alek’s power, moved away from the arena circle in a frightened wave of fur and shifting bodies.

  Head like a cat’s, but with scales. Ears tufted with soft black fur. Big black wings with deep purple scales, and a long, scaly tail that ended in its own tuft of fur. A compact, strong body with purple and silver-tipped scales shimmering along its length. I dwarfed the First as I reared up on my hind legs and spread my wings, flexing the claws in my front paws. He wanted tooth and claw, well, he was welcome to come get some.

  “This is sorcery,” the First sputtered. “You are cheating. You do not win here. I saw it. I cannot be defeated while he lives.” The sharp smell of sulfur grew stronger and red sparks flickered and fell from his clenched fists as he advanced on me.

  Before, with everyone I’d ever fought, even Samir, I’d hesitated at the last. Debated the kill, even when there hadn’t really been time to do so. This time, Dragon-me was out of fucks to give.

  “I cannot be defeated!” the First yelled again, his bland face twisted into a mask of rage. Spit flecked his lips. Gravel vibrated into the air as his magic grew and swirled around us in sulfurous red smoke. “I cannot…”

  Reader, I ate him.

  Silence followed. The circle snapped as I crunched and swallowed. I did my best not to think about what I’d just done, or there was a good chance the First would be coming back up. A vomiting dragon-cat might be on brand, but it would hurt my currently badass image. Wolf appeared in my mind’s eye, corralling the First’s memories before I could more than glimpse them. I sent her a mental thanks. I was up for one crisis at a time at this point. His magic sank into the ocean of my own.

  I spread my wings and used magic to raise me into the air, not wanting to kick up a dust storm by beating my wings. I had no idea if I could speak in this form, but I was going to try. Below me stretched a few hundred bodies, still mostly in their animal forms, but some had shifted back to human. The walls and ridges of the quarry were swarmed and all their eyes turned upward to me as I hovered overhead.

  “The First is dead,” I said. My voice rang forth, almost musical, a deep toll of a bell across open land. It wasn’t so much from me moving my mouth, either—I felt my words as a projection more than an actual act of speaking. More magic I supposed, but I ran with it. There’d be time to figure out this whole dragon thing later.

  “Surrender, and you can go back to your lives. This is my town. If you were coerced to be here, you will have our help. If you chose the wrong side, you have until dawn to be far far away.” I punctuated the last words with a strong wingbeat and a roar of my own that reverberated around the quarry and shook the branches of the distant trees.

  I lowered my body back to the ground. Even in this form, my ribs ached and my mouth tasted like sulfur and blood. I released my dragon form, visualizing fingers and hair, focusing on the feel of my D20 amulet against my chest. Pain returned with a vengeance as I shifted back to human shape. I shoved it aside and turned away from the confused and frightened bodies of the First’s people.

  I stumbled toward where Rachel and Vivian were trying to help Alek out of his chains. Harper, Ezee, and Levi moved toward me but stopped as I waved them off. Freyda went past me, toward the hopefully former enemy, Aurelio and others following her lead. They parted for me as I got to Alek. His chains turned to dust with a tired wave of my hand, my magic flowing strongly through my veins, holding the darkness at bay.

  And then I was in his arms, his warm skin against my cheek, his heartbeat strong as I laid my ear to his chest. I used more magic to push away the world, surrounding us in a swirling circle of cooling mist. Time slowed for us, the chaos beyond blocked out. Whatever happened next, this was worth it. This moment was all I’d fought for.

  “I remember my first vision of you,” Alek murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest.

  “When you came into my shop and accused me of murder?” I said with a hiccupping laugh. My face was wet with tears, and I didn’t even remember crying. It hurt to cling to him and I didn’t care at all. The pain made me wrap my arms more tightly around him.

  “Before that. The vision from the Council that sent me to you. A woman with hair like smoke and flames in her eyes.”

  I tipped my head back and looked up at him. “I remember. I stood all poetically at the crossroads between life and death.” I licked my lips as he bent down, his mouth a breath away from mine. Beyond my magic, the real world was trying to invade, the sounds of shouting and flickers of movement breaking through the mist. “I wonder which I chose?”

  Alek’s lips brushed mine and then he tucked me against his chest again, resting his chin lightly on my head. “Love,” he murmured. “You chose love.”

  Freyda, Aurelio, and the other wolf-shifter alphas took control of things after that. I don’t know how they got it all sorted, and I knew there were some scuffles, but no one died. There were a lot of shifters displaced who would need help finding new homes or returning to their old lives, but Freyda was like a general with a plan and I was smart enough to stand aside and let her do what she was good at.

  I went home, taking Alek with me. After food and a shower and about a million years of sleep, but really only fifteen hours or so later, I felt like a person again. My shoulder and ribs healed in what felt like record time while I slept. A corner had been turned with my shifting into a dragon. I understood somewhat better what the Archivist had meant when he said he felt change coming. I had eaten Samir’s heart and broken a seal. Change was inevitable.

  Fortunately, so were pancakes and bacon. The world wasn’t totally wrecked yet.

  “You really going to eat that sitting on his lap?” Lara asked me as I set my heaping plate down in front of Alek before squishing into his lap.

  “I’m not letting him go ever again, so get used to it,” I said with a grin.

  “You need to eat, and I need to eat.” Alek wrapped his arms around me and gently lifted me up, setting me in my own chair. He kept his thigh pressed against mine, however, and his eyes were crinkled with laughter as I made a face at him.

  I knew I couldn’t stay in actual physical contact with him forever, but I wasn’t about to relinquish it when I didn’t have to yet. Part of me couldn’t believe he was real. It was going to take more than a day or two for me to forget the sight of his face covered in blood, the sound of him dying beside me as I hung helplessly trapped in the truck. I was resilient, not impervious. There were still haunted shadows deep in his eyes, too, and for all he joked about it, he hadn’t stopped touching me, either.

  Harper, the twins, and Junebug had shown up with Lara this afternoon, all of them toting various baked goods and supplies. We crowded around my table eating a late breakfast and enjoying the feeling of nobody trying to kill us. They caught me up on what Freyda and the others were doing. Vivian and Rachel were apparently in the thick of things at the Den still, doing what they could to help. Harper looked happier and less burdened, so I assumed when she shared the news about the vet and the sheriff, it meant she’d gotten a chance to talk to them. There was no way they would blame her for running, and I hoped that with their help she would stop blaming herself.

  Justice May also returned, having been in hiding with a couple of shifter families. She’d been pinned down by a group of the First’s minions, but they’d been called away before the big duel and she was able to escape with the refugees. She was going to be staying on with Freyda for a while and helping with the rehoming of various groups.

  I decided to keep the shop closed for a couple more days. I took the time to rest, eat, and spend a lot of time in bed with Alek. Three days after the fight with the First, I came upon my warded box as I was cleaning the apartment. I opened it and laid my hand over Samir’s key.

  Wolf materialized and brushed against my side, pushing her nose under my opposite hand. I dug my fingers into her fur as a wave of memory, Samir’s memory, rocked me. Like a proper wave, it flowed through me and then was gone again, leaving knowledge in its wake.

  “Jade?” Alek said, coming up beside me, his ice-blue eyes concerned.

  “I know what it is,” I said. Awe shivered through me. “I know what this does!”

  Alek helped me hang the door that Samir had sent me onto a closet in the storeroom. It fit perfectly, morphing slightly to fill the space it needed as we screwed in the hinges. I tried not to think about the magic that had created this door. Samir was dead. I knew the door’s purpose now, and it wouldn’t hurt me.

  I tested the key anyway before I sent text messages around and gathered the gang. Just in case, like a good rogue checking for traps.

  I ushered Harper, Lara, Ezee, and Levi into the storeroom. Alek leaned against the doorway behind them as they all filed in and stared at the ornate door on the closet.

  “I thought that door was evil?” Lara asked, brows raised.

  “Nope,” I said. “I know what it does now.” I motioned to the key in it. “Who wants to do the honors?”

  No one stepped up. In fact, they backed away.

  “Oh come on,” I said. “It’s fine. I checked it for traps and everything.”

  They all had more or less flattened themselves to the far wall.

  “For fuck’s sake, that was one time. One! In a game, not even real.” I made a face at my friends.

  “Total,” Harper said.

  “Party,” Ezee said.

  “Kill,” Levi said.

  “What about you?” I said to Lara. “Come on, be brave!”

  “Oh no,” Lara said, folding her arms over her chest. “I’m a gay black woman, and I have seen this movie.”

  “Fine, cowards,” I muttered, ignoring Alek’s soft chuckle. I turned the key and swung the door open.

  The gasps behind me were satisfying at least. The door opened into a library, a proper huge library with shelves stacked to the heavens and long wooden ladders on brass wheels at various intervals.

  “Is that…?” Ezee moved forward and peered over my shoulder through the doorway.

  “Samir’s library? Yeah,” I said. “Only, don’t go touch anything, sorry. I haven’t actually checked the whole house in there yet.”

  “His house?” Harper said. “Maybe we should burn it. To be safe.”

  I couldn’t say the thought hadn’t occurred to me, but I believed that the value of the works he had collected outweighed the risks. There were very probably things in that house I was doing to destroy with impunity, but it would take a while and careful sorting, and careful access to his memories, to sort it all out.

  “Some stuff I will destroy, for sure,” I said. “Once I figure out what it all is and what it does.”

  “I’ll totally help you sort the books,” Ezee said as an excited gleam lit his eyes.

  “I figured you would,” I said, sliding an arm around him. “Anyway, I figured y’all should be the first to see this. After everything.”

  “After everything,” Harper said, coming up beside me. “We’re still here.”

  “Yes we are, furball.” I slid my other arm around her and we stared through the magic doorway into our future. It looked pretty bright indeed.

  That evening I stood in the lot behind my building, watching the sun sink into the trees. Alek and I had taken our dinner down to the picnic table on the back patio, enjoying the warm summer breeze. He stood behind me, his arms loosely wrapped around my torso, his chin resting on my head.

  The wind carried the scent of baking bread and crushed lavender. We both tensed as three figures appeared in front of us as though by magic, stepping out of beams of sunlight as though through doorways we just hadn’t noticed. Alek stepped away from me, moving to my side, his muscles tensing.

  The three women all looked somewhat like Brie, but not. The tallest had sharper features, her blood-red hair smooth instead of curly, her eyes black with flecks of silver in the irises instead of bright blue. She stood in the middle. The woman to her left was the shortest; her features reminded me of a bird’s, inquisitive and alive, her hands seemingly unable to keep still as she smoothed her green dress. Her hair was more orange than red, the curls loose and unruly, and when she met my gaze, flames danced in the pupils of her light blue eyes.