“I’m sure I can follow along. Just talk.”
He gazed out at the lake for a long moment before facing her head on, meeting her eyes. “First, I’m a shifter. It means I have an animal inside of me. I know it sounds weird, but it’s the truth. You saw him last night—”
Olivia waved her hand impatiently. “I know all that, and I know what a shifter is. What I saw last night, whatever you are, is not a shifter. At least, that’s not all you are.”
His eyebrows shot up. “How do you know what shifters are?”
“That’s not important right now. It’s your turn. Talk.”
His brow furrowed as he looked at her, and she swore he inhaled deeply. He was trying to figure out if she was a shifter, but he wouldn’t be able to tell that way. Dragons had no scent.
“You’re right. I’m not just a shifter,” he replied slowly. “Our ancestors are… different. A few hundred years ago, a gorilla shifter mated with a vampire. No one expected them to have mixed breed children. They assumed any kids would be either vampire or shifter—not a mix of both. Yet, here we are. It’s happened even more over the last few centuries, and about fifty years ago, all known descendants banded together. We all live here now.”
Stunned, she stared at him with wide eyes, not even breathing. Cody was half vampire and half shifter? How was that even possible? Vampires were on the rare side, but it wasn’t unheard of for them to mate with shifters.
What was unheard of was for them to produce children with both traits.
“Y-you’re… both vampire and shifter?”
“Yes and no,” he replied, his brow furrowed with concentration as he tried to explain. “I—and my troop—have some vampire characteristics. We have night vision, better than any other shifter, and we’re even faster than the average shifter, too. But we have no thirst for blood. We’re basically shifters with some above average enhancements, who happen to look a little different.”
“That’s why you were white, with red skin and eyes. And maybe even why you barely have the scent of fur,” she replied slowly.
“Hybrids don’t generally have a scent like most shifter species, and when they do, it’s very faint and hard to pick up on. As for the rest… kind of. Most gorilla-vampire hybrids have dark fur with red skin and eyes. Only Silverbacks have white fur.”
She felt her eyes get even wider at that admission. “You’re a Silverback? So, you’re the alpha of your troop?”
He nodded, his half smile finally making an appearance. “I am. Every generation in my family has produced the Silverback for the past two hundred years or so, and that remained the case when the other hybrids joined us.”
She remained quiet for a moment, processing all the information, and testing herself to see how she felt about it. She couldn’t lie, there was still a tiny sliver of fear there, because hello, vampire and previously unheard of hybrid.
But her earlier suspicions were also correct. Learning what he truly was didn’t really make a difference in how she felt for him. He was just still Cody—and she was still falling for him. Hard.
“I… don’t even know what to say. This is a lot of information to take in. What you are… it’s an impossibility I’d never believe if you told me, yet I saw it with my own eyes.”
“It’s a lot to take in, I know.” Pausing, he studied her with intense chocolate eyes. “But I know what you can say. How do you know what shifters are?”
She didn’t even hesitate in her choice to tell him. What she was seemed almost insignificant in the face of what he was. Still, a small smile played on her lips as she looked at him. “Because I am one.”
His eyebrows furrowed as he shook his head slowly. “That’s not possible. You have no scent. No fur, feathers, anything. If you were a shifter, I’d know it.”
“That’s because I have no scent. I’m a dragon.”
Chapter 13
Cody
Cody’s mouth popped open at Olivia’s words. She was a dragon? No way.
“That can’t be. Dragons don’t exist anymore. The hunters killed them all.”
Eyes sparkling a bit, she shrugged. “That’s what we wanted everyone to think. But I assure you, we exist. There aren’t many of us left—we’re pretty much on the endangered species list—but there are some. And I’m one of them.”
He must have still had a disbelieving look on his face, because she arched an eyebrow, then looked as if she were concentrating. A moment later, her pupils flickered, elongating and then snapping back to normal quickly.
And at the same time, her moss green irises took on a light, silvery blue iridescent hue. They were absolutely gorgeous, and his breath caught as he gazed at them. His mind flashed back to the day they met, when he thought her eyes changed color a bit, but he’d dismissed it because she had no scent.
But now it made sense.