Beauty in Ashes (Phoenix Rising #7)- Harper Wylde Page 0,2

strands of his hair. I loved how the color illuminated as it caught the overhead lighting, nearly glowing against his sun-kissed skin.

“No.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, I could almost hear the unsaid ‘Thank God’ at the end of that sentence. “Ciarán was covering his mind, hiding it, attempting to make himself appear dimwitted and unfocused, and used music and random thoughts to act as a cover for his true self. It’s more like…” He considered us for a moment, searching for the words he needed. “It’s more like he doesn’t have a true self.” Damien leaned back against the wall, letting the wood take his weight as he thought. “I can always feel a person’s alter in their minds, but it’s an echo, it’s not a real presence. When a mind is shattered, it’s like picking through pieces. His mind feels nothing like either. It’s a mess of blurred lines and sharp edges all jammed together and combined into one entity.”

“Can you show me?” Theo’s blue eyes were sharp.

Damien tilted his head. “I can try. I’m not sure I can pass the full sensation though,” he cautioned.

“Just try,” I encouraged. “Maybe if I can understand a bit better, it will help me when I talk to him.”

Damien opened our link, and I felt him push an impression of him searching Birdman’s mind toward me. It was a view of our compound, of the buildings from overhead, I realized. It should have been simple, a flash of memory, yet in a moment, I understood what Damien meant. I felt like I was seeing through a poorly filtered screen, each piece of the image colored and processed slightly differently. Emotions battered me, none of them seeming to connect, and each of those fragments felt off, disconnected, yet were still clearly a part of the whole.

Ryder swore, staggering slightly, before Hiro caught him, keeping him steady on his feet. Joshua had gone slightly pale, reaching out to steady himself against the wall. “What in the hell is that?” Joshua whispered, his eyes wide as he looked at us.

“That’s what you’ve been looking at?” I questioned breathlessly. “His entire mind is like that?”

Damien’s mouth was pressed into a thin line. “Everything. I can’t even get to it all. Much of it’s still walled off, but the parts he’s let me into? It’s all the same.”

“What could cause that?” Killian asked, and even the sturdy Celt looked a little sick, his fair skin slightly green.

Theo sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It may actually make sense.” All our eyes whipped to the Kraken. “I finished all of the testing I’ve been working on. I was going to go over the results with you before we went in there today, but seeing this? It makes everything a little clearer.”

Damien waved a hand for him to continue and pulled me against his chest, nuzzling his head into my hair.

Theo looked to all of us in turn. “He’s a hybrid.”

“We knew that already,” Killian grumbled.

“You don’t understand. The kids? They’re maybe two types of shifters. The types are forced to integrate, unlike a typical mating, but they’re still two types. Him?” Theo shook his head. “I found markings for at least eight kinds of shifters in his DNA. Active types of shifters.” His eyes locked with mind as he added, “Including an avian marker I’ve only seen one other time.”

I froze. “He’s part phoenix?”

“Not phoenix,” Theo assured me. “But whatever your father’s bloodline is. I’ve still had no luck identifying that.”

“But you know it’s not Stepanov’s Koschei,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t match what’s in the database.”

“I only know what he contributed to the database doesn’t match,” Theo reminded me gently. “He could have had his own reasons for not wanting his genetic material catalogued and simply provided false material.”

“He’s not avian though,” Ryder argued, slamming his hand into the wall. “I don’t understand why that guy, or Stepanov for that matter, would make that kind of claim!”

“Mind games,” Killian replied coldly. “What else would it be? He knew it would fuck with our girl’s head like nothing else.” Killian wasn’t wrong, and I shuddered again, despite Damien’s warmth at my back. I had already gotten rid of one murderer of a father, only to be told I had another one. It was like I was cursed. I knew bloodlines didn’t define a person, but I still didn’t want to be related to that evil bastard.

“Ryder has a point,” I murmured, pulling Damien’s arms tighter