Even Dev was awed. “So what are you, then?”
“Xarunese.”
“Bless you,” Dev said drily. “You need a Kleenex? Benadryl?”
Max sighed heavily at the bear’s fucked-up sense of humor. “Land of Xarun. Much like Atlantis, the gods took issue with it. What little remains sits at the bottom of the Black Sea. I’m one of the very few who survived the sinking.”
“Ouch.”
Max inclined his head to Kyle for his verbalizing the pain of that particular nightmare.
“So wait a minute.” Dev cocked his head as if he just realized what Max was telling them. “You’re not Greek or Apollite… how exactly are you Katagaria?”
Carson Whitethunder, the hawk who was also their resident vet and doctor, passed a smirk to Dev. He and Aimee were the only two creatures here who had ever seen the mark that was branded on Max’s thigh. And only because they had treated his injuries. Aimee when Max had first arrived one heartbeat from death, and Carson decades later after a couple of their grittier confrontations with enemies who’d tried over the years to destroy the Peltier family. “Haven’t you ever wondered why, in over a hundred years of living here, Max has never stepped a single foot outside of this building?”
Dev snorted. “We’re all freaks here. I don’t judge.”
Max glanced to Seraphina as he remembered the less than pleasant way she’d handled the news when she’d first learned what that mark was. Why he bore it.
He’d never intended for anyone here to learn about it. But it was time to come clean.
“Remember that you’re all bound by the Omegrion laws. None of you can attack me on Sanctuary grounds.”
“Sheez, boy,” Dev groused. “What are you? The Dragonbane, or something?”
Max inclined his head to him, and as soon as he did, it sucked every bit of oxygen from the room. Half the shapeshifters around him took a step back, as if terrified being near him would taint them.
All humor and friendliness evaporated from Dev’s eyes as he gaped. “Are you shitting me? You’re the sole reason for the war between the Katagaria and the Arcadians?”
Illarion stepped between them. It’s not that simple, Dev. Calm down.
Dev curled his lip. “Not that simple, my ass. You murdered Lycaon’s heir in cold blood and started this bloodbath between our people, and you’re telling me it’s not that simple?”
Max felt that same sick knot in his stomach he got any time someone saw his mark and recognized it.
He was the most hated among his people.
No, not his people.
They were Greeks and Apollites.
He wasn’t. He’d never really been one of them. Forever a hated outsider. An interloper who’d been mistaken for them since the day Dagon had captured him and mixed him in with their ancestors.
Unable to bear their rejection, he met Sera’s gaze and waited for her to condemn him as well.
Seraphina choked on tears as she saw the familiar agony in that golden gaze. The reservation and acceptance of the fact that he didn’t belong to anyone.
For the first time ever, she saw him.
Worse, she saw herself in the way the others reacted as they shouted and accused him of crimes and misdeeds. Judged him without a hearing or without understanding. Like her, they had accepted him only a few minutes ago and now they were attacking him, without listening. They were so busy condemning him over the stories they’d all been told that none of them even asked him what had happened.
They acted as if they knew.
But none of them had been there. With the exception of Maxis, none of them had been born.
Yet they were the experts, with all the answers.
“Enough!” Fang shouted, holding his hands up to get the others to settle down. “We’ll deal with the Dragonbane issue after this is over. Right now, we need to focus on getting the kids away from the gallu before they convert them. Regardless of anything else, they’re innocent in this.”