Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) by Heather Heffner Read Free Book Online

Thaksin, gestured unabashedly for me to join their table. He thought for a moment, and then said, “Come!”
    Our relationship consisted mostly of one word sentences in our respective languages. However, because of Eve, the spirit world in which all creatures could be understood as they wished, I knew he had a wife and two daughters back home, and for vacation they all liked to take midnight dives to the bottom of Emerald Cave, at which time, Thaksin assured me, “the sharks were much more active.”
    With Bae trailing cautiously behind, I took a seat between Kaelan and Thaksin. Unfortunately, that meant I got to stare across the table at Rafael’s sun-kissed skin, his messy brown hair, and his lean, muscular shoulders, which were currently being massaged by a petite goshawk woman named Miao. Every time she laughed, a twinkling wind chime sound, the men flushed and had the tendency to knock over makgeolli bowls.
    Not a word about the encounter in my apartment. Of finding me frothing and writhing on the ground as Wolf in broad daylight. I vaguely remembered seeing Rafael that day through a shifting kaleidoscope of color that mixed up his expressions. One of his faces had reddened with anger when he’d demanded my return, but the other had been broken-hearted. I wasn’t sure which one was real.
    My eye bore into his forehead, but he didn’t look back. That was it, then. All of those words. Dipped and splashed in guilt.
    I scowled and found more mud in my ear.
    “You are Citlalli, the new leader of the wolves!” Miao exclaimed, extending a prim hand. “It is funny, isn’t it? An American girl leading wolves in South Korea?”
    “She must be providing them with weapons,” another goshawk joked, and the pair laughed.
    All of the “wolves,” deliberately didn’t look at each other. It would be stupid to let the other Were tribes know how estranged the pack was at present. Our story was that there were minor problems “adjusting,” to the new leadership, but few were buying it. No wonder so many goshawks were sticking around. Xu Xiang, leader of the International Were Council, would want to know how deep the problem went.
    I have to get the pack back together as soon as possible . I wiggled anxiously in my seat. I’d seen separation in a family before—my family. It was bitter and ugly and led to a divorce that left all of us shocked at the monsters we could become. None of us had trusted the other. What we had trusted was silence, and when that silence went on for too long, many of us almost lost our lives to it. Now my father drank and rarely answered my calls. My smart older sister Daniella had no idea I was a wolf, and oh, that man Mami had cheated with that resulted in Raina’s birth? A shapeshifting dragon. My brother Miguel had barely survived a life of drugs and gangs to come here, and my eldest sister, dearest Mari, had died at the hands of vampyres.
    At least now I knew she was at peace.
    I’d blamed Mami for the divorce, for the silence. For losing Mari. Now I was responsible for a family. I would not let us crash and burn.
    “What is your agenda, pack leader?” Miao was asking. “Will you go after the vampyre princes who hurt your sisters?”
    I knew very well who had put those words in her mouth. I glared at Rafael, but he seemed to find everything else in the tent interesting except for me.
    “The pack’s agenda is one of peace,” I said loudly. “This war has gone on for half a century. I have photos, Miao, of all the werewolves lost in the struggle.” I remembered all too well the haunting black-and-white photograph that Alpha Jaehoon had shown me from the Korean War. He had been the only one left from it. Jaehoon had been trying to teach me to stop thinking about only myself. I wouldn’t let him down. It already hurt when I looked at photos of our current pack and saw faces that weren’t around anymore.
    “We have begun by sending emissary monks from Peomeosa Temple into the