The chemical fire suppressant had finally stopped raining down from the sprinkler system, leaving the penthouse looking like a war zone decorated by an overly enthusiastic foam party. Zebra was going to have a fit when she saw the mess. I surveyed the damage with the resigned expression of someone who'd had his home destroyed by supernatural forces more often than I cared to admit. At least the structural integrity seemed intact; the building had been reinforced specifically for situations like this, though I'd never expected to test those modifications quite so thoroughly. At least it meant I wouldn’t be forcing Kelly to move again.

  Kelly stood in what had been their living room, carefully stepping around chunks of debris and puddles of fme retardant. Her ptop had somehow survived the chaos, protected by being tucked behind the sofa when the dragon made its dramatic entrance. She'd been quiet since Pyraxes's departure, and I recognized that particur quality of silence. It was the same thoughtful quiet she'd get before asking him pointed questions about inconsistencies in his cover stories.

  "Dad," she said finally, not looking at him directly. "That dragon wasn't really trying to kill us."

  I paused in the act of checking Mara for injuries. She had dropped and had shifted back to human form and seemed rgely unharmed, though her clothes were singed, and she had a few shallow cuts from flying gss. They were already healing, lucky magical, I’d be feeling this fight for weeks. "Seemed to be doing a pretty bang-up job for not really trying, Kells, what do you mean?"

  Kelly turned to face him, and her expression was that of someone who'd been putting pieces together and didn't like the picture they formed. "She could have killed us easily. That thing was huge, could breathe fire, and had cws the size of kitchen knives. But she spent most of the fight searching, not attacking. Looking around, sniffing the air, asking about stolen things." She crossed her arms. "If she really wanted us dead, we'd be dead."

  Mara nodded slowly. "The kid's right. I could smell her emotions during the fight; there was rage, yes, but also desperation. Grief. She wasn't hunting for revenge; she was hunting for something she'd lost."

  "Something she thinks I stole, now you can smell emotions, is that it?" I said, the pieces clicking into pce. "Thought you were a warrior, Mara, not a Care Bear. Someone raided her nest and made it look like my work."

  "Which means the elves who hired you knew this was likely to happen," Kelly continued, her voice taking on the tone she used when expining things to slower cssmates. "They hired you to deal with a dragon problem, knowing that the dragon would probably come after you personally. That's not hiring a security consultant, Dad. That's setting someone up."

  “Sylvanus… no wonder he wanted to go with me to the nest… he wasn’t guiding anything. Used me as a distraction, and I saved his worthless hide.”

  I felt something cold settle in my chest. The elves had been too eager to hire me, too quick to offer substantial payment for what should have been a straightforward negotiation. I'd been pyed, maniputed into taking a job that put him and his family directly in harm's way. Again.

  "Fucking elves, "I muttered. "I should have known better. They're all the same, maniputive, self-serving, willing to sacrifice anyone to protect their own interests."

  "Hunter." Mara’s voice was sharp. "You're doing it again."

  "Doing what?"

  "Painting an entire species with the same brush because some of them are assholes. The same thing you do with vampires, dragons, lycans," She gnced at Kelly apologetically. “And you’re going to teach her the same thing if you keep it up.”

  “Maybe she needs to learn, Mara… trust the wrong… thing out there and it can get you killed. Present company excepted, of course.” I knew it was a mistake the second it left my mouth.

  “I’m one of the good ones, is that it, Hunter?”

  “That’s not what I…” The words died on my lips. I did trust Mara. Had just trusted her with keeping Kelly safe. Right now, I trusted her almost more than any other person alive out there.

  “Just because these particur elves are maniputive jerks doesn't mean they all are," Kelly said, the voice of reason. The same look she always wore when she knew she was right.

  Mara stepped forward, her voice gentle but firm. "She's right, Hunter. The elves who hired you made a bad call, but that doesn't invalidate every supernatural being in the city. It just means these specific elves prioritized their own safety over yours."

  I felt the familiar heat of old anger rising in my chest, twenty years of conditioning and trauma pushing me toward the comfortable certainty of hatred. But then I looked at Kelly, really looked at her, and saw not just my daughter, but Michelle. Seventeen years old, just about the same age Michelle had been when everything went to hell, but alive and safe and looking at me with disappointment rather than fear.

  "You're right," I said finally, the words feeling strange in my mouth. In the st year, Mara wasn’t the only outlier to my way of thinking, Thorne, George, Fenris… even Lisa, I wasn’t sure could be considered fully human anymore. "Both of you. I'm... this is harder than I thought it would be."

  Kelly's expression softened. "What's harder?"

  My gaze looked around the destroyed museum, at the artifacts and weapons scattered across the floor, at the photo that had somehow survived the chaos, a picture of three teenagers standing together, arms around each other's shoulders, smiling at a camera. I walked over and picked it up, brushing off the gss fragments.

  "Letting go of twenty years of hate," I said quietly. "Kelly, I need to tell you something. About what I really do for a living. About why I do it."

  My hands were shaking, fingers leaving damp trails as I brushed the broken gss off the frame before handing it to Kelly. In the picture, two boys and a girl posed in front of an old, beat-up red truck Nate had inherited from his dad. The boy on the left was clearly a younger version of myself, maybe sixteen, with the same eyes but cking the hard edges that decades of violence had carved into my features. Opposite to him stood a girl with dark hair and a bright smile, and between them, another boy who shared her features but had a goofy smile he never quite grew out of.

  "That's Michelle," I said, pointing to the girl. "And that's her brother Nate. This was taken about six months before alternaturals revealed themselves to the world."

  Kelly studied the photo with the intensity she usually reserved for her art projects. "She looks like she was really happy."

  "She was. We all were, in our own way. I was in my fourth foster family, finally somewhere that felt like it might actually work out. Michelle and Nate lived next door, and she was... she was the first person who ever made me feel like I might belong somewhere."

  Mara settled onto what remained of the sofa, giving us space but staying close enough to listen. I was grateful for her presence; this story wasn't one he'd ever told Kelly, and having a witness somehow made it feel more real.

  "When the alternaturals revealed themselves, it wasn't the smooth integration you see now. There was panic, fear, and violence on both sides. Michelle was curious about the new world we were suddenly living in, wanted to explore, to understand. So one night, she went out to investigate reports of supernatural activity in the woods outside town."

  My voice grew quieter, more distant. "We still don’t know exactly how it happened, but she stumbled on some little hairy men that shot her with something. I don’t think she ever even saw them. Got home, compining of a headache, and went right to sleep."

  I took a deep breath and let it out. My hands were shaking as I looked down at the picture, the loss washing over me again. Michelle was a bright spot down in South Carolina, made everyone’s lives better. The anger that had consumed me when I found out someone, no, something had taken her from the world. From… my world. Nate and I had taken things into our own hands, but Kelly didn’t need to know that part.

  "An organization called ARC showed up a few days ter," I continued. Researchers of the newly emerging species. Said they were dedicated to protecting humanity from supernatural threats. They had resources, training, and purpose. And they had an offer for angry, grieving teenagers who wanted to make sure what happened to Michelle never happened to anyone else."

  Kelly's grip on the photograph tightened. "They turned you into hunters."

  "They turned us into weapons. Gave us equipment, training, and targets. For twenty years, I've been their attack dog, sent out to eliminate supernatural threats before they could hurt innocent people. And I was good at it, Kelly. Really good. Because every time I pulled the trigger, I was saving another Michelle."

  "But that's not what you were really doing," Mara said quietly. "Was it?"

  I shook my head. "Not always. Sometimes, yes, there are genuinely dangerous alternaturals out there, ones who prey on humans or other supernatural beings. But sometimes... sometimes I was just eliminating people who were inconvenient to ARC's agenda. People whose only crime was being different, or powerful, or unwilling to py by rules that were designed to keep them subjugated. For years, I was fine with that. Heck, I volunteered for the chance to put another freak in my crosshairs." I paused again, my eyes meeting Mara’s as her face remained neutral. Her lips a tight line, but this wasn’t any news to her. Among her kind, I had been well known when I knocked on their door.

  The earpiece crackled to life, Holly's voice cutting through the heavy silence. "Hunter, sorry to interrupt, but I've got good news. Found your alternate route into the dragon's ir."

  I pressed the earpiece. "Go ahead."

  "Old subway tunnels from the 1920s. They were sealed off when the current system was built, but the maps show they connect to the basement levels of several buildings in the warehouse district. There's one that runs directly under the building Pyraxes has cimed. You could get in without going through elven territory."

  "How stable are these tunnels?"

  "Structural reports from the '80s show them as sound, but that's forty years old. I'd recommend bringing some heavy-duty fshlights and maybe a backup route."

  "Thanks, Holly. Keep working on it." I ended the connection and turned back to Kelly and Mara. "I have to get Lisa back. She's wrapped up in this mess and about to be at ground zero for a war she is in no shape to fight."

  Mara stood up, brushing fire suppressant foam from her jacket. "And I need to track down Riven before he does whatever he's pnning with that artifact."

  "No." My voice was firm. "You don't engage him without me. That neckce gives him too much power over you. You go up against him alone, and you'll end up as his puppet again."

  "But if he's building toward something big,"

  "Then we stop him together. Track him, find out what he's pnning, but don't try to be a hero. The Fang of the Primal Alpha makes you vulnerable in ways you can't predict."

  Kelly looked between them. "So you're working together now? The monster hunter and the werewolf cop?"

  I almost smiled. "Not the first time. Strange world we're living in."

  My phone buzzed with an incoming call, and when I saw the name on the screen, my expression darkened. "Speaking of ARC… Colton."

  He answered with reluctance. "This is Hunter."

  "Derek, thank God." The voice on the other end was tense, professionally courteous. "We have a situation. There are reports of dragon activity in Manhattan. Significant property damage, multiple emergency responses. Please tell me you're not involved."

  "Define 'involved.'"

  "Please tell me you haven't pissed off an ancient fire-breathing lizard in the middle of the most densely poputed city in North America."

  The destroyed penthouse I was standing in would seem to indicate his guess was correct. "I may have had a minor disagreement with a dragon."

  The pause on the other end stretched long enough that I wondered if the call had dropped. When Colton finally spoke, his voice was carefully controlled. "Hnnter, you officially severed ties with ARC months ago. This means any supernatural incidents you're involved with are no longer our problem. However, if said incidents threaten civilian poputions."

  "It's handled," I cut him off. "The dragon has what she came for, more or less. No ongoing threat to the public."

  "That's not what the NYPD is reporting. They have witnesses describing a creature the size of a city bus breathing fire through a residential building."

  "The Pierre isn't residential. It's a hotel."

  "That's not the point!"

  “You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, Colton. I’ll handle it.”

  I disconnected the line, dropping the phone back into my pocket. "Time to go. Kelly, you're staying here. Zebra and Zoar will make sure you're safe, and the building's security systems are designed to handle anything short of a military assault."

  Kelly looked around with a wry grin. “Military assault? Looks like this pce can handle a small breeze at best.” She indicated the rack of weapons still hanging from the ceiling. “But if things get too out of control…”

  “Not unless you want to be grounded until you’re old enough to drink, young dy.”

  "Dad, wait." Kelly reached out and took my hand. "Be careful. Both of you. And remember, not all alternaturals are Michelle's killers. Some of them might even be friends, if you give them the chance."

  I squeezed her hand. "I'll try to remember that. And maybe… If you behave… I’ll teach you how to shoot when all this is over. If you’re interested, that is."

  Kelly nodded, a grin forming on her face before she left us to it. As we prepared to leave, Mara checked her weapon, and I gathered equipment from what remained of the arsenal. Kelly wandered back into the museum section of the penthouse. The dragon's attack had scattered artifacts across the floor, but most seemed to have survived the chaos. Ancient weapons, protective talismans, trophies from jobs spanning three decades, the accumuted detritus of a life spent walking the line between human and alternatural worlds.

  She was examining a damaged dispy case when she heard it again, the whisper that had been haunting her for weeks, soft and insistent, always just at the edge of hearing.

  "Kelly..."

  This time, instead of dismissing it as stress or imagination, she followed the sound. It seemed to be coming from a section of the museum that had somehow escaped the worst of the damage, where several particurly old artifacts were housed under protective gss.

  Her eyes were drawn to a bck oil mp sitting on a marble plinth, its surface decorated with intricate gold iny that seemed to shift and move in the emergency lighting. The whisper came again, clearer this time, and Kelly could swear it was coming from the direction of the mp.

  "Kelly... help me..."

  She stepped closer, her reflection multiplying in the curved surface of the ancient brass. The whisper came once more, so faint she wasn't entirely sure she'd heard it at all.

  But the mp seemed to pulse with warmth, as if something inside was calling to her, waiting for her to answer. This time, after what she just saw, she no longer wondered if she was imagining things.