I was the most spoiled little princess in the shifter world, because I had four powerful daddies.

Darius is the head of the Dragon clan, and the King who rules over the entire shifter world.

The other three are the heads of the Lion clan, the Serpent clan, and the Eagle clan. Everyone fears their power.

My mother was their childhood sweetheart.

When she was killed by rogue wolves, they found me still barely breathing inside her, and saved my life.

The four of them spoiled me rotten. Whatever I looked at twice, it would be sitting in front of me by the next morning.

Every girl in the shifter world envied me.

Until the year I turned sixteen, when Vivian came back. She was the daughter of their first love.

From that day on, my four daddies were completely different.

Vivian cried to Daddy Darius and said I'd pushed her down the stairs.

Without a single question, he threw me in a cell, bound my wrists in silver chains, and made me kneel on broken silver shards for seven straight days.

Then she went to Daddy Orion and said I'd stolen the necklace her mother left her.

So Daddy Orion melted down the only ring my mother ever left me and had it remade into a necklace for her.

The last time, Vivian stabbed herself and cried that I'd tried to kill her. Daddy Rex didn't even ask. He just sentenced me to four years in the silver prison.

The silver prison holds the worst criminals in the shifter world.

The guards whipped me with silver every day, forced me to wash everyone's clothes, and some weeks I went days without a bite of food.

Today, when my door got kicked open again, I was huddled in the corner shaking. I hadn't eaten in two days.

Then I heard the Moon Goddess's gentle voice.

“Child, do you want to leave here and go back to your mother?”

The Moon Goddess continued. “Your mother carried the white wolf bloodline. After she died, her soul returned to me. It breaks her heart to watch you suffer. If you want to go to her, you can leave this body behind, and I'll bring your soul home too.”

I froze for a couple of seconds. My mother wasn't gone?

My legs shook when I stood, but it wasn't fear. It was joy.

Finally.

I could finally leave this hellhole.

The walls of the silver prison were built from stone, and there was a jagged outcrop on the wall across from me.

I took a deep breath, backed up two steps, and threw myself at that sharp edge with everything I had.

Someone slammed into me from the side and caught my whole body, hard enough that we both crashed into the rack beside us. I heard a voice I knew too well.

“Are you trying to fucking die?”

I looked up.

It was Daddy Darius, head of the Dragon clan, King of the entire shifter world.

I never thought he'd come down to a filthy place like this himself.

The arm pinning me pressed against my shoulder and never let up. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and there was a thin line of blood at his right temple.

I opened my mouth, dazed. “Daddy Darius…”

“Shut up.” He shoved me off and rubbed the shoulder he'd hurt catching me. “I stopped having a daughter four years ago.”

Right. Four years ago.

I laughed, a bitter, broken sound.

I thought about the time I was kidnapped as a kid by an enemy clan. They threatened Darius, demanding a fortune in dragon's blood as ransom.

Darius, who never bent to anyone, the Dragon King who made the whole world tremble, was terrified they'd hurt me.

He gave them everything they asked for. He nearly drained himself dry.

By the time they sent me back, he was slumped in a chair, his face white as paper, his lips tinged bluish-purple, too weak to even lift his hand.

I threw myself at him and cried, and he patted my back, his voice faint but steady. “Don't cry. A little blood is nothing to me. It'll grow back in a few days.”

That was before.

Ever since Rex brought Vivian home four years ago, that man—the one who'd drain his own dragon's blood for me—was gone.

I'd always heard that my four daddies had a first love. It was Vivian's mother, Cecilia.

They say years ago, the whole shifter world was still ruled by the old King. He believed a witch's prophecy that one of my four daddies would one day take his throne and kill him, so he ordered all four of them executed.

The four of them barely escaped with their lives.

On the run, they met my mother.

My mother carried the rare white wolf bloodline, a lineage so uncommon she was a born healer. She took in those four men, all of them at death's door, and nursed them back to health, one painstaking day at a time.

She hid them somewhere safe, trained alongside them, and spent every bit of her savings on potions traded from witches to awaken the bloodlines of all four.

In the end, the witch's prophecy came true. They returned and killed the old King. Darius became the new King, and the other three became the new heads of their clans.

I heard my mother was meant to marry Darius.

But right before the wedding, Cecilia showed up.

The moment she appeared, all four of them lost their heads over her.

Cecilia was just like Vivian. She always looked at my daddies with those big pitiful eyes, sobbing that my mother had wronged her.

And my four daddies believed her without hesitation, every time. They always blamed my mother.

Until one bad fight drove my mother out of the house in anger, and on the road she was attacked by rogue wolves.

She was nine months pregnant by then, and she'd lost her ability to shift. The rogue wolves tore her apart.

No one realized I was still alive inside her, until my four daddies cut me free.

The day my mother died, all four of them went to pieces. They drove Cecilia away and swore at my mother's grave that they'd be good to me for the rest of their lives.

They never expected that sixteen years later they'd find Vivian in rogue wolf territory, half-starved and beaten down to nothing.

That was when they learned Cecilia had died less than five years after they cast her out. Vivian had been an orphan since she was four.

Drowning in guilt, my daddies took Vivian in too.

They decided Cecilia hadn't really done anything wrong after all, that it was my mother who'd been petty and small-hearted, who'd stormed off and gotten herself killed by the rogue wolves.

After Vivian came back, she was exactly like her mother. In front of my daddies she was always soft and meek and saintly, while she lied about me, said I'd hit her, and begged them not to be angry, not to punish me.

I explained myself so many times, but my four daddies never believed me.

They said I was just like my mother, petty, unable to stand seeing anyone else happy.

So every time Vivian shed a tear, they punished me half to death.

Within a few years, I'd gone from the little princess of the shifter world to garbage rotting in a silver prison.

Darius glanced down at the red welt on my temple where I'd hit the wall, and his brow furrowed.

He suddenly reached out and gripped my chin. “You really are just like that mother of yours. All you know how to do is use death to scare people.”

“But she was smarter than you. She always did it when all four of us were there to see. And you? Hiding in this dump, throwing yourself at a wall, for whose benefit?”

I didn't make a sound.

Nothing I said ever mattered. I'd said so much before. Did they ever listen to one word?

I lowered my eyes. “Of course, Your Majesty. So you came all the way here—surely not just to watch me hit a wall?”

He paused.

Then he frowned. “Don't flatter yourself. Today is Vivian's birthday. We're taking her up north to see the aurora. She said you've always wanted to see it, and she begged us to bring you out so you could come along.”

The aurora.

I'd longed for the northern lights since I was little, always nagging my daddies to take me.

But the road was long, my four daddies were always busy, and I was born premature with a frail body, so they promised they'd take me when I turned twenty.

I finally made it to twenty. And now they were taking another daughter instead.

Four years ago, I could have torn the whole palace apart over this.

But now I only lifted my head and told him, “I'm not going.”

“You nearly killed Vivian a few years back and she's still willing to forgive you, and you're still making a fuss?” A flicker of fury crossed Darius's face. “Not your call.”

He grabbed me by the collar, dragged me out of the silver prison, and shoved me into the back seat of a black off-road truck.

He took me to another one of his apartments first, hosed the mud off me, then tossed me a clean T-shirt and jeans. After that he hauled me downstairs, started the truck, and headed for the palace.

He drove and warned me coldly. “You'd better have learned your manners in that prison these past years. When you see Vivian later, no more bullying her.”

It felt like someone took a hammer to my chest.

Yes. I'd learned my manners.

Soon we reached the edge of the Flame Forest. That forest is cursed. They say centuries ago a spell went wrong, and the whole forest has burned ever since, the fire never dying, never spreading.

I made a sudden decision.

I yanked the door open and rolled out sideways.

The instant I hit the asphalt, my knee slammed down hard and my vision went black, but I didn't care. I scrambled up and ran for the trees.

A wall of heat hit my face, scorching my eyebrows.

Darius had been burned by fire before.

It happened while they were on the run, when the old King's army trapped them with a wall of flame. He'd charged out through the fire, and it left huge burn scars across his back and arms. Lily told me he'd never gone near a flame since.

So he wouldn't follow me in.

I shut my eyes. My body already screamed with pain from the burns, but I kept walking deeper into the sea of fire.

Soon I'd get to see my mother.

But someone tackled me from behind, caught me around the waist, and shielded me from the worst of the flames. The air was thick with the smell of singed flesh.

Whoever held me crushed me against his chest, and I felt his whole body trembling, just slightly.

I went still.

He dragged me out of the fire, and only after stumbling back a dozen steps did he let go and push me down onto the grass by the road.

His back was a mess of charred skin, raw and bloody, his shoulders heaving, his breathing ragged.

I stared up at his face, gone strangely pale, and for a moment I said nothing.

He took a while to recover, then slowly turned and looked down at me.

“You just wanted our attention, didn't you?” His voice still wasn't quite steady. “If you really want to die, next time don't do it in front of me. Go find somewhere with no one around and do it yourself. Stop pulling this nonsense.”

I didn't answer. I just curled my lip.

He pulled me up off the ground, checked the knee I'd split open rolling out of the truck, frowned, and said nothing.

He put me back in the rear seat. This time he locked the doors.

By the time we reached the palace it was full dark. I'd barely gotten to my door when Daddy Orion came over.

He didn't say a word. He just raised his hand and backhanded me across the right shoulder, hard enough to send me flying into the big tree by the entrance.

The old whip wound on my back split open again, and blood soaked through the back of my T-shirt.

I bit back the pain and pressed myself against the trunk without making a sound.

Orion came over and crouched down, his voice pressed low and cold. “Emma, do you have any idea how badly Darius got burned just now? He already had old burns to begin with…”

I didn't look up.

Darius had walked into the Flame Forest.

He's more afraid of fire than anything. And he still went in.

Orion waited two seconds, and when I stayed silent his tone went colder. “That act of yours isn't fooling anyone.”

He straightened and said to Darius, “Don't let her play you.”

Darius leaned against the truck, his face calm, hands shoved in his pockets so I couldn't see his knuckles.

Orion turned back to me. “Emma, today's Vivian's birthday. Make your scene in front of the two of us if you have to, but don't go looking for trouble with Cormac and Rex. You know how those two—”

He didn't finish.

Because I suddenly lunged for the steel cabinet behind him.

I lived in his place for so many years. Of course I knew where he kept the deadliest things locked away.

I yanked the drawer open and saw it in the corner, a long thin syringe, the chamber filled with murky dark liquid. That was the concentrated snake venom Orion brewed himself. I'd once overheard him tell his assistant that injecting it straight into a vein meant certain death.

I pulled off the cap and aimed it at the inside of my arm.

“Emma!”

Orion crossed the distance in one stride, seized my wrist, and ripped the syringe away, hard enough to leave my hand numb.

“Do you even know what that is?”

He pried the syringe loose and shoved it onto the top of the cabinet, somewhere I couldn't reach, then kept his grip on my wrist and bent me down over the cabinet.

“Start talking. How did you know where I kept that?”

I said nothing.

Orion took a deep breath, pinned my wrist hard against the cabinet door, and with his free hand pulled a vial of antiserum from his kit. He uncapped it and drove it into the spot where I'd been about to inject, pushing it in just in case.

“All because we threw Vivian a birthday party? Was that worth this?”

Darius stood by the door, his color still off. By now he must have actually believed I was serious about dying, because his voice dropped low when he spoke. “Cut it out. The four of us talked it over with Vivian last night. She's willing to forgive you. Just behave today and celebrate her birthday with her, and tomorrow we'll take you to see the aurora with us. After that we'll treat you the same as before. All right?”

By the time he finished, the tears spilled right over.

My two daddies traded a look. They probably thought I was crying because I was happy.

But I was crying and begging.

“Daddy Orion, Daddy Darius, I'm begging you. Stop caring about me. Just let me die.”

Orion's face fell. “Emma, we laid it all out for you. You still want this?”

“I heard you.” There was no point hiding it anymore. “But I don't want to go back to how things were. I want to find my mother.”

I told them everything—the voice, the Moon Goddess, all of it. How my mother's soul had been watching over me, how I could see her once I died.

The two of them looked more and more wrong.

Finally Orion crouched and held me by both shoulders.

“Emma, listen to me. There's no such thing as a soul returning to the Moon Goddess.”

When they found my mother back then, she'd already been torn apart alive by the rogue wolves.

They tried everything. They brought in the most powerful witch in the world, hoping to piece my mother's body back together and call her soul home to revive her.

But the witch reached out with her magic for ten full days and couldn't catch even a thread of my mother's soul.

They were certain her soul had scattered completely.

Orion said the voice in my head was most likely a hallucination, the product of too much trauma.

It wasn't.

I knew it was real.

But no matter how I explained, neither of them believed me.

Orion sighed. “If you really can't stand to go to Vivian's party, then just stay in your room tonight. As long as you behave, no one will dare bully you again.”

I was about to shake my head.

Hurried footsteps came from outside, followed by a fist hammering on the door.

A few seconds later Cormac and Rex came storming in, both of them grim-faced.

“Darius, Orion, Vivian's missing!” Rex's voice was so loud the whole building shook.

The two men inside froze at the same time. “Isn't she getting ready for tonight's party?”

Cormac's brows were drawn tight, his voice heavy. “She went back to her room this afternoon, said she was changing into her party dress. But just now I went to find her and knocked and got nothing. I pushed the door open and she was gone. There was a note on the bed.”

He threw a crumpled scrap of paper onto the table.

I saw the words on it, the handwriting frantic.

“Emma. Kidnapped. Help me.”

All four of them turned at once and fixed their eyes on me.

I knew that look too well.

Before any of them said a word, I was already backing away.

“No, it wasn't me.”

“How is it not you?” Cormac crossed the room in one step, grabbed me by the throat, and shoved me against the wall. “You've been begging to die all day. Turns out it was guilt. Where did you take Vivian?”

His hand was brutal. I was already hurt, and pinned to the wall like that, my wounds started bleeding again.

But I still shook my head. “I don't know. I never even saw Vivian.”

“Still talking back.”

Cormac dragged me straight up to the rooftop terrace.

This building was twenty-eight stories, and the outer edge of the terrace had no railing.

He hauled me to the edge, holding me by the back of the collar with one hand, my body hanging over nothing.

My feet left the ground.

I looked down. Twenty-eight floors. The pavers were so small, so far away.

I'm afraid of heights.

Back when Vivian pushed me out of a third-floor window at home and I broke my leg, I told them the truth.

But Vivian looked at them with red, brimming eyes and said I'd hurt myself being careless during a game, that she'd clearly warned me not to climb somewhere so dangerous and I wouldn't listen.

They believed her, and on top of that they cursed me for being reckless, said I had it coming.

Ever since then, any time I'm up high, a numbness crawls up my spine until I can barely breathe.

My hands started to shake.

“I'll ask you one last time. Where is Vivian?”

That suffocating terror crept up from the soles of my feet and clogged my throat.

The words reached my lips, and I swallowed them back down.

Emma, don't you get it yet.

They'll never believe you.

Since they won't believe me anyway, I might as well push them a little harder.

Let them finish me off and be done with it.

I smiled, my voice light as air. “Vivian? I had the rogue wolves kill her.”

The blood drained from every face at once.

Darius's eyes shifted in an instant to the slitted golden pupils of his dragon form, blazing with light. “What did you say? Emma, how dare you—”

“How dare I?” I laughed out loud. “Her mother killed my mother. She stole your love and got me four years of torture in a silver prison. So I shouldn't kill her?”

I lifted my head and gave them a taunting smile.

“If you've got the nerve, then kill me and avenge her.”