Green Shadow, page 1
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and not based on real events. Any resemblance to people, places, and things in real life is purely coincidental.
Green Shadow – Mackenzie Green Book 3
Copyright © 2022 by JS Kennedy
Cover art by: Original Book Cover Design
All Rights Reserved
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the author, except in the case of a brief quotation embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact the author at: J.S_Kennedy@yahoo.com
Join her mailing list @ jskennedy.ca
To those who find the strength to overcome their pain and sorrow. You inspire me.
Mackenzie Green Series:
Green Gryphon
Green Mage
Green Shadow
Contents
Map GreenRiver
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
Bonus scene
Training
Acknowledgments
About Author
Glossary
Prologue
Lucan
I was a teenager when her reign of terror started, almost ready to take up my apprenticeship under the current Protector in preparation for taking on the role. News from other parts of the country was rare, and when it did make it to us, it spread through the city like wildfire.
During the lunches, Dad dragged me to, a reminder that no matter what position I held, I was still part of the family. He started to share the gossip of a supernatural creature hunting criminals of our kind. She started out hunting the worst of the worst, and I loved how Dad described her actions in a heroic light. But as time went on, the tone of his tales changed. Until I had to beg for stories of her.
At first, he refused, saying nothing new had come in. Then, finally, when Terra committed an act so deplorable it resonated through the whole country, did he share my hero’s fall, that final story.
“Lucan,” Dad said as he sat across from me at Maisy’s, a coffee clutched between his hands. “I have something to tell you.”
“Is it a new story about Terra?” I asked. Trying hard to hide my excitement and failing. Dad didn’t smile, but he nodded.
“Yes, but it’s not good.” That quieted me, and I waited for him to continue. “The tales of her have changed.” He took a sip. “She’s no longer the hero but the villain.” I sat back and listened as he explained her devolving habits and how she targeted innocents. When he told me about the brutal murder of Senator Ryan Hallcrest, a politician who advocated for supernatural rights, and his six-year-old daughter, I felt the world drop out from under me.
Terra. That one name invoked a sense of loss within me every time I heard it.
I stepped away from Mackenzie. My body going hot and cold. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and nausea churned in my stomach. My mind was blank. I couldn’t process what I’d just heard. Unable to reconcile the bright, caring woman I’d begun to know with the pitiless killer whose name, to this day, was spoken in whispered fear.
Understanding pooled in her hazel eyes when I finally got the courage to meet them. Had she feared all along this would happen? That if anyone discovered who she’d been, they would reject her?
My anger surged, emanating from me in a wave. I didn’t want to sympathize with Mackenzie. She should have told me. Trusted me with the knowledge of her past. That I had to learn who my mate was from a stranger. It gutted me.
I didn’t react as she walked across the clearing. Instead, my eyes lost focus as a red tint crept in from the edges. As the shock stole my sight, the last thing I saw was Mackenzie kneeling on the ground, a metal collar snapping closed around her neck.
I couldn’t see, but my dragon, tuned solely into her, captured Mackenzie’s screams as they echoed through the clearing. Then, as my hearing became nothing but a constant buzz of static noise, I caught the sound of a body thudding to the ground, the rustling of clothing, and the sounds of someone being dragged through the trees.
That was the last thing I remembered for a long time. In my mind’s landscape, I faced a giant beast. My dragon core. His eyes blazed with blue light. His lips peeled back, exposing his teeth, and a growl built in his chest, echoing throughout the mental space.
How could you? He snarled, the rage in his tone impossible to miss.
“She lied to us. She’s a monster.” I shot back. Mackenzie, the name sent shivers down my spine, had made me see the goodness, courage, and love she gave so freely to those she cared for. And in one moment, it was torn away.
You would take the words of a stranger over that of our mate? He rumbled. You would forsake her without giving her a chance to explain?
“She didn’t even try to dispute it.” I crossed my arms.
You are not worthy of me. Sorrow colored my dragon’s tone. Intense pain wracked my body following his words. It felt as if my body was breaking apart on the cellular level. Finally, I cried out and sank to my knees.
This continued for an eternity until a jolt of pain in my body stopped the separation.
“Stop!” I cried into the void, my dragon’s spirit a translucent presence before me. He had faded to the point I could barely see his outline.
Why should I? He responded, and I scrambled for an answer.
Finally willing to compromise, if only in self-preservation, I said, “We will get her back. I can’t promise not to cut the bond when we do, but I will give her a chance to explain.” My dragon studied me. With a nod, the intense pain stopped, and he became more solid.
I will hold you to your promise.
Chapter 1
Lucan
I stormed towards Jasper’s office. I don’t have time to pander to this snake. I thought, wanting nothing more than to scour the Triad’s resources to find a lead on Mackenzie.
The leader of the Dracos Tribe had summoned me over thirty minutes ago, and I may or may not have fiddled with some bullshit task purposely to make him wait. It was hard not to answer the summons immediately, I’d trained for years to hear and obey. But I needed the time to calm my dragon enough that he wouldn’t take control and punch the Dragon Head in the face.
I arrived at the plain wooden door on the second level of the Hall of Justice. Protocol dictated I knock and wait for permission to enter. But I was feeling just rebellious enough to ignore the nicety.
The tension between us had started when Jasper ordered me to walk away when my niece had gone missing, and returned with a vengeance when Connor released him from the dirt prison where Mackenzie had stuffed his betraying ass.
My training told me Jasper’s word was law. But, on the other hand, my heart said Jasper wasn’t any kind of leader I wanted to follow. And my dragon core, he was ready to rip Jasper’s head off.
I settled for a show of insubordination that was guaranteed to make my current irritation known.
Scowling as I turned the knob. The facial feature was a constant fixture. I hadn’t felt like smiling since Mackenzie’s sacrifice. It had only been forty-eight hours since she gave herself to the monsters of her past to save her siblings, but it already felt like years.
I opened the door and looked at where my boss sat behind his desk. He glanced up at my unannounced entrance, and a flash of annoyance arched through his eyes, before being buried beneath the calm persona of the Dragon Head.
Unease briefly burned in my gut. You are mucking this up, Lucan. Play the part. You still need access to the benefits that come with being the Protector of Dragons. Then again, it would be out of character for me not to be emotional in this situation. I was an empath after all.
Jasper stood, walked around, and leaned on his desk, his arms crossed. His body language was casual. Yet, it didn’t fool me. This caring tactic may have worked when I still had absolute faith in him as a leader, but now, given the room’s third occupant, I could see the glint of cruelty and madness that lingered in Jasper’s clear eyes.
Snake. I thought, and my dragon bared its teeth in a draconic smile at the insult, delighted that I would compare Jasper’s majestic dragon core to a belly-dragging cylindrical beast.
&n
My dragon tensed. Few people knew about my mate bond, and I trusted them not to spread the word. What bond had Jasper discovered that he required Annabelle’s services.
I held less concern than my dragon. Annabelle was a wyvern shifter, the lowest cast in the Dracos Tribe, and shouldn’t be a threat to me.
“Lucan, you’re looking well,” she said softly.
A snort escaped. I had bags under my eyes and a scowl dominating my face. ‘Well,’ wasn’t even close to how I was looking.
Jasper huffed in exasperation. I turned from the purple eyes veined with white and grey, to meet the diamond-clear eyes of the more significant threat.
All Dracos shifters had eyes of gemstone quality. Shifter eyes were the window to the soul, and in our case, the animal within. Annabelle’s tri-colored eyes immediately identified her as a wyvern shifter. Children knew what Tribe they belonged to at birth, and most were born with the nature of their beasts already settled. But at puberty, a small percentage of children underwent a dramatic transformation, and the nature of their beast altered. Some for the better, most for the worse. Their lot in life forever changed.
Annabelle had been one whose eyes changed for the worse. She’d been born with eyes of purest violet, but when she turned thirteen, veins of white and grey had marred the amethyst. Only a few years older than her at the time, I remember pitying her lot while wondering why my eyes had retained their translucent sapphire blue purity.
“What do you want?” I snapped at Jasper. Annabelle gasped at my disrespect, and I wrestled with the anger mainly emanating from my dragon. Finally, wrestling it back, I ground out a “Sir.” Though the word tasted like ash in my mouth.
“I asked you here to discuss severing your oath, the one binding you to the mage children.” He doesn’t know about Mackenzie. The tension in my shoulders eased. “It is unseemly for the Dragon Protector to foster humans.” Jasper’s lip curled into a sneer. “We don’t even keep our own human children.”
I managed to contain my dragon’s response to that statement with great effort. To him, children were children, and deserved to stay with their families. I agreed. I found the practice of fostering children who didn’t present with the right animal disgusting.
My dragon and I were also one when it came to our honor. Only a coward would break their word. I would not go back on my promise, even if the oath I swore could be bypassed.
“Spare me the speech,” I said. “I don’t, and never will agree with the Triad’s attitude towards children born without beasts.” Fear, anger, helplessness, shame, the emotions I’d felt from children as I escorted them from their families and to their new homes, bombarded me. My dragon remembered each of their tiny faces, and it broke him each time. Tamping down the emotional storm boiling up from my dragon was hard. But I reminded him that we still needed to be the Protector, at least for now.
“Would it not be worse,” I growled, “for the Protector to be seen as an oath breaker, than to foster two human children for a few short years?”
Connor wasn’t technically a child; his eighteenth birthday was only days away. Finished school, he was now considered an adult by our society. The boy already had a mentor lined up and wouldn’t need my help like a ward usually did. I was sure the only reason he continued to stay under my roof was so that his sister wouldn’t be forced to contend with me alone.
“What you have done is not widely known.” Jasper waved a hand, ignoring my words. “I can contain it with minimum effort.”
I didn’t want to contain it. Didn’t want to give the kids up. I was a man of my word and would do that duty.
“What about his nascent mate bond?” Annabelle purred from her corner, a sly look on her face. My jaw clenched, causing my teeth to creak with the strain, and my dragon snarled in the recesses of my mind. A hissing sound threatened to escape my throat.
I’d known Annabelle could break bonds, but I’d forgotten the passive side to her power, the ability to see all the bonds connected to a person.
Shit!
“What mate bond?” Jasper snapped. His clear eyes locked on Annabelle. The woman folded under his stare and whimpered.
“It’s one-sided, a couple of months old.” She tucked herself deeper into her chair. “Right now, it’s stretched thin. Whoever Lucan’s mated, she’s far away.”
I growled a low and dangerous sound, my dragon and I in complete accordance. Our mate bond was a private thing, and of no concern to anyone but us. Sacred. Annabelle had no right to blurt it out.
The wyvern cowered further, and I backed off, my nature and training not allowing me to torment a weaker member of the Tribe.
Jasper’s forehead crinkled as his mind worked at a rapid pace. He wasn’t a stupid man, and he put the pieces together quickly.
“Never.” The word came out cold and harsh. Jasper’s face turned ugly with malice. “I will never permit the union.”
Defiance surged through me, causing my blood to heat and my eyes to luminesce. The asshole didn’t have a choice. It was against shifter law to interfere in another’s mate bond, unless a crime was committed.
Jasper looked at me, his eyes glinting with subtle light. “You will reject the bond immediately.”
I could reject it. Until Mackenzie accepted the bond, I could sever the connection. However, I wasn’t ready to make such a profound decision. Because once the bond was severed, it could never again be forged. I would forever lose the chance to have Mackenzie as my mate. Before last night, I would have thrown myself into courting her without hesitation. Now, knowing that she was Terra, the boogieman of the supernatural factions, I needed to decide if that was a past I could accept or if it was the proverbial straw that would break my dragon’s back.
But I didn’t need to justify my thoughts to Jasper. So, I kept it simple. “No.”
“You will.” Jasper narrowed his eyes, and the glittering sparkle became more pronounced. An insidious whisper trolled through my mind.
Mackenzie isn’t worth my position. I am the Dragon Protector, a calling far more important than one woman. The Tribe must come first. Besides, she isn’t worthy of me. My mate should be strong, beautiful, a dragon. I shook my head slightly. The thoughts sounded like me but weren’t. Sensing weakness, the strange ideas plowed forward.
And why should I take care of her brats? They do nothing but whine and bitch. It would be better just to pass them off. Connor and Brooke will do better with their own kind anyway.
The devolving thoughts ceased as a warm sensation coursed through me. It reminded me of lying on the grass on a warm summer day. The smell of the earth surrounding me. An image of Mackenzie popped into my mind. Her smile, her laugh, her determination to put everyone before herself.
The whispers surged back, gaining strength and speaking as if they were a part of my deeper consciousness.
My dragon roared inside my mind, clearing my head and allowing me to see the thoughts for what they were. An outside force. Rage erupted from the center of my magic and I let it out in a controlled blast, honing it in on the Dragon Head.
No, never again would I refer to Jasper in that way. With this vile act, he’d lost the right to even the illusion of my respect.
“You dare!” I roared, and Jasper crumpled under the onslaught of my power. I was an empath, capable of feeling the emotions of others and siphoning them away. But, on the flip side, I could make them live through the brunt of mine.
Jasper crumpled as if I’d struck him. Going down to one knee he hunched over, one hand protecting his head, the other wrapped around his stomach. Lines of pain etched into his face.
“You dare try to manipulate me,” I seethed through gritted teeth. The alien thoughts were easy to see now that my mind was clear.
Jasper’s passive power was as a telepath – the ability to read the thoughts of others. His range was incredible, and his powers were unstoppable if he made physical contact. I’d long suspected he’d cultivated his image as a wise leader by skimming the surface thoughts of those he met and tailoring his responses to the individual. But, like with most magic of the mind, there was never any proof.
