Rhia's eyes snapped open. Delta was still out cold in her arms and the raven was dozing beside them. Late afternoon sun battled against the November chill outside their little cave. The presence of the two unbound dragonkin were closer than ever, but still weren't giving off any hostile vibes. Everything seemed quiet and still.

So why was every hair on her body standing on end? Why did she feel like something was inexplicably wrong?

Carefully, she lay Delta on the ground and walked out of the cave, straining her senses to pick up whatever was bothering her. There weren't any unusual sounds or scents. There was nothing but grey rock and ice around her and the cave. There was nothing, yet she was even more sure that there was something or someone nearby. Her canines were lengthening instinctively, and hellfire kept pulsing to life in her palms.

Tentatively, she tried to activate her shift, but stopped when her back spasmed. The pain wasn't as bad as it had been, but it was enough that whatever happened, she would have to deal with it in her human skin.

Behind.

She spun around, searching for whatever was triggering her senses. "I know you're there," she hissed under her breath. "Show yourself."

In response, there was a series of low chirps and clucks that reminded Rhia of cackling hyenas. And then she saw it coming slowly over the ridge towards her. Her breath caught in her throat, and a ring of hellfire roared to life in a defensive circle around her and the entrance to the cave.

The creature was even bigger than Atticus's polar bear. Two-and-a-half meters at the shoulders and nearly five meters from shoulders to the base of the tail, and the tail itself was almost as long and split into three, whip-like appendages, each tipped with a single claw. Its bulky body was covered in a mix of what looked like coarse black fur and chitin plates. A neon purple aura pulse beneath the armour, similar to the under glow of the dragonkin. Short, thin, and deadly sharp spines grew in two rows along each side of its spine from the top of the head to halfway down each of its three tails. Its mouth split open like a snake preparing to swallow its prey whole.

Fear was not an adequate word. Nor was dread, nor terror, not even panic.

What Rhia was feeling came from her magic itself. The magic in her that had been born with the world. The magic that knew how to endure above everything else. It resonated with the power of the creature stalking towards her, similar to how she resonated with the other dragons and the kin, but entirely different at the same time.

This was an ancient of the old world. Something that had grown and evolved around the same time as the elves. It carried the deep, primal roots of the world's magic from before the veil collided with reality.

The creature stopped just before the line of hellfire and locked its bright, violet eyes with Rhia's. Four eyes. The creature had four eyes. The first pair were front facing like most predators, and eerily resembled the eyes of the dragonkin with vertically slit pupils. The second pair were further back and slightly higher. Its pupils were slits as well, only set horizontally.

Slowly, it shifted from the monster into a man that bore the same kind of ethereal beauty that both the dragonkin and the elves carried with their humanoid bodies. But like the dragonkin and the elves, he was distinctly not human.

His shoulder-length black hair did a decent job of concealing his second pair of eyes at his temples but couldn't completely hide them or the fact that they moved independently of the first pair. The skin of his hands was not the olive tone as the rest of him, but were pitch black, and appeared to be covered in the same chitinous material that protected his animal form, and his nails were curved into sharp talons.

"I'm surprised you could sense me," the man spoke for the first time. No one could have missed the unnatural length and sharpness of his canines and pre-molars, but humans would have been forgiven for not noticing anything odd about his voice. With every word, there was a low clicking sound at the back of his throat, almost mimicking the way the dragonkin greeted immediate family and soothed their young. "I suppose there really is a difference between the dragons and their kin."

"Who are you?" Rhia hissed. "What are you?"

"My parents named me Ezekiel. The Organization calls me Echo."

The most surprising part of hearing that was the fact that Rhia wasn't surprised at all. There were only so many sentient creatures from the old world, and many of them were listed in the Entity Project database either as test subjects who never survived to phase two or, as in Echo's case, as Entities themselves. Echo's breed had stuck out as much as Rhia for being a dragon or Kate for being a high sin.

Hellhound.

According to Atticus, the hellhounds were a recognized breed under the counsel's purview, but he didn't know that much about them. They were technically classified as a type of shapeshifter but were one of the few breeds who weren't actually represented by the shifters, but rather the solitary wendigo counsellor. Like all the breeds represented by Counsellor Megedagik, information about the hellhounds was carefully guarded, allowing the breed to maintain their reclusive nature.

Rhia had been able to tell that Nekros knew more, but in private had been overly reluctant to even acknowledge them. She was beginning to wish she had pressed him harder on the subject.

"Echo?" came Delta's small, quivering voice. Echo's secondary eyes flicked to the cave behind Rhia.

"Delta, stay back!" she snapped.

"Echo..." Delta whimpered again. "Echo... Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo..."

"Poor thing," Echo smiled genuinely. "He's really gone crazy, hasn't he?"

"What do you expect?" Rhia struggled to keep her voice calm. "After what they did to us, I'm surprised there aren't more of us in his condition."

Echo lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "He should go. I'm not here for him."

Against her better judgement, Rhia turned her back on Echo to face Delta. The boy had his hands over his ears, his eyes wide, and tears streaming down his cheeks. The raven sitting on his shoulder was puffed up to look as big as possible while a cloud of birds was beginning to circle overhead. "Get out of here," she ordered, looking at the raven. "Do not come back, no matter what happens."

"B-but-"

"Delta, go!"

The raven suddenly morphed into Delta's body, and his hesitation and fear vanished. He shifted quickly and flew straight up to reabsorb the rest of the birds. Rhia turned back to Echo, who hadn't moved an inch except to tilt his head back to watch Delta fly away. When he decided that the other entity was far enough away, he turned all four of his eyes back on Rhia. "Would you mind putting out the fire? I just want to talk."

"We can talk like this," she argued. "In fact, I prefer it."

Echo's eyes flared with annoyance. But instead of arguing, he took a step forward directly into the middle of the flames. The fire lapped at his legs and waist, but nothing happened. He wouldn't burn. "There's a reason the Organization sent me," he explained patiently, gliding one of his hands through the flames like running water. "Hellfire has no effect on me or my kind. It's kind of where the name comes from."

"What do you want?"

"To talk. Really, Charlie, if we were sent to kill you, we wouldn't have waited around for you to notice we were here."

"We?"

Echo raised his hand and snapped his fingers. Behind him, three more hellhounds emerged over the ridge. None were as big as Echo had been, but all of them were just as terrifying and were all growling down at her. "My littermates. Siblings, I guess you could call them."

"You guess?" she asked carefully.

"Hellhounds are not social creatures. They don't build large communities made from several generations of several different bloodlines. They don't even stay with their children beyond their formative years. Once they learn to hunt effectively, they're on their own. Littermates will form close bonds and stick together after the parents are done raising them. But once they find mates, they break off to form their own family units. The fact that they mate for life is considered an anomaly, given their overall antisocial nature."

The way he talked about the hellhounds caught her attention more than what exactly he was saying. It was like he was reading from a stack of cue cards rather than what he knew from personal experience. And the way he looked at the others didn't give Rhia the sense that he really saw them as family.

"They form bonds with their littermates," she repeated quietly. "But you didn't?"

"It's hard to be close to your siblings when you're pulled away from them every few days for experiments or too exhausted afterwards to join them. And once you start building the strength to be able to be around them, you all realize the differences that the experiments make. I was stronger. Faster. Bigger. I was able to master our abilities with ease, and discovered knew magic that hellhounds have never been known to cast."

The hellhound in the middle turned its eyes from Rhia to Echo, uttering a low warning growl. The spines on its back bristled and vibrated together, making a sound similar to a rattlesnake but a hundred times louder. Echo's lip curled in response.

"They follow because those are their orders. Not out of any love or loyalty for me as their brother or even as a fellow member of the breed. Since we were raised under the purview of the Organization, our biological parents lost interest in raising us by the time we were three. They knew that one of us would be separated for the Entity Program when they joined the Organization, but I don't think they ever considered that we wouldn't be overjoyed to be reunited."

Rhia huffed a quiet laugh before she could stop herself. "Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."

"I thought you might. That's why I wanted to talk. You get it."

"What about the other entities. They went through the same thing, didn't they?"

"We're not given much of an opportunity to speak with the others. Alfa is more myth and legend at this point. Bravo is the only other Entity who's met him, and Bravo himself isn't exactly much of a conversationalist. And the others..." Echo hesitated, turning back to her while keeping his second pair of eyes on the other hellhounds. "I know they grew up the same way. I know they went through the experiments and the adoption and everything. But I don't think they experienced it the same way. From what I've heard about you, though... I think you get it."

"Get... what?"

"After my biological parents left, I had to be separated permanently from the litter for my and their safety. I was alone. Truly alone until I was placed with my Colonel and my adopted family. I was so afraid that they would reject me too. I wasn't prepared to be welcomed with open arms. But my older sister doted on me. The two younger ones adored me. Colonel Matheson treated me like she did her daughters, and her husband was ecstatic to have another male in the house. I still remember the first time I called them my parents. My real parents, not just the people who gave birth to me."

Rhia shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the series of growls coming from Echo's littermates. The logical part of her knew that this could all be a trick. But her heart ached for him, and she wanted to believe that every word was as sincere as it sounded. She wanted the connection she felt with Echo to be real.

It was more than one old world creature resonating with another. It was more than merely understanding the trials and tribulations of being an entity like she had with Kate and Delta, even with Priya. The more they spoke, the less the world around them mattered, because Echo was right.

She did get it.

"My mom and brother were like that too," she said before she could stop herself. "My adoptive mom, I mean, but I don't think of her like that. She's my mom. And my brother..."

Common sense finally caught up to her and forced her mouth shut. She couldn't give any reason for the Organization to think that she still loved Maddox as her family or vice versa. Echo was an entity, end of story. And even if she could trust him not to say anything, she definitely couldn't trust the other hellhounds not to rat him out as a spy.

"At least, he was my brother," she led, thought the words tasted bitter on her tongue. "Until he found out what I was."

"My middle sister turned on me when she found out I was an ancient too. She got bullied a lot by a couple of shifters in middle school, and she was never able to separate them from any other ancient. We had a lot of really bad fights before I left to be reinitiated."

"With all due respect, Echo, Maddox was supposed to be my emotional lynchpin, so him deciding to join the Organization went a little further than a sibling spat."

All four of Echo's eyes widened. "Oh shit," he whispered. "I had no idea. I knew that Delta had one, but I didn't ... Jesus, Charlie, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine. I'm over it. Besides, I shouldn't have really been really surprised. He was Colonel Kincaid's son, after all."

"Right, I forgot that Kincaid was your Colonel. I've never had the pleasure, but his reputation precedes him. No wonder you left. Growing up an entity is hard enough. Doing it under his purview and not even knowing must have been a special kind of hell."

"Who was yours?" Rhia changed the subject. She wasn't sure how much more she could lie about Maddox before vomiting. "One of your sisters?"

"No, none of my sisters were meant to join the Organization. At least as far as I knew. Her name is Bailey." An embarrassed grin cracked across his face. "She was the girl next door. She's the Juliet to my Romeo. Just as forbidden, though not as tragic. No matter how hard things get, I always know that home is in her arms."

"You're in love with her."

"More than anything in this world. Instant friends since we were five, together since we were fifteen. I was scared that going back to the Organization for my final trial would break us up, but it's only made us stronger. It's hard, the times I have to be away for a mission. But it feels good to come back to someone who knows how lonely it is. It's nice knowing there's someone else who wishes we could turn back the clock and go back to how things were before."

Echo paused for a moment, his chest expanding as he took a deep breath. "You didn't come back to the Organization. You chose to be reunited with the dragons and your biological family. Be honest with me... is it any better on the other side?"

There was a mix of complex emotions on his face, perfectly matching the twisting storm in Rhia's heart. She knew what she should say for the sake of encouraging another Entity to break away. But she couldn't bring herself to spit it out.

"No," she whispered. "My mom tries so, so hard, and she's been so damn good about it, but it doesn't change the fact that she still doesn't get it. Not completely anyway. None of my old friends talk to me anymore. It doesn't matter how many layers of glamour I put on, they don't see me as me anymore. I'm just... a dragon. And the dragons don't get that I'm not really one of them. They think I should be able to just step up and be exactly like the rest of them, human experiences be damned. They get so angry when I can't or won't do something that they see as no big deal. There's no patience, there's no understanding. I feel like I'm caught between two worlds, and I don't belong to either of them. My dad is the only one of them who actually tries, and even he-"

Rhia froze. Since they met, she had acknowledged that Nekros was her father biologically. Emotionally, he was more of a father than Richard ever had been, but they were still building that foundation of a relationship. She had never called him dad. Not to him. Not even to herself.

"Jesus, Charlie," Echo's voice called her back to the present. "So you... you're really alone in this?"

"I was alright for a while," she shrugged and swiped at the tears threatening to fall. "I had someone else. Someone like your Bailey. He wasn't a part of the Organization. But he'd gone through something similar. He was turned into a vampire, and he lived with the constant reminder that he was supposed to be something else. Someone else. For god's sake, he helped build a kingdom that he never truly belonged to."

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know. He is alive. It's more than just a feeling. I know that he's out there. He's just... gone."

"Gone... but not dead." Echo paused for a moment, watching her carefully. His rear eyes flicked back towards the other hellhounds, lingering on them and hesitating for a long time. When he spoke again, his words were slow and cautious. "There are... rumors of a vampire being held at one of the facilities. I've heard that he's killed almost everyone he comes into contact with. They've even had to contain him in the dragon hold because the sedatives stopped working."

"Nolan," she breathed. "His name is Nolan. Is he... is he really alive?"

"Nolan Wes," Echo's eyes brightened. "Yes, I think we're talking about the same vampire. Now there's a man who's more than the rumors say."

"Where is he, Echo? You have to tell me, please."

"I don't know. The research facilities have been on lockdown for months. The only people who know who's placed at what facility are the people who work there. And no one knows how many facilities there really are."

"Please, Echo, you have to tell me what you do know. I found Delta from a scrap of paper in a destroyed facility, I can work with anything you give me."

"Hold on, Charlie. It doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to do this alone. I can help you. Come back with me."

She took an instinctive step back. "No. I can't go back. I won't go back. They put me in a cage, Echo."

"I won't let that happen. I'm not asking you to come back to the Organization. They won't either. I think they would be happy to let your vampire go and for all of us to go our separate ways."

"I... I don't believe you..."

"Why? Has the Organization come after you since you left? Delta left seventeen years ago. Kilo has been out for five. They've known where they were the whole time. Have they ever come after them?"

"The Organization drove Delta to the breaking point, and he's been living in isolation because of what happened to him. Kilo is in hiding for her own safety because she is so afraid that the Organization will come after her if she came out in the open."

"Delta is mentally ill. Rationality cannot be explained to him. As for Kilo, she's a paranoid venom addict. Her mate is the High Sin of Greed and is more than capable of making her afraid of the world to keep her from leaving him.

"I was not sent here to hurt you. I have three other hellhounds at my back, if I was ordered to bring you in dead or alive, we wouldn't be talking. Charlie... have I given you any reason not to trust me? We've gone through so much and feel each other's pain. I just want to help you. Let me help you."

She hesitated. She knew he was lying. He had to be lying. But there was something so earnest and honest about the gentle clicking in his voice. The way he looked at her with so much kindness and understanding. She wanted nothing more than to believe him.

"Is he... is he really alive?"

"Yes, Charlie. He's alive. Even with the full force of the Organization behind him, there's no way a werewolf would have the kind of power needed to kill Nolan Wes."

Rhia's ears started ringing, and her vision blurred at the edges. A lump formed in throat and her lungs grew heavy, making it impossible to breathe. The world seemed to tilt, and she struggled to stay standing as a wave of nausea washed over her. Guerrero lied. He never killed Nolan. He had the support of the Organization the whole time.

It was too much for her to process all at once.

"Come with me, Charlie," Echo coaxed, stretching out his hand towards her. "Nolan Wes is alive. We can find him together. Let me make you whole again."

~