Still Waters hide the deepest secrets

Opening the cage

Nixie

At dinner, I sit at the table between my mates but can't eat, my stomach in so many knots anything would come directly back up.

"Princess?"

"I can't Sebastian," I whisper to him.

"You will after," he orders.

"Fine," I huff at him. "If it makes you happy."

Dillon's eyes narrow at Sebastian's words. "I'd rather you ate now. I have plans for after."

"You aren't the only one," Sebastian grins.

"What?" Dillon asks him.

"Once she shifts and breaks the cage, she will be able to shift into anything."

"Anything?" Dillon's eyebrows climb and his eyes fly to mine.

I frown at Sebastian. "I'm not 100 percent sure of that, but at least a horse."

Sebastian chuckles at me. "You can shift into any living creature you want. Wood sprites can do plants as well."

"Like a tree?"

He nods. "It's how they hide."

I shrug. "Makes sense but I don't want to be a plant." The thought of being a flower my mother could pluck like a toddler picking a dandelion makes me shiver.

"Don't think like that, Nix," Dillon orders. "We will keep you safe."

"Sorry." I give him a half-hearted smile. "It's hard to make my feelings do a complete one eighty."

Sebastian's thumb brushes my cheek. "We know it's hard, princess. Feelings don't simply go away after eighteen years in an instant. But we will be right next to you."

Pain, every cell in my body screams. My muscles spasm, my intestines twist and turn, my bones crack and there is a powerful rushing sensation in my head like a raging river of boiling water. I gasp, trying to breathe. Death would be easier than this.

"What's happening to her?" I hear Dillon say, his own fear coloring the words.

"She's not shifting," Rebecca says and somehow her words calm me. "There is something else happening."

I want to ask questions, demand answers. I want to think, to rationalize the pain. But I can't. I'm locked in my body, awash in pain. All I can do is feel. And all I can feel is pain. Pain so intense, I have no words to describe how I feel and after having been tortured by my mother for 11 years, I have a lot of words.

Her hand touches me, and suddenly I can breathe. "Shh, little one. We will get you through this."

I scream but this time it is more of a howl as my body bends in ways it was never meant to bend. I feel a ripping sensation, then everything stops. The pain, the rushing in my head, it just all stops.

I lay on the floor of the balcony on my side but even with my eyes closed, I know I am not a wolf.

Then I feel a wet nose touch my cheek and I slowly open my eyes. She's beautiful. Golden red. Not me. "What happened?"

Lorelei lays down next to me, her body touching mine from shoulder to hip. "You were never supposed to have a wolf," she says. I hear two males behind me gasp, so I know they can hear her, too. "Becca's spell should have created a siren witch. But someone or something changed the spell. Instead of Jefferson's cells replacing Brandon's, they replaced hers."