[1] Lions Inside | Tony Stark

prologue

Elizabeth Dawson knew that she had never been so happy in her life when she, on Christmas morning, saw her two children running around their father, trying to get the daughter's doll he had taken and was holding over his head, laughing at their attempts and the son's pouty face.

Their daughter, Jadelyn Dawson, had just turned eight years old and was their little angel, the golden girl and she had already started to learn much about her shapeshifting abilities.

Jadelyn's five-year-old brother, Thomas, was full of energy and never wanted to sit still. He hadn't shown any signs of shapeshifting yet and Elizabeth would feel relieved if he never got the power.

This was the first time in a long while that the family had been together. Her husband, William, had been busy trying to find clues to where hunters could be. They were afraid that they were starting to catch up with their constant moving.

"Mummy, father won't give me my toy back!" Elizabeth heard her daughter's small voice say from where she was, holding onto her father's white dress shirt.

Elizabeth smiled at her daughter before she gave her husband a playful glare. "William, you know how Jadelyn feels about having her doll taken."

William only shook his head in amusement. "I am just telling her that she can have it if she can reach it, love."

Elizabeth knew what he meant and made a motion with her finger for her daughter to come over. Jadelyn glared at her father before walking to her mother. Elizabeth crouched down and whispered in her ear. "What do you think could reach up there?"

Her daughter thought for a few seconds before she whispered back: "Do you think a little birdy could fly up there?" Elizabeth smiled at her child before leaning in again. "Why don't you find out?"

Jadelyn nodded and took a few steps away before starting to concentrate, Elizabeth chuckling at her expression.

After a few seconds, instead of a little girl standing in front of her, a small Robin was flying and started tweeting angrily at William. Jadelyn started flying towards her toy, wavering as she did so and when she put her small talons in her doll William let go of it.

That's when she heard it. The quiet clicking sound of a gun as it was loaded.

"William, get down!" She shouted before someone started firing their gun into their kitchen, hitting everyone except for the small bird still hovering in the air.

The small girl flew up and sat on top of one of the cupboards, shaking in fear as a man and a woman dressed in black, both wearing some kind of masks to cover their faces, entered the house by breaking the door.

The man pointed the gun, searching for anything else left alive in the house and Jadelyn pushed herself closer to the wall, hiding in the shadows.

The woman walked towards her parents, both dead from the gunshots, and checked their pulses.

"Both targets are dead. I repeat: both targets are confirmed dead." The woman said and scanned over the room one last time.

Jadelyn saw her brother halfway up the stairs and tried motioning with her wing for him to hide upstairs.

Instead, something happened. Her brother transformed into a bear, just like the one they had seen at the zoo only a few days ago.

Since it was his first time transforming he lost control of himself and ran towards the attackers, letting out a roar as he did so.

The people were almost at the door when her brother transformed and they quickly turned around, fear visible on their features as they started shooting at him.

Her brother got the chance to slash his claws towards them, cutting their suits and digging into their stomachs. Even though they were hurt they kept shooting and her brother soon fell to the ground, transforming back into the small boy he was.

The two also fell to the floor, the man speaking into some kind of radio. "We are hit. I repeat: we are hit. Mission still successful. All the shapeshifters are now confirmed dead."

Jadelyn watched in silence and fear as the life slipped away from the two. She waited several minutes to assure they were dead and shakily flew down in front of her mother before she turned back to a small girl.

"Mummy?" The girl asked, her voice shaking as tears began forming in her eyes.

Her mother blinked once before she let out a small breath. "Come my little bird, you must hurry."

The girl did as her mother said and leaned down in front of her. "You must listen to me. Listen well. In my drawer, there is a golden necklace. Take it. Try to destroy it, if you can't you'll have to hide it where no one can find it. Do you understand?"

Jadelyn nodded in response, even if she was confused, and gave her mother one last hug. "Please don't leave me, Mummy!"

Her mother only looked at her with loving eyes. "I wish I didn't have to. But now I know you can survive with the help of your abilities. You must go now, little bird. But remember: Never trust a human. They will only bring death with them."

And as her mother drew one last breath before her eyes were only staring in the ceiling.

The girl let out a gasp if grief and disbelief before trying to pull herself together. "I-I'm sorry Mummy. I promise I w-will do what you told me to." Jadelyn cried over her mother's corpse before standing up and stumbling towards the stairs.

She walked into her parent's room and saw the drawer. She looked through it until she found the necklace or rather the locket, light coming out of the openings.

She put the locket around her neck and started to run out of the house, casting one look at her family's corpses before running out of the house.

She stopped and turned around to admire the house she had grown up in, the house she would never see again. She started choking up at the thought, but she shook away the feeling and reminded herself of what her mother had said.

And when she turned around and transformed into a bird she started to fly off, knowing this would be the last time she ever felt remotely safe.

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So that's the prologue. What did you think? I hope you guys are as excited for this story as I am.

Also, I totally listened to I'll make a man out of you when I wrote about Thomas' transformation 😂