Page 1 of Fennick’s Fortune (Sentinels of Apollo #2)

I’d been doing a regular patrol when I caught the scent of shifters. There were several, and they spanned various species, so it was hard to distinguish one from the other to get an accurate count. However, it didn’t matter how many were in it. I needed to talk to them.

It was a miracle I’d run across them at all.

Being a park ranger in Joshua Tree National Park was no easy job.

The park was seven hundred ninety-five thousand one hundred fifty-six acres, or twelve square hundred forty-two miles.

It was bigger than Rhode Island. Over half of the park was designated for wilderness.

I wasn’t the only ranger assigned to protect and patrol the park.

That would’ve been impossible. We had nine dedicated campgrounds, numerous hiking trails, and climbing areas, which attracted a large number of people every year.

They all needed to be monitored. Additionally, we had to venture into the wilderness to ensure that no one was camping where they shouldn’t be, thereby disturbing the wildlife, flora, and fauna.

Then there was the danger of fires due to the dryness from combining the Mojave and Colorado Deserts.

Invasive species such as red brome and cheatgrass dried out and formed fuel for fires to burn hotter.

It was a precarious balance that kept disaster from happening.

I’d been patrolling one of the wilderness sectors assigned to me when I caught their scent.

With the information my fellow Sentinels and I had learned mainly from the god Apollo, we’d been working hard to protect ourselves, my friend and fellow Sentinel Brax’s mate, Cerys, and their unborn children, and our people.

Shifters and supernaturals of all kinds were at risk.

The Knights of Pytho wouldn’t discriminate when it came to killing us.

Their goal was to exterminate all of us.

Too bad the Council of Oracles hadn’t told us this.

They were supposed to be the wise ones to whom the Sentinels reported.

Unfortunately, we discovered that they had been hiding vital information from us for decades, including the existence of Pytho and his Knights.

In addition, they hid that we could find mates and have children, even if it wasn’t with someone of our species.

It had been thought that no human could bear a shifter or a supernatural’s child.

We were dying out. Many of us were close to despair that we’d die alone, while others chose to take human mates, knowing they would never have offspring.

Apollo had informed us at his surprise appearance that while we were what he called his Chosen Ones, there were others called Precious Ones.

They were humans who, for reasons known only to Apollo, he’d chosen centuries ago to be able to have our children.

And it all started with him meeting a woman, Cerys’s ancestor, and designating her bloodline to bring forth the Precious Ones when the time was right.

The reemergence of Pytho from Hades, specifically from Tartarus, and the reappearance of his Knights, had triggered that.

We didn’t know if all Precious Ones came from that one bloodline, or if there were others. We didn’t chit-chat with Apollo.

While he’d been very benevolent to his Sentinels, Cerys, and Cerys’s grandma, Twyla, at our two encounters, he was a god.

They were known to be pernicious. They could change their attitude from kindhearted to merciless in a blink.

We worked to avoid drawing his attention or asking for favors, if possible.

The Oracles had been forced to reveal to the other eight Sentinel groups worldwide the existence of Pytho, the Knights, and the Precious Ones.

They also told them how they’d hidden this information.

There were very few of us Sentinels to police the shifter and supernatural world.

One of the ways we’d done it was by not allowing those we policed and protected to know who the Sentinels were among them, or how many there were.

That secret was no more. We had to identify ourselves to get them to believe our warnings.

To help identify us, we now had permanent tattoos, for lack of a better word, on our chests over our hearts.

They were placed there when Apollo put his hand on us.

It was our symbol. It was of a black cowl-covered head wearing a gold plague mask like doctors wore during the Black Death.

A black hat was on the head, and upon it was perched a black crow holding a lantern.

Along the bottom of the head were purple roses and leaves.

Apollo gave the Council of Oracles the same emblem but in the form of a gold amulet on a chain.

We could identify a Precious One when we met them because the brand would glow and grow hot.

So far, Cerys was the only one we’d met.

It was unknown whether the others like her would have the same powers as she did.

While being human, she displayed abilities from her mating with Brax and her pregnancy with twins.

They could speak telepathically with each other.

It wasn’t common between shifter and supernatural mates, though, as Sentinels, we had it between the seven of us.

Additionally, Cerys appeared to have developed defensive powers to protect herself.

We loved it when she threw out her hands to ward off the Oracles, and they went flying in the air and landed on their asses.

We didn’t know if it was due to the babies or if she would have that ability after they were born.

As time passed, Cerys was demonstrating more and more skills.

The other Sentinel groups, which were located in Canada, South America, Africa, Australia, Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and Europe, were just as displeased as we were when the Council of Oracles informed them of their actions and the threat against all of us.

They were busy like we were, trying to do our regular policing, being on the lookout for Precious Ones, watching for Knights, and spreading the word to all of our kind.

They needed to know of the threat and how to protect themselves.

If some decided to move closer to where they knew Sentinels lived, we’d find ways to help them do it.

We couldn’t protect everyone, so they had to step up, defend, and fight for themselves and their loved ones.

That was the reason why, when I caught the scent, I let the rest of my Sentinel friends know.

We lived in and around the small town of Needles, California.

It was a perfect place for shifters like us.

My fellow Sentinels consisted of Abraxas or Brax, as we called him.

He was a local San Bernardino County sheriff.

Royal was a local firefighter. Nico was a paramedic and Banner a lawyer.

Keir was a game warden, while Gunnar was a bounty hunter.

With a group the size I estimated this shifter bunch to be, it would take more than me to convince them of what they faced, especially if they hadn’t been told of it.

The word was spreading, but not as quickly as we had expected.

Some of us didn’t trust the Oracles to do their job or have our backs.

They were too busy trying to keep their seats on the Council.

Apollo was making changes, and though the terms for council members were for fifty years, Apollo wasn’t waiting.

He was bringing diversity to the Oracles in the form of some women and other species who hadn’t been or weren’t represented.

They were less than pleased about these changes and blamed it on our Sentinel Phalanx, Cerys, and Twyla, for causing it.

I didn’t bother to track and approach the shifter cluster until my guys arrived.

That would take three hours or more. The edge of Joshua Tree closest to Needles was two and a half hours away, and I was further inward.

They had to get loaded up. It would be more like four hours.

I’d advanced as close as I dared. It wasn’t smart to approach any group of shifters alone.

If they were smart, these shifters would have had someone watching their rear and backtracking to make sure no one followed them. That was smart, but I prayed they didn’t think to do it. To keep myself from going nuts while waiting, I sat there thinking of my life and how fortunate I was.

When Brax convinced us a few years back to move to this small, remote town of Needles, we thought he was crazy.

He insisted that we had to check it out.

Overall, it was a small town of approximately five thousand permanent residents.

Our numbers swelled to more than double that in the summer, when visitors came to enjoy boating and fishing on the Colorado River, explore the Mojave National Preserve, and visit the caverns.

This tourism was the cause of our jobs being required even more.

As the secret police force for supernaturals and shifters, we naturally gravitated towards professions that helped people. Or at least my friends and I did.

It was nice that Needles had a few other shifters who called it home when we arrived.

The main ones were the Bhaer family, who owned the best local bar, called Pour Decisions.

They’d been cautious at first, but when they realized we weren’t there to cause problems, they helped us orient to the best places to run in our other forms and to stay safe.

In our opinion, it was a hidden gem. Cooper owned the bar, but his brother, Colter, and cousins, Calvin and Chance, worked there.

They were bears like me, but a different type.

I was a now extinct Eurasian brown bear.

Or at least as far as we knew, there were no others—animal or shifter. The Bhaers were Grizzlies.