Page 114 of Shifting Hearts

SEVEN

JASON

I watched Morgan go through the change, feeling numb inside, the weight of my failures crushing me. I had promised to protect her, to keep her safe, and yet all I could do was stand there while she slipped further away.

When Steven appeared, all that grief twisted into rage. I had thrown every ounce of anger I had at him, but it hadn’t mattered. Nothing could undo what he had done. Annie had been right, he had betrayed us in the worst way. I could never see him as an ally again.

Darius, Sonia’s father, had begged Cass not to turn Morgan. He had pleaded like a man on his knees before a storm. He had known, just as I had, that wasn’t ready, Beth had died two years earlier then she should’ve.

Cass didn’t care. All she had seen was the fire. She hadn’t cared that Timothy and Luka had been reduced to ash, nothing but cinders in her wake. She had only seen power.

And when Morgan finally woke, I had known what was coming. The storm would break, and the monster who had once terrorized our kind would rise.

I hadn’t been able to imagine what she would become. I had only hoped and prayed that somehow I would still see my Morgan beneath it all, and not the nightmare she was about to unleash on this world.

It had taken three days for Morgan to complete the change, and when she finally woke, terror consumed her.

She had scrambled up the wall with unnatural speed, pressing herself into the corner like a trapped animal.

My heart broke as I realized the witch was already using her gift on her, and Steven knew it.

Cass spoke to her in a sickly sweet voice, coaxing, lulling. Morgan had no idea who she even was, just as Cassandra had promised.

Darius noticed immediately. His sharp glare cut through the room, directed at Cassandra, and in that instant I knew he understood. He knew exactly what she was capable of.

Then came the feeding. I could not bring myself to watch as she tore into an innocent man, draining him dry with a hunger that seemed endless. She clung to him even as life left his body, refusing to release him until Cassandra wrenched her away. Morgan’s body hit the wall with a sickening crack.

Cassandra rushed to her side, stroking her hair as she whispered explanations, what would happen if she ever drank from the dead, what dangers lingered in blood already spoiled. Her voice was calm, reassuring, as though she were guiding a child instead of a monster newly reborn.

She brought in a second victim, and again Morgan drained them to the last drop. Their screams clawed at my ears, a sound I knew would haunt me for the rest of my days.

Darius demanded a private word with Cassandra, and she ordered Steven to keep watch over Morgan.

He only nodded at her, his eyes lingering on Morgan with a strange heaviness.

I slipped back, putting as much distance as I could between myself and Morgan so I might overhear what passed between Cass and Darius.

“Why doesn’t she remember?” he asked, his voice sharp.

“I don’t know,” Cassandra replied softly. “But she is… something miraculous.”

“Don’t lie to me. I know what you can do.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do? What are you talking about?”

“You think I don’t know?” he hissed. “It isn’t normal to build covens as large as yours.”

She glared at him, her voice like venom. “Be very careful with your accusations, Darius. You tread on thin ice. Now that I have Natasha, she could turn you and your daughter to dust with a flick of her hand.”

A low growl rumbled from his throat before he spun on his heel and left. Cassandra stood for a long moment, watching him retreat, her expression unreadable, before she returned to Morgan.

Morgan gagged, blood spilling from her lips, the price of her overfeeding. Cassandra knelt beside her, brushing her hair back tenderly. “There is a limit, my Firebird. You must learn when you are full.”

Steven stepped forward, speaking to Cass in low Spanish. “Why doesn’t she remember?”

Cass’s eyes darkened as she answered. “I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know.”

“Cass,” Steven pressed, “if you are doing this?—”

“I am not,” she snapped. “Why would you think that? I told you, my abilities died the night Jericho nearly killed me. I’m half the woman I once was, Steven.”

“So her forgetting is what, mere coincidence?”

“It must be,” she whispered. “I would have let her go. I swear it.”

But I knew the truth Steven refused to see. Abilities didn’t die.

He huffed in frustration and led Natasha back to her chambers. I followed at a distance, though my eyes stayed fixed on Cassandra. It didn’t matter that she went by a different name now, beneath the mask, she was still the same dangerous woman she had always been.

The years that followed were brutal to witness.

Morgan became Cassandra’s everything. The lies she whispered to her were endless, even about the marks on her back.

They hadn’t disappeared with the change.

If you asked me, that was karma. But Cassandra was a master at hiding the truth, even from those closest to her.

I hated watching their games, their frolicking in her bed.

It infuriated me to my core, and the fact that I could neither escape it nor change it kept me constantly on edge.

Morgan grew more sadistic with each passing day.

Life meant nothing to her anymore. I saw it in her eyes.

My love was gone, and in her place stood something worse than the boogeyman.

Hatred hollowed me out as I watched what she became—how she toyed with her coven, how she manipulated them like pawns. She was becoming more like Adrienne every day. And I hated Adrienne with every piece of my soul.

“She did this for you, Jace,” I reminded myself again and again. Remember what she sacrificed for you.

I clung to the hope that Morgan wasn’t in this monster, that if she ever remembered who she truly was, she would burn Cassandra alive and come back to me.

One night, I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sound of their laughter, Morgan’s moans and complaints as Cassandra brought her to her knees with practiced cruelty.

I couldn’t bear to watch it. It sickened me to my core.

Morgan had never been drawn to women, but she believed every poisonous word Cassandra fed her.

The witch’s hold on her was as strong as it had once been on me.

“Stop. Stop.” She shoved Morgan away.

Morgan growled, low and feral.

“You know I don’t like that,” Adrienne said.

“Why? Why don’t you like it?” Morgan snapped back.

“Tell her, Adrienne. I dare you,” I egged, leaning forward.

She only shook her head.

Morgan slammed against the post of the bed and it splintered. “I want to know.”

“Calm your temper,” Adrienne said.

“Then tell me. What are you hiding from me?” Morgan demanded.

“Nothing,” she snapped.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You think I’m lying to you? I would never lie to you, my love.”

I snorted, unable to help the bitter laugh that rose in my throat. Yeah, right.

“You had someone before me,” Morgan pressed. “She did that, didn’t she?”

Adrienne’s face told the story before she spoke. “Don’t—please.”

“Who was she?” Morgan pushed.

“It wasn’t a she,” Cass said finally. “You are the only one.”

“A fucking guy?” Morgan barked. “Who? I want to know.”

“It’s a long time ago,” Cass answered, voice thin.

“I don’t care,” Morgan snapped.

“Fine,” Cass said at last. “Sit down. I’ll tell you once—and never again.”

She spun that soppy story about me like it was a lullaby, how I’d broken her, how Steven “changed” her. She said it had happened fifteen hundred years ago.

She never told Morgan the truth. Not the whole truth. Just the cruel version that painted me as a monster, as some ancient atrocity, and I watched Morgan’s loathing begin to harden into something awful and real.

Cassandra told her I had died long ago; she even explained what I had been, and Morgan laughed at the idea, called it an abomination, until Cass soothed her with assurances that we were real.

Everything Cassandra said was a lie by omission. When had Morgan learned that I was still alive? When had she decided she would hunt me down and incinerate me on sight? How did the truth finally reach her ears?