I might have stood staring at the spot where Jesalyn had been for hours if it weren’t for Cade yelling in my ear. My confusion and shock were probably normal. My boyfriend’s dead mother had showed up as some sort of hologram, shared a slideshow of crazy images, and now I could see even though it was completely dark. Considering all that happened after being thrown in a dungeon by a crazy monster, the situation was definitely intense.

“Hailey!”

“What?” I snapped out of my daze. One minute the Lightness was there; the next she was gone. I struggled to hold onto the images she’d shown me. Were they real? What was I supposed to do with them?

“So you can hear?” Cade leaned back against a stone wall. Aside from the initial way he yelled my name, he was still his cool and collected self. “I was beginning to doubt you had that ability. Seemed you were purposely ignoring us.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t.” I was trying to process the mind-blowing information dump from Jesalyn while also coming to terms with our current predicament. Unfortunately the visit from the Lightness had done nothing to break us free from the basement prison we were in. I went over the events leading to our current situation. Agreeing to speak at the women’s conference, meeting Veronica, having to take a leave of absence after saying exactly what was on my mind at the conference, agreeing to go to Veronica’s house to protect The Society, Veronica turning into a crazy monster, and finally falling through the floor to this awful place. All in all it still seemed exactly as bad as I’d thought.

“Jesalyn gave you her light. Now use it to get us out of here.” Troy’s expression was hard and unyielding. It was hard to find any evidence of the Drago I’d first met. No cocky attitude and smirk. All traces of his humor were gone. Was this all about the fire that was stripped from him? Was his fire so tied to his personality he was essentially a different person now? I hated to even think about the possibility. Not that he was the nicest before, but this was something else entirely.

“You make that sound easy,” I snapped.

“It should be easy.” The coldness in his voice matched his expression.

“Maybe if I’d known what a Lightness was before just now.” As usual I’d been kept in the dark. That term now took on new meaning after meeting Jesalyn. I didn’t want to be angry at Wyatt, but why had he kept the details from me? Because there’d been no time. Life seemed to always move at a whirlwind pace for us.

“You have her light. You are a Lightness now.” Troy crossed his arms. “There’s nothing more to it.”

“No. I’m still a Pteron.” Aside from a bad headache, nothing felt different. I wasn’t about to transform—having my wings out wasn’t going to help us much where we were—but I knew I still could. That more powerful and darker side of me still lay just beneath the surface.

“Well, yes. You are a hybrid.” Troy scowled. “But that doesn’t change that you have the power to get us out of here.”

“Somehow when you say it like that it isn’t encouraging.” I tried to make light of things even though there was nothing light about them. We needed to escape, and we needed to do it soon.

“Who said I wanted to be encouraging?” Troy puffed. “It doesn’t matter what I say. We have to find Wyatt. That should be motivation alone.”

“We need to get out of here.” Cade straightened and stepped away from the wall. “If that involves finding Wyatt, I’m down for it.”

“Hunter.” I turned toward the glass wall. Hunter was still standing there. Still completely naked. “Could you cover yourself please?”

“Oh.” He moved his hands down in front of him. “I forgot you can see.” He gave me a sheepish smile. Many girls went for guys like Hunter—the Alpha types—but I had no interest in being window dressing for anyone. That’s all a mate was to an Alpha in my opinion. Wyatt wasn’t an Alpha. He was strong and powerful, but he viewed me as his equal. There was no hierarchy to worry about.

Hunter’s hands worked as coverage, but that was going to limit his movements. “We need to get you clothes.”

“Yes. A pair of pants would be nice.” He smiled. “Wish I hadn’t been in the shower when all this happened.”

“I still can’t imagine how that all went down,” I admitted.

“Were you trying to imagine it?” Cade bumped his shoulder into mine.

“I don’t mean literally imagine it, idiot.” I could feel heat rising to my cheeks.

“Idiot?” Cade raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never called me that before.”

“You’ve never accused me of being a pervert before.”

“Come on, you just said you couldn’t imagine Hunter in the shower. That implies you were trying to imagine it.”

“No. I said I couldn’t imagine Hunter getting kidnapped from a shower.”

“Hailey, do you usually argue this much?” Eloise asked quietly.

“Uh, with Cade, yes.” We’d always had a relationship more tantamount to a brother-sister relationship than actual friends. You’d have thought one older brother would have been enough for me, but I was a glutton for punishment.

“Ok. I’m just trying to see how much Jesalyn’s gift changed you.”

“Gift? You really think there’s Lightness in me?” I looked at the petite girl beside me. Eloise had really ended up with the short end of the stick when she was assigned to me.

“You can see. Perfectly.” Eloise touched my elbow. “The rest of us can’t.”

“I know, but that might be an after-effect of Jocelyn’s, well, whatever it was she did.”

“The after-effect is you’re part Lightness now.” Troy sat down and leaned against the wall. “How many times does one need to tell you things before you believe it?”

“Why are you so convinced I am part Lightness?” I asked out of both curiosity and annoyance.

“Because it’s obvious.” Troy stretched his legs out in front of him. “I may not have my fire, but I haven’t lost my keen observation senses.”

“Keen observation senses?” Cade chuckled. “Oh, my. I wish I had those.”

“Shut up, bird.” Troy sneered.

“Just stop.” I rolled my eyes out of habit and turned back toward Hunter. “I’m going to need your help.”

Hunter snapped right to attention. “Ok. What do you need?”

“I appreciate you agreeing before I even tell you what you’re going to do.” At the moment I was grateful one of the guys I was stuck with was willing to be helpful.

“I’m naked and stuck in some basement. There isn’t much I wouldn’t be willing to do to get out of here.” He made a good point.

“Can you find any spot on the floor over there that feels different?”

“Feels different?”

I gestured to the floor on his side of the glass wall. “It might be a false floor or something. I kept thinking there was a way to climb up over the wall, but maybe the solution is to go under.”

“This doesn’t sound like a Lightness solution to me.” Troy’s voice was just as defeatist sounding as before.

I wanted to ignore him, but I struggled to hold my tongue more often than not. Hence having to take a leave of absence from my job. “Well, it’s certainly not a Pteron one. We don’t burrow underground.”

“No, we don’t,” Cade readily agreed.

“If it’s the only way out, we’ll do it.” Pterons, as a whole, suffered from claustrophobia. We didn’t like small places, and we definitely didn’t like moving further away from the sky. We may not fully turn into birds anymore, but we still descended from true bird shifters. Dragos didn’t seem to have the same problem. Probably because their ancestry came from dragons, and dragons had lived in caves.

“It can’t be the only way out.” Cade looked up at the ceiling. “Now that you have light we can check out more.”

“Be my guest.” I pointed at him. “We might as well check out all possibilities.”

“There aren’t going to be any real possibilities unless you use your new powers. Don’t you think the monster has thought this through? She’d want any obvious escape option to lead to an even worse place.” Troy practically growled the words.

“Well, right now I’m going to do anything to get us out of here. Would you rather starve to death? We all know she picked us for a reason. She has to be doing something horrible up there.” I gestured toward the ceiling.

“I am all for escaping, but explain to me again how anything going on up there is our problem at all?” Troy frowned.

“How isn’t it our problem? Our life is up there. Don’t you want something to go back to?” I fought to keep the exasperation from my voice.

“Without my fire I have nothing to go back to.” His haughtiness was gone.

“Really?” I knelt down in front of him. “Is that really all you are? The great and mighty Drago Prince is nothing without his fire?” My words were harsh and pointed, but I needed to wake him up. We all needed to be on our best game if we had any chance of getting out of there.

“Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” His eyes narrowed into tiny slits.

“I do know what I’m talking about. What happened to you sucks, but if you want any chance of getting your fire back we have to get out of here.” I was annoyed at Troy, but we needed him whether I liked it or not. Besides, he was like family to Wyatt. In a weird way now that made him like family to me. He wasn’t being left behind.

“Getting out of here doesn’t mean we are getting the fire back from The Elders. That’s impossible.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. Hard, yes. Impossible, no.” I was pretending to have far more confidence than I really had. The Elders were god-like creatures that scared the hell out of me. “You’re stronger than this, and you know it.”

“Hailey. I think I found something,” Hunter called, thankfully ending my attempt at a pep talk. “But I need a light to get a better look.”

“Can’t you light up now, Hailey? Isn’t that what a Lightness does?” Cade draped an arm over my shoulder.

“Can I light up now?” I shrugged off his arm. “Are you kidding me?”

“You got the light from the Lightness, didn’t you?” Cade furrowed his brows. “Or did I misinterpret all of that?”

I grunted. “I’m not some light bulb. I can’t just light up.” Seeing in the dark didn’t mean I got any of her other abilities.

“Why not?” Cade crossed his arms over his chest.

“Because that’s not how this works.” Not that I had any idea how it worked.

“How do you know? Are you an expert already?” Troy called me out on it. Normally it would have annoyed me, but it meant he was at least trying. That was a step in the right direction.

“Hailey thinks she’s an expert on everything,” Cade jabbed.

“Are you two trying to make me angry?”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“What?” Anger surged through me.

“Because latent abilities are often triggered by strong emotions…” Eloise stood calmly at my side. “They are trying to get your lightness abilities working.”

“Well, you are doing a good job making me angry, but as we have no idea what latent abilities I might have, you may quickly regret this.”

“Can we be in a worse situation?” Cade quirked an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Hunter and I said at once.

“And I thought you were an optimist.” Troy rose to his feet.

“Me?” I put a hand to my chest. “Right. That’s exactly what I am.”

“You are a hell of a lot more optimistic than me.” Troy walked toward me.

“Only because of your missing fire.”

“What was with all that Elder talk?”

“That has nothing to do with optimism. It’s determination.” I fell to my knees in front of the glass wall, trying to see far enough on the other side to get a glimpse of what Hunter felt. It was frustrating that the basement was 100% complete darkness. Even the slightest amount of light would have been enough for shifters to see.

“Cut the chit-chat and light it up, Hailey.” Cade knelt down beside me.

“This is all your fault, you know.”

“Mine?” Cade put a hand on his chest.

“Yes. You’re the one who introduced me to Veronica.”

“Yes, when I thought she was just a Sorceress. You can’t actually blame me for this mess.”

“Hailey, please. A little bit of light?” Hunter glanced over.

“I wish I knew how.” I sighed.

Eloise took my hand. “You do know how.”

“I do?”

“Yes. You need to focus and think.” She squeezed my hand.

“I thought I needed heightened emotions.”

“That was one theory, and it didn’t work. Let’s try another.” If nothing else, my Guardian Pixie had a calming influence on me. Plus, it was nice to have another girl around.

“I like the sound of this one better.” Even if relaxing generally wasn’t in my wheelhouse.

“Then make it work,” Troy spoke from somewhere behind me.

“You aren’t helping the whole relaxing idea.”

“Oh, my mistake.” He chuckled.

“What’s your problem?” I rose to my feet and turned to him.

“You know what my problem is.”

“Yes, you lost your fire. That can be temporary, but it can only be temporary if you snap out of this. Fire or no fire, you are still strong.” This wasn’t about a pep-talk anymore. This was about desperation. I couldn’t hope to figure this out if he didn’t stop acting like such a jerk.

“Is this why Wyatt likes you? You’re his personal cheerleader?”

“What did you just say?” I stepped toward him. “I’m his personal cheerleader?” Anger built up deep inside. I felt my Pteron nature taking over.

“I don’t think he meant it that way.” Eloise touched my arm. “And remember, we are trying to stay calm now.”

I shrugged her off. “You know what? I’m going to find a way out of here and leave you behind. We can even put the chains back on if you prefer.”

I turned back to the glass wall and closed my eyes. If there was a chance I had the light power in me—whatever that power was— I had to use it now. I thought about Jesalyn, which in turn made me think about Wyatt. Where was he? Was he in danger too? There were so many possibilities and none of them were good. I needed to get rid of the glass wall. No matter what we did, we were better off if we were all together as one group.

Without opening my eyes, I touched the glass. It was cool at first, but then the temperature started to rise. I heard the guys talking about something, but I blocked their voices out. The temperature continued to rise. My hand burned, but I kept my eyes closed. Something about the burning felt right. Besides, no one was screaming and pulling me away. I was positive at least Eloise would jump in. The burning eventually turned to numbness, and then it faded away. I opened my eyes. There was a hole in the wall in front of me in the shape of my hands, and even more surprisingly, my hands were glowing.