Psycho Shifters

The novel opens in a frozen world known as the shifter realm, where society divides into tiers: null shifters, the powerless majority; betas, stronger soldiers with extended lifespans; alphas, immortal war generals who transform into mythical beasts; and omegas, immortal shifters capable of birthing all three types but now believed extinct. Portals connect the shifter realm to the fae realm, and for decades a fae queen has sent monstrous creatures through these portals, sparking a war in which alphas and betas serve as defenders.

The prologue introduces ten-year-old Sadie, a null shifter orphan indentured to Dick, a retired beta who runs a tavern. On a rare warm day, Sadie picks the lock on her bedroom door and frees her six-year-old sister, Lucinda, for a day in the snowy forest. A townsperson reports the outing, and Sadie takes the blame. Dick beats her savagely with his belt. She vows to stop crying and be strong.

Ten years later, Sadie is still scrubbing Dick's floor while he whips her. Her body is covered in scars, and her voice is permanently broken from years of screaming. She activates "the numb," a dissociative state that first appeared when she was twelve. It eliminates emotion and pain, replacing them with cold tactical instructions, and requires a day and a half to recharge. She begins strangling Dick with his own belt, but a messenger from the oligarchy, the realm's ruling government, interrupts to announce all servants must be tested at the sacred lake, a fae-enchanted body of water that reveals a person's shifter type. The messenger slits Sadie's arm. Her blood turns the lake black, signifying alpha, then blood red, a color the enchantment was never supposed to produce. No woman has ever tested as alpha. The messenger fires at Dick and carries Sadie away.

Sadie wakes at a military fortress near portal three, one of several portals where shifter soldiers battle fae creatures. She meets the three alphas stationed there: Jax, an enormous, calm, dark-skinned man with gold chains in his braids; Ascher, a tattooed man with onyx horns and an aggressive temperament; and Cobra, a pale man with emeralds embedded in his skin, emerald eyes, and a cold hostility. The oligarchy confirms Sadie is an alpha. The men are skeptical, but Jax agrees to test her in combat.

During a grueling sparring exercise, Sadie uses the numb to fight for hours, absorbing punishment without flinching and finishing mid-group despite no training. That night, Darren, a beta and friend of Dick's, breaks into her room intending to rape her. Sadie slashes his face with a stolen butcher knife. Cobra, found in the hallway with Darren's mangled body, snaps his neck. Jax moves Sadie into the alpha quarters for safety. A chapter from Cobra's perspective reveals his distrust of women stems from decades of captivity under the fae queen. He escaped six years ago, and Jax's steady presence rebuilt his mind. He is drawn to Sadie but views her as a threat to his bond with Jax.

When a spider fae breaches the portal, the alphas transform: Jax into a spined bear, Ascher into a half-ram, and Cobra into a figure draped in writhing shadow snakes. As the spider seizes Ascher and flees, Sadie transforms for the first time into a saber-toothed tiger with white fur and foot-long canines. She chases the spider and holds it until Cobra's snakes kill the creature. Betas begin calling her "saber-toothed bitch" with grudging respect. Afterward, Sadie befriends Aran, a lanky, blue-haired beta with an infectious personality. She also discovers a tiny shadow snake from Cobra has attached to her wrist, sending pulses of happiness; she hides it.

In a battle-tactics class, Sadie answers a hypothetical about defecting soldiers with a chillingly calculated plan for staged murder, delivered in a flat tone that stuns the room. The instructor, an elderly woman called Auntie, assigns Sadie and Aran mandatory weekly therapy. Meanwhile, the alphas' attention toward Sadie escalates: Jax grows protective, Cobra oscillates between hostility and possessiveness, and Ascher swings between cruelty and softness. Chapters from their perspectives reveal that Jax is 120 years old with five adopted sisters, attracted to both Cobra and Sadie, yet suspicious the oligarchy is hiding her true background. Ascher's father runs the realm's largest weapons cartel, and Ascher has been carrying out a secret mission since before arriving at portal three.

Sadie obtains maps from Zed, a null shifter servant at the compound who has befriended her, and discovers the shifter realm is labeled the "relicta realm," Latin for "abandoned," and that four realms exist: Human, Relicta, Fae, and Beast. She has never heard of a beast realm. During therapy, Auntie is seized by an inhuman voice reciting a fae prophecy: "Blood and ice will fall the lie, / Color and white to break the queen, / Heir and friend join and tie, / A reborn quad the fates foreseen." Aran explains that fae prophecies are enchanted and alive. Sadie connects "quad" to the four realms on her map.

Cobra's shadow snakes inject Sadie with venom that triggers intense arousal rather than lethargy. Aran speculates the reaction resembles an omega's heat, an involuntary reproductive arousal cycle unprecedented for an alpha. During a larger attack involving four spider fae, Sadie is trapped in a barbed spiderweb on a mountainside. Cobra reveals his full form: a massive shadow snake so long its tail vanishes from sight. Jax captures a live spider fae, a major victory. A dying spider locks eyes with Sadie, and she feels compelled to help it, suggesting the fae may not be simple monsters.

After the battle, John, a red-haired beta who had befriended Sadie, exploits her unconscious state and drags her toward the portal to deliver her to the fae queen for a bounty. He wears a vial of blue fae flame that blocks her shifting ability. Jax intercepts and saves her, seeing the thick scars covering her torso. She reveals she was a servant beaten with a belt and begs him to keep her scars secret. Under interrogation, John discloses that "beasts" from an unknown realm pay the fae queen to capture alphas. Before he can elaborate, blue fae flame kills him. Cobra recognizes the flame as the queen's power and reveals she imprisoned him for decades.

Before the Ianuarius celebration, a realm-wide holiday, Aran gives Sadie a stray white kitten. At the party, Jax punches a beta who kisses Sadie, and Cobra pulls her into a closet for her first sexual encounter. Sadie later finds Jax drugged in the snow outside. Her kitten transforms into Xerxes, a tall, golden-skinned male omega who serves the fae queen and wears a vial of blue fae flame around his neck. Ascher arrives carrying the unconscious Cobra and Aran, his hotheaded persona gone. He has worked for his father's syndicate alongside the fae queen throughout his time at portal three. Xerxes uses the flame to summon the queen, who paralyzes Sadie with blue fire; the numb keeps Sadie standing. The queen thanks Xerxes for bringing her daughter back, then walks past Sadie to kneel before Aran, revealing that Aran is her daughter, a fae princess who disguised herself as a male beta. Sadie connects this to the prophecy's "heir and friend."

The group is transported to the fae castle. Guards take Sadie, Jax, Cobra, and Aran to the dungeon while the queen leads Ascher and Xerxes away. A final chapter from Ascher's perspective reveals his anguish: he has grown genuinely attached to the other alphas and is obsessed with Sadie, telling himself they will forgive him once the truth about the realm emerges. The novel ends on a cliffhanger with the four captives imprisoned, the realm's power structures exposed as deceptions, and the identities of the mysterious "beasts" still unknown.