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“You made bets, didn’t you?” Cadence asked in a dead tone.
“So many bets! I’m going to be a millionaire!”
“You can’t be a millionaire off of two-dollar bets, Nox.”
“Okay, dream-sucker. Worry about your own finances. I’m not sharing any of my riches with you.”
Jenna giggled as they traded insults. When she did her scan of the room again, her gaze halted at the open barn doors. Leaning against the open frame, Lucas stared right at her, unblinking, with those lightened gold eyes that said his animal was right at the surface. His face was unreadable. Was he angry?
He melted back into the shadows, and Jenna stared at the doorway, wishing for…wishing for…she didn’t even know how she felt right now.
“Where is Torren?” she asked.
“Check the rafters. He likes to be up high when he knows he’s going to let the gorilla out.” He quickly searched the room and then pointed up to a hay loft. Torren knelt up there, studying the crowd below him.
“They’ll be all right…right?” she asked.
Nox snorted, and that was the only answer he gave. She felt someone watching her, and her instincts kicked up. Across the barn, three men were sitting at the top of a set of bleachers. Chills lifted on her forearms. Kirk sat next to Damon Daye and none other than the red dragon himself, Vyr. They all wore somber expressions that gave away nothing, but on the top of his thighs, Kirk’s fists were clenched with tension.
“Vyr is here,” she whispered to Nox.
The smile faded from his face, and he cast a quick glance toward his Alpha. “I know.”
“Why?” Cadence asked.
“For Torren. Torren is the guardian of the red dragon, and the red dragon is the guardian of him.” He slid his bright blue-eyed gaze to Jenna. “Don’t worry though. Lucas has his own fire-breathing cheering section.”
“Damon?” she guessed.
A tight smile flashed across Nox’s face. “Lucas has had the attention of the blue dragon for a while.”
“Keep Vyr out of it,” she murmured to Nox, deeply disturbed. If either of those dragons got pissed, everyone here would burn, and this was neither of their fight. This was supposed to be for fun, but the stakes felt like they were bigger than she understood. She had a bad feeling, but that always happened when there was too much power in a small space. “Excuse me,” she murmured, and ducked around a trio of bystanders.
“Quiet!” a roar came from the ring.
When she turned to look over her shoulder, a giant, sweaty man covered in tattoos without a shirt on was pacing the center of the ring.
“We have something special for you tonight. We have what you have begged for. What you have waited for. You like seeing the tiger fights? The grizzly fights? This place hasn’t seen a fight like this in years. This arena has known the days of Kong! The days of Kirk the Destroyer. It has seen the young blackbacks train and challenge each other. The next generation of Damon’s Mountains have painted this place in blood as they established dominance, and bragging rights, and territory lines. You have seen these two before, but not like this. They have grown in the years they have been away from the mountains.” The man grinned as he circled the outer edge of the ring, looking from face to face as the cheering grew deafening. “You are in for a special treat tonight.” He lifted his voice and yelled, “Who wants to see a silverback fight?”
The enormous fight barn rattled with the cheering and clapping and stomping of the crowd. Her heart pounded against her ribs and she gasped as Torren jumped from the rafters and his gorilla exploded from his skin in mid-air. The entire barn shook as he landed on his hind legs and slammed his massive fists on the ground.
He. Was. Enormous.
The silverback’s eyes glowed green and stayed trained on the open door as he paced slowly back and forth. The crowd went absolutely insane.
“A motherfucking silverback fight!” a man near her yelled excitedly.
The lights flickered and the announcer told everyone to, “Push back to the walls as far as you can. Make room!”
Nox was shoving people out of the way, making a path to the door. “Move or die!” he barked.
She didn’t know about this. She didn’t like it. The cheering, jeering crowd. The size of Torren. The dragons. The fog of heaviness that was settling over the room. It was too much energy, too much intensity.
Her skin was crawling with the instinct to fly far away from here. She needed to see Lucas!
She bolted for the door through the path Nox had cleared, but a sound outside stopped her dead in her tracks. The drumming of a challenge echoed through the barn as a silverback beat his chest.
Torren roared and stood on his hind legs, slammed his fists against his chest, and oh no, oh no! She bolted for the doorway, but she was too late to stop anything. A massive animal was charging toward her. With a yelp, she jumped out of the way of the charging silverback, and as he passed, time slowed.
