And what they saw?—
Wrong. Everything about him was wrong.
Proportions that boggled the mind, limbs that bent in directions they shouldn’t, skin that seemed to absorb the morning light. His face—if you could call it that—shifted constantly, features sliding and reforming, never settling into anything recognizable.
And his eyes.
Pale and cold and starving—the eyes of something that had fed on light for centuries and could not stop wanting more.
Around the battlefield, she heard the reactions. Gasps. Screams. The primal terror of prey animals recognizing an apex predator.
“WHAT IS THAT THING?”
Someone’s shout, echoing across the harbor.
“Devourer!” Aero’s voice boomed from above, draconic and thunderous with eight centuries of authority. “An ancient parasite we thought extinct—and now, finally, unmasked. Avine—NOW!”
This was what they had been waiting for. The glamour was down. Dragon fire could land clean.
Avine moved.
The sea answered.
The harbor surged—not a wave but a column of ancient force, called up from below by the strongest sea witch in Haven Shores. It rose around Aero’s dragon form like an impossible tide, cold and deep and enormous, the ocean lending its weight to eight centuries of draconic fire. His scales crackled violet where sea-cold met lightning. His eyes blazed with something that hadn’t existed before this moment.
And when he opened his jaws, what emerged wasn’t just dragon fire.
It was the ocean itself, burning.
The inferno hit Derren like divine judgment.
The Devourer screamed—not the charming man’s voice anymore, but something older, rawer, a sound that scraped against reality itself. Dragon fire was his weakness, and without the glamour to deflect it, without the ability to hide what he truly was?—
He burned.
But he didn’t die. Not yet.
Derren turned his terrible gaze on Narla, hatred blazing in those too-many eyes.
“You.” The word was barely recognizable through the damage. “You did this.”
He lunged for her.
Wyatt hit him mid-leap.
The pantherand the Devourer crashed to the dock in a tangle of claws and wrongness.
Wyatt had never fought anything remotely resembling this. The creature wasn’t built right—its strength exceeded anything natural, and wherever it touched him, he felt his life force being drained.
But his mate was behind him. His mate, who had done the impossible, who had stripped this monster bare with nothing but the truth that lived inside her.
He would die before he let Derren touch her again.
Teeth found something vital. He bit down, tore, felt the wrongness of dark blood on his tongue.
Derren struck back—claws? Talons? Something that carved furrows down Wyatt’s ribs, the wound burning with more than just pain.
They rolled across the dock, each trying to gain advantage. Derren was stronger, but Wyatt was faster. More desperate. Fighting with the pure primal fury of a predator protecting his mate.
