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Vaguely I heard a scuffle nearby and knew it was Dom ripping into whoever had just attacked me.

The ground began to shift heavily below us and I sat up and found my voice to scream, “Fall back! We’re on top of him!”

I was thrown wide as the driveway stood up and took flight.

What we’d mistaken for patterned concrete was actually dragon scales. Fucking glamour.

The dragon took flight, heading almost straight up into the sky.

I stood and took inventory of the damage even as I moved toward Dom to help him with the shadow-man.

Everyone on our team was accounted for except for two. Harvey and…

“Where is Christian?” I called out.

Caleb started cursing and I glanced at him. Caleb looked worried and disgusted as he pointed up. “He held onto the dragon, the reckless fool.”

Fuck. It was a worrisome and potentially devastating development, but we didn’t have time to linger on it.

I glanced toward the fight. The shadow-man was a bloody heap on the ground though he still had a head.

Dom and Harvey had effectively been distracted by the a larger than life blond man that stepped out of the front door of the palace, as were we all.

Where the fuck was the other team?

The man was beautiful and glowing. He smiled and nodded at me. “It’s Ragnar the Spellbinder,” I said loudly for everyone.

“Hello, cousin,” he said in a thickly accented voice.

“Don’t meet his eyes,” I called out. “And don’t listen to him. He can trap you with his voice!”

“So unfriendly,” Ragnar chided me. “That’s no greeting for a man you were betrothed to from birth.”

That gave me pause. “I left when I was eleven, you sicko. I was never betrothed to anyone.”

“Just because you will something doesn’t make it so. We had a betrothal, written in blood, from the time of your birth. You have robbed me of many sons in the years you’ve been away, but we will make up for it.”

He was pissing me off, but something much worse was happening to Dom.

He had transformed into some amalgam of bear, cat, and wolf that was more terrifying than any of the three. He stood almost ten feet high. He was the definition of a monster from nightmares, and he was foaming at the mouth and growling as he approached Ragnar like a hunter stalking prey.

Ragnar pointed at him, raising his brows at me. “This? This is what you chose over me? You’ll both pay for that.” He waved a hand at Dom and chanted something under his breath.

Dom froze in place. Everyone but me seemed frozen, in fact.

I approached Ragnar myself, picking Torst up from the ground where it’d fallen as I moved.

I thirst, the axe chanted in my head loudly.

“Your timing is impeccable,” I told my axe fondly.

Without further ado, I took a heavy swing at my cousin.

He moved his hands into odd shapes as he whispered and darted out of my way.

I followed, Torst swinging with deadly intent at every step. I missed him by a hair once, twice, on and on.

His spells weren’t affecting me for some reason, and I realized why only when I saw where he’d effectively maneuvered me.