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Dipping his head, he kissed me, his mouth moving skillfully over mine. My hands threaded through his hair, and I pulled him down so that his body draped over mine as my tongue slid against his.
When he pulled back, he brushed the tip of his nose against mine. “Ye lead by doin’, Ari. By bein’ who ye are. Fierce. Stubborn. Strong as fuckin’ steel.”
My chest felt like it might burst. It was almost too much to bear—his faith in me, his complete confidence in me. But it made me want to be the person he saw when he looked at me. To deserve the pride shining in his eyes.
Leaning up, I pressed one more hard kiss to his lips. Then I slapped his firm ass. “All right, sweet talker. Then let’s go kick some godly ass.”
The other two had woken up sometime during Lachlan’s and my make-out session, and we all got to our feet quickly. Since we didn’t exactly have camping gear or food for breakfast, we were ready to head out in a matter of minutes.
As we stepped out of our makeshift shelter, I held up my hand to block the early morning sun rays, staring out over the horizon. “Where do you think we should—”
Before the final words were even past my lips, a flare rose up in the distance from the foothills to our right. I froze, my heart kicking into a gallop as my gaze tracked the trajectory of the flare.
We hadn’t had any means
of staying in communication with the other groups of students who were on our side. But I had wanted to make sure we could reach each other if and when one of us found the gem. That flare that’d just been set off was an alert that one of our teams had located it.
“Shit. We gotta go!” Spinning on my heel, I raced in the direction the flare had come from, tracing the smoke path downward as the flare hovered bright in the sky. It would stay like that for a while, magically sustained, before it petered out.
The men were right behind me, all four of us scrambling and darting around low shrubs and plants as we hurried toward the gem’s location.
By the time we neared it, I was out of breath—fucking hell, I should’ve spent more of the summer doing straight cardio—and the bright light of the flare in the sky was beginning to fade.
Another team of students arrived almost exactly when we did, and it was a good fucking thing.
Because four gods were guarding the gem.
My heart seized in my chest as I took in the scene. A girl named Nadia was suspended above the ground, bright tendrils of magic wrapped around her limbs. It looked like she was fighting the god’s hold on her, but none of her efforts were making the slightest difference. As I watched, the tendrils of magic began to pull apart, and she screamed.
Holy fuck. He’s going to rip her limb from limb.
I didn’t even think. I just threw myself into the fray. The other students who’d been assigned to a team with Nadia were being similarly held by the other three gods, and I saw my men sprint toward the bound students. As I rushed forward, I threw out my hands and sent ropes of magic bursting forth. They wrapped around the god’s magic, and I pulled as hard as I could, trying to create slack on the lines that were slowly stretching Nadia’s limbs apart.
“Help! He—”
Her last word was cut off by an agonized scream, and fury rose in my veins. I dropped the magic I’d been using to try to free her and turned it on the god himself instead.
He looked middle-aged, with beady eyes and a broad forehead, and his lips twisted unpleasantly as he spread his hands, about to rip the girl to pieces.
Without even thinking, I hurled a bolt of magic at him. It hit him hard in the chest, knocking him off balance. While he was distracted, I ran toward the girl, leaping into the air and wrapping myself around her like a damn koala. She shrieked again, a mix of pain and fear this time, but I ignored it. This close to the lines of magic that wrapped around her, I was able to use my own to counteract them, slipping small threads of my power between the god’s magic and her skin.
She shivered in my hold, shaking and crying as the god got to his feet again. Behind him, I could see the gem sparkling in the early morning light, but I couldn’t abandon Nadia until she was free.
With a growl, the god sent new ropes of magic hurtling toward me. They began to slither around me, binding both me and Nadia.
Motherfucker. This was not part of the damn plan.
“Nadia,” I murmured, trying to keep my voice calm and ignore the fact that she was basically giving me a piggyback in mid-air. “I need you to help me. Do you feel what I’m doing with the god’s magic? I need you to do the same thing, okay? We need to break the hold.”
She sniffled and gasped, but I felt her nod. Tentatively, her magic followed the same path mine had, creating even more space between the god’s power and our bodies.
“What…?”
The low voice ahead of us drew my attention, and I looked up to see the god regarding us with wide eyes as we slowly fought against his magic.
Ha. That’s right, you fucker. This is why your leader fears wild magic users.
With a final surge of energy, Nadia and I broke the binds holding us. We tumbled to the ground, landing in a tangle of limbs. I rolled away as she pressed up to her hands and knees, her limbs shaking so much it looked like she was trying to stand up in the middle of an earthquake.
