AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Whatever she’s saying, I hope it’s working.
I resist the urge to look directly at it, remembering all the old stories about not drawing attention to yourself by making eye contact. I need it to ignore me long enough for the witches to get what’s theirs.
Keep it talking, Drago. Try to hold out long enough for the witches—
I know what I must do, my love.
Drago’s mind is eerily calm. Steady and focused.
Like he’s accepted this.
I allow myself a single glance at the creature.
It’s missing an eye. The one Drago stabbed the last time they met.
“Oh my god,” Eden whimpers, drawing my gaze.
“Don’t fucking look at it! No one look at it!”
Instantly, she shields her eyes until she’s able to move her gaze to the floor.
“The scourge,” Drago says, scars glowing a brilliant blue-white across his face and through his shirt. “Two arms.” He raises both arms and flips the scourge off. “Looks like you’re not so lucky, though.” Drago points one of his middle fingers at the creature’s missing eye.
“I don’t need eyes to see, Champion.”
“Mmm. Tell me something. Why’d you break your pattern? Why come from the west?”
The dried papery voice hisses out a laugh. “You called me.”
“I did no such thing!”
“Oh? You collected the largest group of powerful supernaturals on a single mountain. If not a beacon, then what? I thought you’d accepted your fate and had come to offer yourself to me.”
Keep it talking!
I chance a glance at Emilia. Sweat beads across her brow as Lily leans close, whispering in her ear.
A new wave of nausea rolls over me, and I puke right next to my chair.
“Ah. I see you’ve brought the guileless one again.”
Puking caught its attention? Great. I keep my eyes glued to my lap.
“I see you’ve been collecting power and abilities as well. Maybe I’ll make you the sacrificial lamb instead.”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and stare at a point just over the creature’s head. “I didn’t ask for any of my power, and I don’t use it to gain more, scourge.”
It comes closer, and Drago moves between it and the witches and me. “If that were true, there wouldn’t be an entire coven of witches trying to extract their ancestral knowledge and power from you, would there?”
“I didn’t ask for this,” I repeat, standing, and like the last time I faced it, it doesn’t seem as tall as it should.
I glance down to see my shifted Werebitch legs. Backward joints, fur, and a half a meter extra length.
And that makes me pause.
I had this creature within me the last time I faced the Wendigo. That’s why it seemed shorter.I was taller.
Before I’d made a mate bond with anyone but Rafe.
