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Dark magic.
The monster fought back, biting me, and I growled and snarled as we fought.
I was vaguely aware of Dagger. He had shifted into the bear that he was and fought with the same vigor as me. He had his hands full with another monster, just like the one I was fighting. He was on top, his thick bear body shaking as he mauled the creature’s face.
The monster I was fighting tried to attack while I was distracted, and I gave it my full focus. For a second, it regained control, getting on top of me. I heard a scream that sounded too much like Kinley’s, and my lion froze.
She was here somewhere, buried in the darkness, and she needed help.
My protectiveness came out, and I attacked with renewed vigor. I bit into the monster’s arm, whipping it around so that it slammed into the ground, and it let out a grunt that was much closer to human than the screeches and snarls it had been letting out until now. I dove onto the beast, ignoring the claws that dug into my shoulders and tore through my skin, and my teeth found its neck.
When my teeth sank into the blackness, I tasted blood again, hot on my tongue. The beast was filled with darkness, but under all that magic, the life force slowly drained away.
When the beast’s body stopped twisting and jerking underneath me, I let go of it and ran.
Dagger was on to the next dark creature. The first was nothing but a bloody, mauled mess. He didn’t need my help, and I could focus on Kinley.
When I got to her room, still in my lion form, her window was broken. Blood on the glass made me recoil. It wasn’t a monster’s blood—it was hers. Fear clutched at my throat, and I jumped through the broken window and into her room.
I watched the chaos as it unfolded in front of me. The furniture in the room was overturned, and a sable rabbit ran back and forth between the furniture. Behind it, the monster followed. It was a lot bigger than she was and not nearly as agile. I watched as Kinley bounced ahead before she backtracked. She got between the monster’s legs before the creature knew what was happening and shifted into human form. She had a shard of glass in her hand—I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten it so fast—and she jammed it into the monster’s back before she shifted into a rabbit and ran again.
The monster couldn’t keep up. It tried to get her, but she kept bouncing back and forth, getting closer, shifting, slicing, cutting, and jamming glass into the monster, before she got away again.
I stared at her in awe, frozen in the moment as I watched her pure survival skills take over, this rabbit doing more damage to a creature ten times her size than I’d seen any of my shifters do in fights.
The creature was getting angrier and angrier—I could feel the magic building.
It stood very still, watching Kinley as she moved, and when she ran past, its arm shot out and grabbed her by the ears in mid-air, anticipating where she was going to be.
Her rabbit screeched and squealed, large feet kicking, and she shifted into human form. It only put her in a worse position—the monster had her by the hair now.
I roared.
Mine.
No one touched my fucking female!
I jumped on the creature before it knew what hit him, rode the body of darkness to the ground, and bit into the neck that was exposed. I ripped its throat out, tasting the dark magic, tasting the life force as it slowly slipped away.
Kinley scrambled away with a scream, scrabbling backward until her back hit the wall. Blood dripped from her hands where the glass must have cut her, and from her arms and one leg.
I shifted into human form.
“It’s okay, Kinley,” I said. “He’s dead.”
Kinley’s eyes were wide, filled with fear, and her breathing came too fast.
“Breathe,” I ordered, looking her in the eyes. I cupped her cheeks, so that she had nothing else to focus on. “Just breathe.”
I breathed slowly in and out, letting her copy me, letting her get herself back under control.
Slowly, her breathing evened out, and she calmed down enough to know that the danger was over.
Her lip trembled, and tears streamed over her cheeks.
“I knew they were coming,” she cried. “I knew they were coming.”
The door to her bedroom opened, and Uma stood there, pale, her eyes wide.
