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Despite the arousal rising within me… I felt entirely numb to it… My mind and my emotions seemed to be drifting away from it. Observing and distant, my heart laid in torn, bleeding chunks on the ground at the idea I’d just thrown away my chance at freedom. The opportunity to escape and untether myself from the male who hated me and only wished to use me. That chance to run back to Malekai. Zurie be damned.
Nakoa had undoubtedly had enough by now after several gulps in. The gaping wound in his back was nothing more than an actively fading pink scar- but he was still drinking me in. The sound of his deep, rough groans between each swallow told me just hownotnumb he felt.
My eyes slid back to Nakoa’s, now entirely black and locked onto me.
Even through his haze, he must have seen the stark despair of my expression because a moment later, he pulled back, grabbing me by the throat. I growled defiantly, his face hovering only inches from mine.
“Hold onto me,lohane thili.”
With my blood still coating his mouth, he swept me into his arms, and before I could react, his wings gave powerful beats, lifting us into the air. I jerked back, watching the ground grow further and further away from our feet.
Oh fuck.
That snapped me of my daze.
My grip on him tightened so fiercely he grunted out a chuckle, voice lowering but becoming surprisingly tender. His gaze lowered to meet mine so I could feel the gravitas of his words. He spoke of so much more than just carrying me through the sky.
“I’ve got you.I can carry us both - I only need you to let me.”
My throat tightened at his words, though I refused to be swayed by them.Timewould reveal all. My heartbeat pounded frantically as we ascended over 100 feet in the air, simultaneously stealing the breath from my lungs. Pumpkin, little more than a speck beneath us, I could barely distinguish the barrier he’d willed around her.
So, he is capable of tenderness.
I imagined he didn’t wish to risk her life unnecessarily by forcing her into whatever it was we were about to face with these bandits. If she was shot with an arrow, or otherwise wounded, she didn’t have the healing abilities we had to heal.
Nakoa clutched me tightly to his chest and nuzzled my neck, taking my scent deeply.
Nakoa’s wings pounded a furious rhythm through the air before we nosedived toward the ground, making me bury my face in his chest on instinct.
Heights had always been a weakness of mine.
Nakoa suddenly reared up and sent a ticklingwhooshthrough my guts as we plummeted towards the ground. The scent of blood filled my nose. My gums throbbed and ached, fangs descending.
I dared a glance down in the fleeting seconds it took to descend, taking in the scene rushing towards us. There had to be at least 30 of them here.
Rayne and his shadowy beasts worked as a trio with graceful and vicious efficiency. Lokus wielded two swords severing through torso and limb with unparalleled effortlessness in a way that made it look like a dance. A performance. Famei, no longer in his griffon form, stood in place, looking not unlike an orchestra conductor, summoning roots from the ground that speared through, strangled, and tore apart bandits before they even came within 10 feet of him.
Pomona, usually disarmingly sweet and earnest, was apparently a fucking acrobat. She worked in tandem with a spear. Leaping, flipping, and spinning as shefoldedfrom one victim to the next, impaling them on a 6-foot spear with a double-edged blade that took up the last foot of its length - cutting clean through them.
In his lykos wolf form, Roderick devoured and tore through bandits like a lion would a rabbit, snatching a bandit off the ground, tossing him high, and catching him 12 feet from the ground in mid-air to swallow him whole.
I unfurled from Nakoa’s arms the moment our feet hit the ground at the edge of the battle. In the same instant, half a dozen males and females rushed forward before suddenly dropping to their knees clutching their throats as if they couldn’t breathe.
Nakoawilledhis broadsword into his hands and I watched as some surreal sense of déjà vu washed over me. The bandits before him struggled as he arched his sword through the air, and heads began to roll…
Something cracked in my chest as a thousand versions of myself on that dais in Zurie’s enormous outdoor amphitheater performing executions passed before my eyes.
Oh gods.
A new set of bandits rushed towards Nakoa, snapping me out of my flashback. Terror shot bolts of electricity into my limbs at the sight of the male moving to drive his sword into Nakoa’s back. With a speed unable to be witnessed by the human eye, I lunged forward and carved through the first of him and the ones following him.
At the next onslaught, Iwilledaway my broadsword so that, at last, I couldfeed.My fangs pierced through flesh and tendon, like a scythe through wheat.
With each of them, I gulped down their blood in only a handful of gulps. My fingertips began to throb with a new sensation, and I glanced down, dropping a freshly drained corpse to the ground, to discover a set of lethal-looking black claws now protruding from my nail beds.
What in the fuck?
Power pulsed through my veins and everything around me seemed to slow down. I watched with awe and confusion as more bandits leapt towards me, blades and arrows raised, moving like through sludge. It seemed a wholly unfair advantage.
