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In an instant, my dragon fire had swallowed up all four of the rogues. Their forms toppled into heaps of cinders. A small part of the clenching around my chestreleased.
They were gone. The last of them weregone.
But the vampires, our greatest threat, were still here. “Retreat!” one of the canine guards shouted. The kin who’d tackled the vampires amid the trees streamed back toward thewalls.
I dove toward them, aiming a burst of flames at the vampires who charged after my kin. Gunfire echoed around me. A bullet tore through my foreleg; another, my shoulder. The truck’s engines revved. Forget stealth. They were storming usnow.
I aimed one last blast at the ring of firewood, as long as that might hold us, and flung myself toward the courtyard. These weren’t the only vampires we needed to deal with. My kin were fighting all over thiscountry.
And I would lend my flames to helpthem.
I hit the ground still in dragon form, right beside the fae woman. She didn’t need any further prompting. I opened my jaws, and she held out her hands. With a heave of my lungs, all the firepower I had in me gushed out to meet hermagic.
The heat and the light flowed away from me. I felt it go, in a strangely detached sensation. Felt it rush from me to the fae woman to all the fae around the estate. Felt the sizzle of the fire streaming from their hands to hit the trucks racing at the protective ring, at the vampires pouring out bullets from the edge of theforest.
And onward, from them to the fae to the south and the west. I could almost hear Marco calling commands to his lieutenants, Nate growling as he bashed the head of a bloodsucker who’d made it to his wall, Aaron commanding a legion of eagles, hawks, andfalcons.
All my mates, with me even while they weren’t. My fire reached them all. Them and the smaller towns and villages where more fae had gathered. More fire washing over the charges of vampires. Bloodsuckers bursting into ashes. Flaring on and on until the sensation of it made medizzy.
Or maybe that lightheadedness was from the effort to keep producing so much fire. My whole dragon body was tingling. But I had so much more in me to give. So many kin I wanted toprotect.
Even as I sensed the paths my flames traveled along, the battle in front of me waged on too. West barked orders and sprang to help the guards by the gate. Kylie shouldered her flame-thrower and shot a blast into the chaos on the other side of the wall. My kin raced by all around me, gathering the injured, joining the defense, fighting with everything we had. All of us, together, bound by blood and history and a friendship with the glimmering figures among us that we were only justrediscovering.
“They’re retreating!” someone hollered. Here, or at one of the other estates I was distantly connected to? Footsteps thundered. Fire crackled. My throat burned, but I expelled another long breath. The tingling had faded, leaving only the comfortable weight of my dragon form. Just as much mine as my humanone.
I could do this. I could stand and fight all night if I neededto.
But I didn’t need to. More shouts rang out, and at least some of them were definitely here. “That’s the last of them! The ring isclear.”
The fae woman lowered her hands. I let my flames flicker out. She beamed at me, as brightly lit as if the moon had shone a spotlight fromher.
“It’s done,” shesaid.
I was done. I could shift back now, if I wanted. I stretched my dragon limbs and raised my head toward the sky, letting out a hoarse cry of victory. Only then, carefully and because I wanted to, did I pull back into my humanself.
Chapter 21
West
If someone had toldme a week ago—no, even a day ago—that I’d be entertaining the leader of the local fae on my estate grounds, I’d have laughed my head off. And then given whoever had said it a good cuff across the head for coming up with ridiculousstories.
But here I was. Walking the gardens to the east of the house in the thin dawn light with one of those gawky glowingfigures.
To be honest, the sight of her still made my skin crawl. Too many sour memories. I could ignore that, though. I was man enough to admit when I’d been wrong. And to listen to someone else admit thesame.
“We have a long way to go,” the fae woman said. “Onbothour sides.” She fixed me with a sharp look, as if to remind me that my kin had played a role in the tensions between us. I’d let that slide too, at least this once. “But I am ashamed of the violence that was borne out of what should have been a simple misunderstanding. I hope that we can approach each other with an assumption of good faith… or at least neutral faith, from nowon.”
“I think we can offer that,” I said. And then, because that statement didn’t feel like enough. “And I would like us to go forward that way. With patience instead of suspicion. If wecan.”
All right, so we might both be hedging our bets a little when it came to agreeing to a truce. Old habits died hard. And there wasstill—
The fae’s voice quieted. She stopped and turned toward me. “I must apologize, for the deaths when my people drove you from that grove twelve years ago. Killing is never our goal. I should have been there to temper thepanic.”
I gaped at her for a second before I found the wherewithal to snap my mouth shut. “Those lives can’t be brought back by an apology,” I said, but without as much anger as I might have if the apology hadn’t sounded soheartfelt.
“They can’t,” the fae woman acknowledged with a bob of her head. “The best I can give is my promise that my people will not cross that line first in any conflict from hereon.”
I supposed if my kin started slaughtering fae sometime in the future, I couldn’t really complain if they paid us back in kind. But I had no intention of stirring up violence on our end. No, I’d be much happier if we simply left each other alone unless absolutelynecessary.
