“What do you want me to do?” Maeve asks, giving Phina a droll stare. “Lap dance?”
If I were human right now, I’d laugh. Maeve fills me with a buoyant sort of joy, a weightless happiness. She and I are mates. She can make me laugh even in the darkest of moments. Even when we’re fighting for our lives.
Tara cackles again and levels a bolt of magic directly at Phina, which she counters, but barely. Xeran roars and barrels toward Tara, and I realize what’s going to happen before it does.
Xeran is the supreme. Tara knows that if he gets his claws in her, she’s dead. So all her focus is going to be on him.
I peel away from the group, running as fast as I can toward Tara, who is, sure enough, focusing completely on Xeran. I run like I’m attacking a daemon, then pivot and launch toward a burning branch above Tara’s head.
The flame licks into my skin, and I grit my way through the pain, using my momentum to push off toward Tara, slamming into her back, my weight driving her to the ground.
“Fe-lix!” Maeve calls, her voice breaking in the middle of my name.
The daemons around us flicker and falter, then puff out like a snuffed candle.
My claws dig into her as I scramble to keep my purchase on her. She bucks beneath me with inhuman, and, frankly, inshifter strength, a kind of determined movement I’ve never experienced before.
Her skin lights up, suddenly wreathed in flames that rush through my fur and into my skin, a mottled, wrecking kind of pain that feels like it’s pushing into my brain, sucking the oxygen from my lungs.
A twisted, garbled howl breaks out of me, the agony like a blanket over my body, but I can’t let go. If I let go of her, shemight bring the daemons back, and Lachlan is still down, Valerie working feverishly over him.
“Get thefuckoff me,” Tara snarls, her voice louder than what seems possible, and distorted with rage. Blue fire rises up around us, over my chest and ribs. Like eating a million jalapeños.
I’m burning up from the inside.
“Felix!” Maeve cries, and I feel her magic wrapping around me, trying to tug me away from Tara, but I hold tight. “Let go!”
“You’ll die!” It’s Xeran’s voice now—he must have shifted back. He imbues his voice with the authority of the supreme, booming,“Retreat, Rana!”
But I have to protect Maeve.
Without meaning to, I spent a lot of my life hurting her. I drove her to the worst night of her life. Now, I owe her this.
She’s the love of my life. My mate.
And I’ll die if it means she can go on and live her dreams. Get her clothing line into Hollerand. Make sure other women like her can find the same kind of confidence she has.
The pain is almost ethereal, like Tara is burning away pieces of my soul. My vision blurs, black spots dancing at the edges, but I hold on. I have to hold on.
Tara rolls, using the flames to her advantage, getting on top of me.
Phina runs forward, her hands sparking with magic, but Maeve grabs her, shouting something I can’t hear over the roaring in my head.
Something like, “You might hit him, too!”
Good. Hit me. Take both of us out, and make sure there’s never another daemon fire in Silverville, ever again.
If Maeve wanted closure from coming home, like she said, I can’t think of something better than taking out the psychotic bitch who’s been causing the wildfires.
But then, instead of just holding Phina back, Maeve surges forward, pointing her palms at me. I see the blast before I hear it, the sharp crack of the magic through the air a physical thing.
It hits Tara clearly, knocking her off me and blasting her body into the trees behind us, flames following in her wake.
“Felix,” Maeve says, dropping to her knees beside me, holding her hands over my body, tears running down her cheeks. “Just hold on.”
Valerie and Phina appear, too, all three of them holding their hands over me, healing magic doing nothing to touch my skin, which feels like a piece of bacon dropped directly into a charcoal grill.
I didn’t even realize I’d shifted back into my human form.
