Ayrie came to stand on the other side of me, still in her hybrid form. She grinned, her navy-blue eyes twinkling. “They are approaching pretty fast. I’m excited to see if how you fought me before was just a fluke.”
I scoffed. “You wish. How about you try to keep up?”
“Big talk from little Byrdie. Make sure you aren’t just doing all that to show off to your fated mate.”
Quinn smirked, just on the verge of one of her smolders, warming my core and then some.“My girl doesn’t have to show off. She’s already a badass.”
Yep, fucking her brains out later,I thought, vowing to myself to ensure therewasa later beyond this. As the hunters broke through the houses and entered the edge of the park, a roar tore its way out of my chest, and my wings snapped open.
This was my family.
This was my home.
This was my future.
Lilah and her hunters would not win today.
Nor would they ever win.
I would make damn sure of it.
Dual Wield
QUINN
If we weren’t in active lethal danger, I would throw Byrd over my shoulder, take her deep in the woods, and fuck her until she roared loud enough to make the hunters’ ears bleed. It would honestly be more than they deserved, allowing them to even hear my girl’s screams of pleasure.
The hunters surged from the clusters of houses like roaches when the light was flipped on. Hundreds of them were still left, despite the Sire and her Guardsmen thinning their ranks closer to the border of the enchantment. A swarm like this could kill or at least do some serious damage, especially when they were heavily armed with weapons magicked with dragon blood. Red smoke swirled in tendrils around their blades, rifles, guns, crossbows and arrows, whips, and even their bikes and ATVs that they rode in on. Knowing it was Lilah’s magic made by blood from those like Byrd and her relatives made my skin crawl and blood boil. My grip tightened on Amy and Tina, eager to feed them their blood.
It was hard to truly call thesependejoshunters, though. Many of them did wear hunting gear of dark clothes and masks, but a few looked like they just walked here from their backyard in their tank tops and jeans. None of them had on any dragon-hunting clothes, like a jacket made of dragon scales or magicked clothes for added protection. If their outfits didn’t show how woefully unprepared these assholes were, their utterly shocked faces upon seeing a line of dragons ready for battle spoke volumes. I would bet my next mission payout that most of these dumbasses had never even seen a dragon before today, let alone fought one. They also stupidly hadn’t expected this much resistance this fast or done a lick of research.
Their hesitation would cost them dearly.
Play stupid games…
Ayrie and Byrd’s other cousins roared loud enough to flurry the snow around them from the trees and the ground as they rushed forward. The dragon-shifters took flight and fought with ruthless elegance. The fully-shifted dragons dipped down, taking hunters in their jaws and claws. Those who were partially shifted took advantage of their wings and tails to take on the hunters in the air and on the ground. The Earth cracked, lifting in rough peaks and cliffs under the hunters’ feet. The wind screamed, tossing hunters into trees and dropping them to the ground with bone-snapping force. Shifters of other kinds, like Xander, transformed into their beast forms and used their long nails and huge muzzles full of fangs on the hunters’ throats and wrists. Talli and Maisie blasted searing columns of coral and purple flames that reduced the unarmored bastards into ash and smoke on top of melted snow and scorched grass.
A few made it past to aim their weapons at my Byrd.
I growled at their audacity and braced to attack.
My mate, however, was faster than even I was.
Glass from the nearby houses, ticket booth, and concession stand fragmented into blades. Another earthquake made the hunters unsteady, causing some of them to fall over.Fuck, these fools were embarrassing to the name hunter.Surfacing with a sound like ice cracking under pressure, translucent purple,green, blue, white, black, and orange crystals erupted in long spears and swords from the buried bones of the wintry earth. Each one hummed with a power that even I could feel. With a flick of her beautiful fingers, the crystals wove into a lattice of protection in front of her and us in time to catch a barrage of bullets, arrows, and something that looked like a glowing whip. She summoned one of the crystals to her hand. Wielding it like a sword, Byrd spread her dragonfly wings wide so they glinted like stained glass in the snowy sunlight.
Fuck, I’m going to need a painting of that as soon as this is all over. That was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
And then, I saw her fight.
No, Byrd didn’t fight. My girldanced. She gracefully spun midair before she drove the sword into a hunter’s chest. The purple crystal glowed like it was being lit up from the inside out. The wound blackened, the veins spreading outward like it was a scorch mark from magical lightning. The hunter screamed. The scents of snow, hot cocoa, and popcorn became tainted with his blood, burning flesh, and infection almost instantly. I knew death wasn’t going to be too far behind. It was just like how Uncle Harry died, which made sense.
Death by fucking with the wrong person.
Byrd dropped him and continued slicing through every foe. She twisted, evading bullets and other ammunition being flung her way. Her holographic scales flashed on her neck, along the cutout in her sweater and dress on her back, and on her hands. I was reminded of how much she looked like a reincarnated war goddess carved from magical moonlight and fury. Her wings flickered fast enough to blur as she shot up into the air, tossed a glass dagger behind her shoulder, and dropped a man mid-run with a hit to his femoral artery. She called on another crystalline sword and landed hard on an ATV. She impaled the driver inone smooth motion. She leapt up before the vehicle crashed, the bloodied crystal embedded in the hunter’s chest still pulsing and feeding on the twitching body it was stuck in.
Every hunter that tried her, Byrd followed the energy of their weapons and used it against them. She must have been using Lilah’s blood magic to predict the attacks and twirl around them. Yet, she didn’t dodge the hit exactly, instead finding more and more ways to use their own weapons against them, from ricocheting bullets off her crystals to flipping their blades back on them. Every move of hers was lethal. Every twitch of her wings added to her nimble speed. Every flick of her tail and the crystalline spikes on the end lashed out with pinpoint accuracy, cracking ribs and breaking skulls. She even slammed one hunter so hard into a tree that the bark exploded on impact. She was precise, devastating, and phenomenal to see. I couldn’t stop watching her, couldn’t stop marveling at how ferocious and beautiful and deadly and divine she was.
I learned from the best, Starlight, Byrd thought to me using our bond. The world slowed down like a movie for the male gaze as she shot me a little wink and smirk midair as one of her blades decapitated a man.
