Fuck me, the sight made me ache enough that I clenched my thighs together.
Was being turned on by your partner fighting a kink?Was I into this because I was a huntress with some primal instinct that thought violence was foreplay, especially when it came to something stabby? Was this my trauma showing up in opalescent scales, glitter, and crystals? Or, was Byrd just objectively hot as fuck? Was it just some other third thing or all of the above?
Did I even really care?
I was just so fucking into this and very in love with her.
“Hey, your girl’s gonna put us out of business.” Cody nudged my side. “She’s taking all of our work.”
“I’m fine with that. She can take as much of whatever she wants,” I said, keeping my eyes on my mate’s little murder ballet.
“Hey, Q? You might want to wipe your chin. You have some drool there,” Cole teased.
“Shut the fuck—” I started just before I felt a tingle on the back of my neck. My instincts flared. There was someone behind us. A gap in our defense. I frowned.
“Cole, Cody, on your left,” I said low so only they could hear.
Cody rolled his neck and smiled. “Finally! Some action!”
“Focus, bro,” Cole snapped, releasing the safety on his guns.
Somehow, a group of hunters broke past the dragon-shifters and witches. If this were a different job, I would have guessed that they had done it using stealth or invisibility sigils, but thesetontos del culodefinitely weren’t that professional. They were just stupidly lucky.
It was to my benefit.
I tilted my chin, and we sprinted together. Snow kicked up behind us as we charged. We didn’t care. We didn’t hesitate either.
Cody fired his crossbow at the same time that Cole fired his gun at the hunters on the outskirts of the group. Meanwhile, I went for the three others. These guys were sloppy and undisciplined enough to even piss me off. They were clearly only used to easy kills like a rogue vampire or a vindictive witch. Not a single one of them was ready for me.
No one ever was.
You are a woman. You may be tall. You may be strong. You may be a First Blade to one of the most powerful Hunting families on this planet. But you are, and will always be, viewed as a woman. And, that means people will think you are weak.They will underestimate you. Use that to show them how strong you really are,mija.
My black daggers sliced through the hunters like they were nothing. Amy cut a jugular. Tina punctured a lung. I used both of them to disembowel one. I barely processed any of it. I didn’t flinch. My movements were pure instinct. My body not only remembered every move with fast and efficient ease, but there was a part of me that craved it. It was sick howgoodit felt. The gore of hunting usually turned my stomach, but it still came naturally to me. It was easy to settle into the motions. This is what I was built for, and it was second nature. I was trained to be a killing machine since I could crawl. Hunting wasn’t something I did. It was who I was. It was in my bones, blood, breath, and existence. It was as much a part of me as loving Byrd was. No matter how much I told myself I didn’t want to be this monster, or how much I shouldn’t enjoy watching the life leave those who sought to hurt those I loved, or how hard I tried to escape it, I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk away from this. It was who I was and had always been. I couldn’t be straight, and I couldn’t stop hunting and killing. Two immutable truths.
I was a natural-born killer.
And, I was too fucking good at this.
These wannabe mercs considered this to be just a job.
And that was where they fucked up.
Because they were dead once they got in my line of sight.
With the hunters down, I crouched to clean off my daggers on the clothes of the last hunter I had killed. As I did, Cody shook his head. “Fuck, how did Cooper find these guys? A trailer park and a viral video?”
“They may suck, but there’s a shit ton of them. You don’t need the best of the best if you are just trying to outnumber an opponent and overwhelm them,” Cole noted, loading more bullets in the chambers of his guns.
“Yeah, but you do still need some skill to take on a dragon, right? Let alone an enchantment. These guys seem like they couldn’t hit a parked car with a monster truck.”
Cole shrugged. “Maybe it’s a distraction?”
“Or, the plan was something else entirely.” I narrowed my eyes as I thought out loud. The boys were right. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be their plan. There was no way that he thought sending a legion of these so-called hunters would be able to kill just one dragon, witch-fae, or even me, let alone all of us combined. No, Cooper was smarter than that. He had to know this was a losing battle, and Cooper was not one to accept defeat with grace. He would rather level the whole battlefield with his troops included than take a loss.
If the plan wasn’t to take over the enchantment, then what was the goal of all this?
“I wonder where that fucking weasel is anyway?” Cody asked.
