Back on the estate, while we’d been making our final plans, Nate had tried to convince me I should sit the battle out. He’d made it through about half a sentence before I’d laughed and given him my best dragon stare. There’d been no arguments after that.
The kin who’d died had been my kin too. And I wasn’t going to stand by while the rogues who’d destroyed their lives and my family’s were still walking free.
I turned and reached for the tree we’d stopped beside. The best thing about being a dragon was flying. And I’d be damned if I was going to spend any time at all on the ground as soon as I could shift.
I scrambled up the trunk and clambered from branch to branch until I reached the ones too narrow to easily support my weight. Sitting with my back against the trunk, I scanned the forest. I wasn’t quite high enough to see over the canopy, but I had a decent view between the branches around me.
There was Marco’s black jaguar form crouching a few trees to our left. West’s wolf had blended completely into the brush. Aaron made one last swoop through the sky and came to perch on an oak to my right.
A half an hour. We’d burned through at least ten minutes fanning out around the ambush point, I thought. It shouldn’t be that much longer. But it felt like an eternity between every beat of my heart.
A branch cracked, and my pulse leapt, but it was only a sparrow flitting away. Damn regular animals. I resisted the urge to shuffle my feet impatiently against the branch.
Orion knew exactly where we were going to be waiting. He was supposed to lead the rogues right over this hill. If he was keeping his end of the bargain. If not... Alice was still keeping watch. She’d notice if the rogues looked like they were spreading out to try to take us by surprise instead.
The breeze changed course, and new smells filled my nose. Animal smells—and not the familiar ones of the shifters I’d arrived with—mingling with notes of aggression and anticipation.
The rogues were almost here.
I leaned forward on the branch, bracing my hands and feet against the bark. We didn’t want to spring the trap too soon. Let them barge right into the middle of our ring.
Bodies rustled through the underbrush. Faintly, covertly, but in the quiet my sharp ears could pick up the sounds. My muscles tensed.
A small furry form scurried into view below. A muskrat, leading the supposed charge. Our Orion. I sent a silent thank you down to him, and then several more animals emerged between the trees.
Below my perch, Nate let out a grizzly bellow. We all launched ourselves at the rogues.
I ran along the branch and vaulted out into open space. My scales rippled over my body with the rush of the air around me. My wings whipped out, catching that wind. I stretched and snapped my jaws with my emerging fangs, and hurtled down into the fray.
The forest floor was a mess of writhing bodies. A black bear I knew was Thomas was wrestling with a puma. A scarred silver wolf faced off against Marco’s jaguar. Aaron clawed at a huge weasel that tried to smack him out of the sky. And more, all around—a blur of fur and teeth and splashes of blood.
I let a dragon’s roar rip from my throat. The rogues startled, giving my kin their openings. The puma whirled to make a run for it, and I dove, smacking it into a tree trunk with one taloned paw. A coyote stumbled backward and shifted into human form. He made a grab for the gun he’d been carrying wrapped around his narrow waist.
The echoes of long ago shots fired in my family home rang in my ears. Anger flared through me. Oh, no, he didn’t.
I sucked in a breath and spewed out flame—the hot, searing, destructive kind. The coyote shifter yelped. Then he was nothing more than a charred body with a melted lump of metal in his hands.
There’d be others who were carrying weapons they’d meant to bring to their own assault. I swung around, scanning the fray. I had to pick any rogue off who’d come armed. They could hurt us too quickly. My alphas and my kin were too honorable to break their law about using man-made weapons, even when their enemies didn’t care to play fair.
The click of a safety disengaging made my gut lurch. I swiveled and blasted the figure standing amid the trees before I had time to register anything more than her blond hair and the pistol in her hand. A guy who’d sprung into human form nearby fumbled with his own handgun. Before he could aim it, I turned him into charcoal too.
My muscles tingled as I swooped in the other direction. Another human form moved between the foliage at the other end of the clearing— No, wait, that was Orion. I guessed he figured he could defend himself better with size on his side instead of his muskrat teeth and claws. Naked, his hands clenched into fists, he punched a rogue fox shifter that came at him in the muzzle and then leapt out of the way of its snapping teeth.
I slashed my talons downward to knock the fox shifter to the side. As I dropped down to pin her to the ground, another human figure ran at Orion. A human figure clutching a gleaming dagger.
A rasp of protest broke from my throat. Orion spun around, but not quickly enough. The rogue slammed the dagger into his gut, all the way to the hilt.
Orion’s lips parted. His body sagged. Blood gushed down from the wound.
No. Panic spiked through my veins, sharp and cold. I swiped at the guy with the knife, ripping the dagger from his hand and the skin from his arm. But in my distress, I lost my hold on my shift. My dragon’s body crumpled back into my human one.
I stumbled toward Orion. He’d sunk onto his knees and was reeling backward. I caught his shoulders just before his head smacked the ground.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey. Stay with me.” Shifters could heal from a lot. I’d had my chest gouged by a rogue wolf and survived. If the dagger hadn’t been that well aimed—if I could stop the bleeding—
Reddish flecks were already dappling the former guard’s lips. Shit, shit, shit. I clamped my hand around the hilt of the dagger, suppressing the flow of blood there, as if that surface wound was really the problem and not the cuts he’d taken on the inside.
Orion shivered and groaned. “Dragon shifter,” he murmured.
“That’s me,” I said brilliantly. “I’m right here. You did good. You did your kin and your alpha proud. You’re a fucking hero, you hear that. So you’d better live long enough to celebrate that with us.”
He gave me a sickly smile. “I’m doing my best. But I don’t think—” He coughed and gasped at the wrench of the blade with the movement of his chest.
“No,” I said, with all the authority I could summon. “As your dragon shifter, I forbid you from dying right now.”
He tried to chuckle, but it came out more like a gurgle. Oh, God, there really wasn’t anything I could do, was there?
“There’s something... didn’t tell you...” His voice was fading.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just—just rest.”
“No. You need... There’s a feline kin. Someone... someone high up in the families. Calling the shots. Allied... with the rogues. They listen to him. The rest of the group—every rogue remaining… Ready to attack all together. You have to...”