Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

Miraculously, this time she did as he ordered, jumping to crouch low behind him. He pulled hard on his Power to amass another morningstar and flung it at the next closest Hound. It sizzled through the air and hit the Hound broadside.

Behind him and low to the ground, the Glock spat multiple times. Sophie had finished reloading, and he remembered what she had said when she had shown how she could assemble and load a gun without looking. Because you should be able to do it in the dark, if need be.

He was so furious at her for risking her life, but at the memory of that cocky, sexy little lift of her mouth, he felt a fierce grin break over his face.

At his best, he could amass four morningstars, perhaps five, before he was tapped out. And morningstars were no good at fighting in close quarters. Around him, Braden, Gareth and Rowan were armed with guns too, and the flat, erratic percussion of their firing punctuated the ominous roll of thunder from the storm. The rest of his men slammed into combat with the Hounds, so he drew his sword and dropped the harness to the ground.

He said to Sophie, “For the love of all the gods, do as I said and get your ass back to the house. If you shut the doors, the Hounds can’t get inside. Nobody can get inside unless you let them.”

“You are such a sexist boor,” she snapped. “Look around—did any one of your men make that choice, and are you bitching at them for it?”

I’m not in love with my men. The thought sprang, sizzling and white-hot, like a morningstar in his head.

He shouted, “My men follow orders!”

“I’m a consultant!” she snapped. “Not your foot soldier. I don’t take orders from you.”

“You’re fired!” he growled.

He didn’t have time to say any more or hear if she argued. Not ten yards away, Cael was facing off against two Hounds. Moving forward rapidly, Nikolas engaged the closest Hound.

The battle turned into images he saw in microsecond snapshots. The Hound turned its slavering jaws toward him, and they feinted with each other, pacing in a circle as the driving rain made every step a hazard.

Naturally, Sophie hadn’t gone back to the house. Instead, she calmly walked up behind the Hound while its attention was fixed on him. As he watched in incredulity, she tapped it on the haunch.

He thought he was beside himself before. This time he nearly levitated out of his body.

“What the fuck are you doing now!” he roared.

The Hound spun to face her, then kept turning. It looked skyward, then down at the ground, and turned around the other way, head tilted.

“Confusion spell,” Sophie told Nikolas breathlessly. “He’ll do that for hours. I’ve got one left.”

Even as he lifted his sword to behead the creature, Nikolas filled his lungs to lambast her with everything he had. Then he paused. “It’ll be like this for hours?”

“Yep.” Lifting the Glock, she shot one-handed at the second Hound that Cael was fighting. It was a headshot, clean and true. The Hound was dead before it hit the ground.

She was so limited and fragile. She wasn’t nearly as fast as his men and not half as big or strong as the Hounds, yet in spite of that, she was one of the most dangerous fighters on the field that night, and he adored her for it.

“Keep an eye on it,” he said, watching Cael salute her and race off to engage another Hound. “I want to question it if I can. If you have to, shoot it in the head.”

“Got it,” she said. While she kept her attention fixed on the incapacitated Hound, she quickly reloaded.

Abruptly, rage surged over him in a scalding wave again. He snarled, “Now you take my orders?”

She speared him with a brief, sparkling glance. “I accept your suggestions. You can stick your orders up your ass.”

He would not laugh. Not while he was this furious. Spinning, he leaped into battle, amassing another morningstar to fling at a Hound that tried to flee the field.

It was a sloppy, ugly battle. Nikolas was able to amass two more morningstars before he tapped out. Aiming the last one strategically, he was able to take down two Hounds at once, and then he had to rely upon swordwork. Never moving too far away from Sophie, he kept on the defensive in a broad circle around her.

Within a half an hour, the battle was over. As Nikolas drew his sword from the throat of his last kill, he surveyed the field. A full thirty bodies littered the ground. When the Hounds had first appeared, the numbers had been decidedly against them, but now almost all of them lay dead, strewn across the clearing. Some of the bodies had already shifted back into human form.

They had gotten so damn lucky. If Sophie hadn’t acted so quickly and been such a good shot, if Nikolas hadn’t been able to amass the morningstars, if the other three men hadn’t been armed with guns and silver bullets, this battle could have gone entirely the other way.

The sound of shouting had him spinning on his heel.

Sophie and Rhys confronted each other over the body of a dead Hound. She was swearing, sounding as furious as Nikolas had ever heard her. “What the hell is the matter with you? I told you to back off and leave it alone! I had it under control!”

Rhys advanced, moving his body like a weapon until they were face-to-face. He backhanded her in the chest, pushing her back as he shouted hoarsely over her, “You don’t fucking tell me what to do, woman! He was an enemy! I cut him down like the murderous dog he was!”

Nikolas lunged over and slammed into Rhys so violently the other man skidded on the wet grass and went down on his ass. Breathing hard, Nikolas brought the tip of his sword to Rhys’s throat.

“She was doing what I told her to do,” he growled. “I wanted to question that Hound.”

“I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen!” Sophie exclaimed as she reached Nikolas’s side.

Rhys’s face distorted with rage. “You get a piece of tail, and now you’re holding your fucking sword to my throat? Is that the kind of commander you really are?”

Ice took over Nikolas’s molten rage.

“Yes.” His voice turned stone cold. He pressed forward until the tip pressed against the skin at Rhys’s throat. “That’s the kind of commander I am. You touch her again like that, and I will cut your fucking hands off.”

Beside him, Sophie had gone still. Nikolas grew aware that the other men had joined them and were bearing silent witness to the confrontation.

Nikolas bared his teeth in savage, naked aggression. “That goes for every one of you as well. This woman has risked her safety and her life for us. While you were scrambling for your weapons, she was the first one on the field tonight. We are guests in her house, and you will respect her expertise. And if I find out that one of you has verbally or physically threatened her in any way, I don’t care how long we have fought together, I will end you. Is that clear?”