Just as Nox reached Vyr, Torren slammed into him from the side, knocking him off his path of destruction. The flurry of violence from the gorilla as he slammed his fists against the bear, and from Nox as he ripped into Torren’s arm, was something she would revisit in her nightmares. But for now? She had to stop Vyr from Changing and killing them all. And not just the three of them, but from burning the entire town. Her life didn’t matter compared to the hundreds he could hurt if the Red Dragon tore out of him.
What do I do? What do I do! The fox wasn’t slowing down, but she couldn’t rip into Vyr because it would only anger a monster like him. There would be no stopping the Change if she drew blood. Vyr went to his knees and grunted, his face contorted with pain as he slammed his fists on the ground. He screamed through gritted teeth, every muscle bulging in his body as an awful cracking sound echoed through the clearing. Massive red, tattered wings unfurled from his back, spanning the width of the entire clearing and blanketing them all in shadow.
Oh shoot, oh shoot, oh shoot! She was already to him, couldn’t stop now, but that dragon was coming out of him, and there was only one thing she could think of to do.
And it. Was. Disgusting.
Nevada locked her legs against her forward movement, spinning in the snow. And then she lifted her bushy, red tail, positioned her butt on Vyr’s closed fist…and peed.
“What the fuck?” Vyr gritted out as the bear and gorilla war raged on under the span of his left wing. He yanked his fist out from under her, and his face lost some of its fire as he stared down at his dripping hand with a look of utter disgust.
In an attempt not to get eaten, Nevada dropped to her belly and rolled over, wagged that big, bushy tail of hers as hard as she could. Look how cute I am! You don’t want to eat me!
Vyr knelt there frozen, staring at her like she was some mythical Pegasus he just realized really existed. And then slowly, he folded those monstrous wings and pulled them back into his body, face contorted with agony the entire time. He looked delirious with pain as he slammed against the ground and rolled to his back, arching his spine as though his body was on fire. When he placed his dripping fist to his forehead, pee-pee sprinkled into his hair. Vyr yelled and looked horrified as he wiped her piddle drops from his hairline with his clean hand. Not clean anymore!
She kind of wanted to laugh, but mostly wished she could find a hole to hide in from the mortification. She’d just taken a leak on the Red Dragon. Please God, let this be rock bottom. Don’t let life get worse than this.
“Torren, Nox, Change back!” Vyr snarled out in a terrifying, booming voice that tapered into a dinosaur rumble.
Eek. Play dead. Nevada laid there with her feet in the air, perfectly still with her eyes closed.
Nox and Torren’s twin roars of pain filled her head, and both turned into human screams within seconds.
“Oh my God, Nevada!”
“She pissed on me!” Vyr yelled.
Keep playing dead.
“So you killed her?” Nox bellowed. “I’ll fucking kill you! Slowly. I’m gonna rip your guts through your mouth, you— Get the fuck off me, Torren! Ew, your dick touched me. Nevada!”
Her body was hoisted up. Nox’s mouth crashed onto hers, and suddenly her lungs inflated painfully. Stop that! She nipped him, and he reared back.
“The fuck?” His lip was bleeding, and his eyes were bright silver. His beard looked really cute. His hair was mussed on top and his tattoos were really dark and his face was red. He looked hot all worked up and naked. Mmm, nipple piercings. Her thoughts were a hurricane right now, spinning around and around. Wait… he looked hot, but he also looked mad. I’ll fix it. So she licked his lip and crossed her paws and did her best to give him a foxy-flirt-smile.
His face relaxed with relief and he let off a shaking breath. “Were you playing possum?”
She didn’t know what that meant, but his lips were cute when he enunciated poss-um. She leaned up and licked his beard to reward him for being a cutie-patootie.
“Dude, she pissed on my hand. Did no one hear me?” Vyr barked out. “And I touched my face with it!”
Nox snorted, and beside him, the six-foot-two, dark-haired, tatted-up behemoth Torren let off what sounded like an accidental chuckle. “Well, it worked, didn’t it? And P. S. Nox, you idiot, you almost got us all busted.”
“Uh, that’s not the main concern,” Vyr yelled. “He could’ve gotten people killed!”
“You probably wouldn’t have killed random people,” Torren said, but there were false notes in his tone.
Vyr got to his feet. His shirt was ripped in shreds from his wings, but at least he didn’t have his big dangling dick out like Nox and Torren.
Nox dropped Nevada a split second before Vyr’s fist crashed into his jaw. There was no recovery time before Nox was pummeling him back. Torren tried to separate them, but the two giants went to the ground, just…wailing on each other.
“I’m getting my crossbow,” Torren muttered, sauntering off in the direction of the house.
What? No! He needed to separate Nox and Vyr before they killed each other or the Red Dragon started coming out again.
Flinching at the pain, Nevada forced her Change back to her human skin. She desperately swiped snow out of the way to grab two fistfuls of dried grass, then covered her boobs and her hoohah with them as best she could.
“Stop it right now!” she screeched.
“Fuck!” Nox yelled, hunching at the pitch of her voice.
“Ha, ha!” Vyr said, right before Nox blasted him in the face with a closed fist.
The dragon shoved him off so hard Nox landed ten yards away and skidded through the snow.
“I hate you!” he yelled at Vyr, getting back up on his feet.
“Yeah, well I hate you, too.”
“Both of you just lied,” Nevada said with a smile as she looked between her mate and the Red Dragon. “And whoa, I’m not even scared right now.”
Vyr’s eyes were round as twin moons and honed in on her chest.
“Don’t look at my boobs,” she admonished him.
“Yeah, asshole, don’t look at her boobs!” Nox pointed to Nevada. “Mine!”
A zinging sound whizzed through the air, and Nox spun so quick he blurred. When he slowed down, he was holding an arrow in his hand. What the heck?
Torren was standing near the house, pulling the string back on a crossbow, reloading another arrow.
“You missed, you robin hood wannabe dipshit!” Nox yelled. And then he chucked the arrow in his hand like a tiny javelin, and a split-second later, Torren yelped and grabbed his arm. Mouth hanging open in shock, he looked down at his shoulder where red was streaming through his fingers. Actually, he was bleeding a lot. Nox had shredded the other side of his body, too.
Nox, himself, was black and blue from Torren’s fist, and there was blood in his beard where she’d bitten him. Vyr was wiping the hand she’d peed on in the snow over and over, muttering about how he wanted to barf. Her car was inching slowly past them toward the pond, and Nox’s truck was on fire, wrapped around a tree, with black smoke billowing into the air. The wind was cold on her bare skin, and she hugged the clumps of grass tighter to her nether regions.