Page 54 of My Guardian Gryphon

Rolling hills and grass sped along below us, no roads in sight. Only the pull of the runes called me onward through the clear blue skies. We passed a few groves of wild oaks skirting a streambed. Then the buildings of what looked like a military compound rose on the horizon. Sandbags ringed the parameter of the outpost. Large brown steel bunkers without windows were clumped together.

“He’s there,” Rose whispered, tightening her grip on my feathered mane. “I can feel him.” Her body trembled—the only sign of fear I ever remember her showing in all the time I’d known her.

Rose’s terror ripped a hole in my heart the size of the Texas sky. She’d kill Gretchen if it came down to it. I had to get to her first.

Gun shots rang through the empty Texas sky. A growl from the dragon behind me was the only warning I got to bank left and get the hell out of his way. Fire streamed from his mouth like it’d been shot from a science-fiction-style laser gun—men on the ground below us disintegrated into ash. Rose raised her hands, locking the armies into place. Paralyzing their ability to strike. To move. To escape. Eli burned them all, and I continued straight toward the largest building in the center of the compound, two stories of solid tan-colored steel.

She was there. I could feel her heartbeat pulsing with mine.

My claws struck the ground with a soft thud outside the main door.

Rose leapt from my back, keeping her hands raised and taut, channeling her magick to control as much of the camp as she could. “Find her. I can only control what I can see. Be careful.”

I rushed the front door, shouldering it in with one lunge. Men—Lycans—came straight at me. Bullets flew and I felt the burn as they struck, digging deep into my body. Djinn blinked in and out, upping the bullet spray, but never staying in one place long enough for me to get a good swipe of my talons into them.

The ground shook. Eli had landed. The Drakonae’s scream pierced the silence with a sound that even made my Gryphon shudder with dread. Death and fire would blanket this army. No Djinn or Lycan or witch would survive his fiery judgement.

I slashed my way through several more of Xerxes’ Lycan soldiers before bursting into a dimly lit room and shifting into my human form. There were no more guards. Only three hearts beat in this room. Mine, Gretchen’s, and the man’s I was about to end.

Lights flickered on and off. Eli must’ve hit one of the compound’s generators, but all I could see were Gretchen’s glowing marks. The white light illuminated her bruised and bound body. A large man, easily my size, stood over her with a long knife.

“You must be Alek, so good of you to join us.” His gaze fell to the matching white glow emanating from the rune marks on my arms.

“Get away from her.” Something about him was familiar, but the rage inside me was all I could feel. All I could smell was Gretchen’s scent. All I could taste was her fear permeating the air in the room. Pure terror. Pain. Anguish. Hatred.

I lunged, but something invisible stopped me, grabbed my neck, and slammed me into the far wall. Lamassu magick, this was Xerxes. I couldn’t beat a Lamassu, neither in human form nor beast. His magick, like Rose’s, was too powerful.

Two familiar figures barreled into the room after me. I tried to yell a warning, but my vision was waning. His magick choked me harder and harder. Air ceased to pass through my throat. I couldn’t fight. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t help…Gretchen.

I could only hear my mate’s cries, each one ripping a piece from my dying soul. See her tears. Watch this psychopath destroy everything I cared about.

“Xerxes.” Rose’s voice took on that special god-like quality and the room shook.

A flash of steel and the sound of metal slicing through the air caught my attention. The lights in the room returned. The dagger was frozen, inches from Rose’s chest.

“I’m not that easy to kill.”

“No, perhaps not.” The tall man narrowed his dark eyes then smiled. Actually fucking smiled. “But your dragon was.”

A surprised gasp slipped from Rose’s mouth, and I glanced across the room. An identical dagger had pierced Eli’s heart. Nothing could pierce a dragon hide—in human or beast form—nothing except dragon steel. There were so few blades on Earth, he probably hadn’t thought the blade flying at his chest was a threat. That it would bounce off like a toy made of wood.

Bullets hurt dragons. Artillery pierced their skin because of the speed and the heat behind it, but a simple blade was like hitting them with a loaf of bread. It did nothing. It should’ve been nothing.

The Drakonae prince met my gaze, and I saw the flame leave his eyes before he crumpled to the concrete floor. The man I’d known for a thousand years. A brave and strong and powerful friend was gone, and there was nothing either of us could do about it. A man who served and fought at my side as a brother in arms. A man who’d considered me his equal in this world.

“Eli.” His name slipped from Rose’s lips—a small whisper of the overwhelming grief she felt at his loss. She made no attempt to hide her emotions. Her pheromones spoke to the truth. Her eyes widened with surprise then narrowed with determination.

Eli’s blood seeped from his fatal wound and stained the gray floor. My soul wept for a good man, cried for the son and mate and brother he left behind and the babies who would never know him.

I was still captive against the wall, straining to see through the black spots in my vision, watching my friend die to save the woman I loved. The woman fated to be mine. The woman I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t be conscious more than a few seconds longer.

“Get her now, Alek.”

Rose’s command tore me from my sorrow, reminded me the fight wasn’t over until we’d all breathed our last.

Rose lunged at Xerxes. A white glow surrounded her. Large wings unfurled around her body as it shifted…growing and glowing with her white essence. She’d take the building down with her once she reached her full size. The room couldn’t hold her. Hell, the entire building wasn’t big enough to hold a shifted Lamassu.

Xerxes magick released me suddenly, his attention completely on Rose now. She was making him choose to fight on her terms or die under her claws. She was giving me a chance.

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