Page 5 of The Dragon's Warlock

He grabbed her wrist, holding her arm still. She flinched as he cut into her forearm and popped the chip out. Diem’s eyes were tightly closed.

“It’s out,” he said.

“That wasn’t as bad as I expected. Now, how are we going to get past the people on the other side?”

“Fight.”

“Don’t we need a better plan than that?”

Gideon’s magic was bursting at the seams, wanting to be released.

“Stay behind me, and if things get bad, shift and fly away.”

She glared. “I’m not going to leave you to fight alone.”

The longer they stayed in one location, the more their enemies could organize and call in reinforcements. Gideon hadn’t grabbed his phone off his desk as they rushed to the secret passage. His only thought had been to get Diem to safety.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He reached for the door and tugged it open. It didn’t budge at first, but he pulled harder, and the stone door finally glided open. Two men stood fifty feet away, dressed in black with masks covering their faces. They bore the same red symbol Kael’s men wore. The last Gideon had heard, the council thought they’d found all the Kael’s men and the labs used to turn humans into shifters.

Gideon’s eyes were trained on the two men as he pulled his magic.

“Down,” Diem yelled.

He didn’t have time to react before Diem pushed him to the ground. Gideon rolled them to the side and got behind a rock. Two more men were up in the trees with rifles pointed at them. This wouldn’t be the first fight he’d gone into outnumbered, but he had more than himself to worry about.

He closed his eyes and used his powers to orient his sense. Two of the men were human, and two were shifters. The labs Kael had created to make super shifters had humans working at them. The council had spent years working to keep their identity a secret.

The shifters he sensed were off. Their smell was closer to human than wolf. Diem’s smell was pure shifter, almost like she’d been born with her dragon. He didn’t remember the day she was turned, but he’d watched the video of himself giving the order to change her. The woman should hate him for what he’d done.

Movement in the trees tore his attention from the men on the ground. The man in the tree aimed his gun at Diem. A red dot formed on her chest. Gideon called on the elements and sent a gust of wind toward the trees. Its force was so strong that they both flew backward and landed on the ground. Their voices echoed in the forest.

Diem took her clothes off next to him. He had a hard time drawing his eyes away from her soft skin as she stripped down. Seconds later, a green dragon erupted. Most of the humans who had been changed to shifters had a difficult time shifting. She did the fast change almost as quickly as shifters who practiced it. She was ridiculous and elegant at the same time. He’d watched videos of her from when she was a captive, but now her color was a brighter green. She even seemed larger.

Rawr.She spewed fire across the grass.

“Don’t kill them!” he growled. There was no doubt in his mind that they were after Diem, but he wanted to know who was calling the shots.

He had to hold back a chuckle as the dragon glared at him. The fire clicker in Diem’s throat clicked a couple of times. The two shifters transformed into wolves. If their smell hadn’t told him that they’d been created, their size would have. Both wolves were double the size of standard shifters. Unlike Diem’s smooth transmission, they howled in pain as their bones broke and they transformed.

“Don’t move,” Gideon called to the vines that had crept up the wolves’ feet. His ability to control the elements and plants was rare for a warlock. Most used dark magic to fight, but at a young age, his mother had taught him how to work with nature and how to control the things around him.

The two wolves gnawed at their feet, trying to stop the vines from holding them in place.

The air changed next to him as Diem shifted back into human form. She stood unclothed with her hands on her hips. “You’re supposed to let me help.”

A very naked Diem was distracting and making it hard for him to concentrate on the surrounding elements. “Can you get dressed.” His words came out more as a demand than a question.

“Only if I can help kill them.”

He rolled his eyes. “We need them to shift first, and then we’ll ask questions.”

Diem pulled her shirt over her head, not bothering with a bra. He couldn’t help but stare at her nipples as they poked through the thin white material.

“Let me go check on the others.” She marched past him. The wolves growled and nipped at her but couldn’t move out of the vine cuffs. “They're dead,” she said as she walked back.

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