Page 27 of Reign of the Beast

Shocking me, he did. He even stepped back. “As you wish.”

Mia looked as shocked as me.

Whywashe actually listening to me and doing me a favor?

“What do you want with him?” Mia asked, before I could get a word out myself.

That was her in a nutshell, the ball-busting woman I’d met here months ago. Take-charge. Trying to rule every situation and everyone around her. I wasn’t used to it.Iwas top dog in my world. I still wasn’t sure how to handle it.

Draco looked me up and down, seeming real curious.

Was it the state of me? My clothes being ripped allover, bloodstained and dirty from beating back his soldiers for hours?

“I feel it now,” he announced. “It calls to me.”

I frowned, shifting my weight, uncomfortable at his weird comment. I had a bad feeling he was headed somewhere real messed up.

“Cornelius hid you well. I couldn’t sense it until I was right upon these lands. A formidable diluting spell indeed.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, thoughtfully. “It has not only served to keep me away, but also to keepyouignorant. You believe you are wolf, pure and simple.”

Mia caught my eye, shock all over her face. She zoned in on my neck wound, courtesy of that cocky bloodsucker. “Impossible,” she breathed, looking really freaked out.

“What? What’s going on?” I hated cryptic bullshit.

“Oh, it is very muchpossible,” Draco told Mia, smugly. He stepped up close to the wall, his eyes burning into mine as he told me, “You are my last descendant, boy.”

What?

Some fucked-up black talon things sprung from his hands.

Then, moving faster than I’d ever seen anybody move, he ran at the wall, tearing it to shreds with his monstrous hands.

In the next second, he batted Mia away into one of the burning lodges several feet away.

Before I could even react, he lunged at me.

Grabbing my jaw, he squeezed painfully then jerked me off my feet, holding me up in the air in front of him.

I couldn’t get a word out against his brutal grip.

I growled instead.

He snarled at me and jerked me around, pointing at the fiery lodge he’d thrown Mia into.

It was collapsing into itself.

“Yield and listen, or she will perish. She has mere moments before her supernatural body burns to ash.”

Fuck!I couldn’t stand her being hurt in any way. I felt it in my gut, a sickness, just knowing she was suffering.

I stilled in Draco’s hold.

“Good,” he said.

With a wave of his free hand, the fire raging through the lodge went out.

I heard an angry cry from Mia.

Relief filled me. She was okay. Okay enough to be pissed, too.

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