Page 44 of Sass Me

“Are you sure? Can you handle it? I don’t know. You’re smart, but are you strong enough to handle it?”

“Yes. Yesssss. Give me.”

Steele shrugged and turned his back. Denying it a little longer, making it want to hear what he had to say.“Truth.”Steele whipped around staring at the demon dragon eye to eye.“The truth is more powerful than you can imagine.”

It narrowed its eyes and Steele had to push the air in an out of his lungs to make sure the thing didn’t get a whiff of doubt that every word was the path to pure power.

“I know truth.”It paused waiting to see how that felt coming out of its mouth.“Truth about woman.”

He couldn’t get too excited. He almost had what he wanted and then he could rip it’s throat out. “I don’t know. You could be lying about that. Prove it.”

“Woman not dead. Yet. Woman slave to AllFather.”

A slave. He would kill this all father twice. “Who is all father?”

“I powerful. You stupid.”

Maybe he was for trying to talk to a demon dragon. But, he’d gotten this far. “I am. Show me how stupid I am. Tell me who all father is, where he is.”

“AllFather father of all demon dragons. You kill one. He fuck demon. Make new demon dragon.”

Disgusting, but more information than they’d ever gotten before about the origin of the demon dragons. “Oh, man. How did I not know? You know so much. What else? How does a demon make a demon dragon?”

“You stupid. Demon not make demon dragon. Dragon make demon dragon.”

A dragon was doing this, creating a legion of abominations? Steele glanced at Jakob, then Match. They both shook their heads indicating they didn’t know what or who the demon dragon was talking about either.

It had to be lying again.

“Huh. That’s interesting. I could listen to you talk all day. So, this dragon. Where is he? I bet you know.”

“No.”

Shit. Now it clams up? “No? Come on. You’re smart, you know.”

“No. AllFather go down. He hide woman from you.”

“You must have seen him, you know he’s made the woman his slave.” Fuck, that hurt to say. Enough was enough. Time to find Fleur. “Down, where?”

“Down. You not find AllFather. You never find woman. I fuck woman.”

Not in this lifetime or any other. Steele stabbed the the demon through the eye and ripped off its head. Then he sliced through the entire tree the demon had been trapped on. Then stomped the trunk into the ground, and smashed the demon dragon’s body into the hole in the ground.

“Well, that thing is pretty damn dead.” The voice of one of Fleur’s friend’s broke through Steele’s frenzy. He stomped one more time and looked up to see a circle of men and women, all wolf shifters. They were interspersed with the dragon warriors.

The dragons shifted into their human forms, one by one, until Steele was the only one still in his beast. He took three, then five deep breaths, trying to contain the rage inside. His dragon self wanted to fly, search, tear, shred, until he had his mate back.

But, if he was going to find her, he needed their help.

The change finally shimmered through him and he stood with the rest of the group. His fists were clenched, his heart and gut were eating him from the inside out, and his injuries burned, but he was human.

Jakob put a hand on his shoulder, giving him the solidarity, the knowledge that he had a support team. He didn’t have to do this alone.

Match addressed the wolf shifters. “Do you have any geothermal activity in this area?”

Two of the alpha females Steele recognized, Ellie and Barbara glanced at each other. “We have the hot springs in the Rahound area. Why?”

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Dax said. “Demon dragons like to live and congregate in volcanoes and other underground high temperature biomes.”

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