Page 78 of Dangerous Heat

I didn’t see the arrow coming, too engrossed in the fight. No one should have been tall enough to aim over the heads of everyone waiting their turn, so I was unprepared for long-range attacks.

An arrow pierced my chest, inches away from my heart. I coughed up blood and stumbled, my grip slipping on the dagger. It clattered to the ground, landing in a pool of blood. My vision went hazy around the edges as my body worked to repair the damage, my teeth elongating and throbbing with the need to feed. I reached forward for one of them, trying to pull myself close enough to latch onto his neck. He backed up, easily avoiding my feeble attempt.

The second arrow came for me in slow motion, but in my daze from the pain of the first, the other men caught my arms. They held me still, right in its path, and I knew this one would hit true. I’d die. My eyelids fluttered shut and I sucked in a final breath, waiting for impact.

Except, it never came.

A small yelp had my eyes flying open. Oswald’s limp body flew through the air before hitting the wall with a thump. My thrashing freed me from my captors, a second too late to do anything. Ignoring the fiery pain of my wound, panic over his injury gave me a second wind. Using my teeth and bare hands, I grabbed the nearest attacker and ripped out his throat, gulping down thick mouthfuls of his blood. Pushing his lifeless body toward the other men, who now surrounded me on all sides, I dropped to my knees beside Oswald.

An arrow protruded from his small body, his chest heaving as he tried to get air into his lungs. I didn’t know where the pointed tip had pierced him, but on such a tiny feline body there was no doubt it had hit something important.

I was trying to figure out what to do as his eyes started to glaze over, when everyone hushed around us.

A faint ripple of magic preceded the appearance of a woman. At first I thought it was Freya, coming for her familiar in his last moments. I avoided looking up, not wanting to see how furious she was at me for letting Oswald save my life at the cost of his own. When I inhaled, though, it wasn’t her scent that filled my nostrils.

Gaze drawing up, I locked eyes with a woman who was staring curiously at me.

None of the men attacked her, which was odd until I realized not a single one of them was alive. Their bodies were swaying, then they fell one by one into heaps on the ground with no sign of how they’d died.

“You’re not a witch,” the woman said, tapping her wand against her hip and laughing.

I was not. Maybe if I’d been a witch, I would have a single clue about what the fuck was happening.

ChapterTwenty-Six

FREYA

One second I was peacefully napping on Caspian’s chest, the next alarms were blaring from all around us. Shan sat up straight in bed, his wings snapping out to the sides and nearly taking out Caspian and I. Cas was slowest to react, blinking his eyes blurrily open and glancing around us for the source of the danger. The danger wasn’t in our suite, but considering this was a building-wide alarm, we had to assume it would be soon.

“Get dressed,” Shan demanded, taking control of the situation in a way that ground my gears a bit. I’d have to get used to it.

Throwing on my too-big, borrowed clothes made me cringe, the material not feeling good against my sensitive skin. There was a reason only soft things were allowed in the nest during my heat. I didn’t have any weapons, because Nolan hadn’t been quite trusting enough to provide us with them. I grabbed a pen from the nightstand, though, flipping it between my fingers with ease. It would make a decent wand, in a pinch. All the wand had to do was help focus my magical efforts.

Nothing had happened by the time we were dressed, and Shan hesitantly opened the door to the bedroom we were staying in. No one else was in our suite. Not Nolan, or Emmett, or even Oswald. I wanted to call my familiar back to me, but if he wasn’t here, he had to be with Nolan. They would both be making their way to us and Ozzy could help protect Nolan if he found trouble on the way. Emmett was the one I was most worried about, because I had no idea where he could be. I’d expected him to come back here after we’d parted ways outside Mabel’s suite.

Fuck, Mabel. She was in the building too, but at least I could take comfort in her being tucked away on the most secure floor with a badass Alpha witch to protect her.

“Do we wait in here, or go find the trouble?” I asked, knowing what I wanted to do but also knowing it wouldn’t fly with Shan.

His head whipped toward me and he shook it. “You’re not going anywhere while you’re perfuming up the place like this. All that’ll do is make you stand out like a beacon as the one they want to kidnap. We’re not leaving you alone, so we’re all going to stay here.”

Caspian had one hand on the small of my back, as if making sure I didn’t disobey and leave. “Got it, boss,” I said.

Shan opened his mouth, then closed it again and blinked at me. “You just… agreed with me?”

I laughed. “I’m not completely unreasonable. We just frequently have different opinions. I’d rather be on the front lines kicking the asses of Kylan’s men, assuming that’s what these alarms are for, but you have a valid point.”

He stared at me, puzzled, until footsteps thundered through the hall outside our suite. There was a bang on the door a second later, and Shan fluttered his wings. They barely fit in the room, but he kept them extended and used them to block our view of the entrance. “Looks like I get my wish, anyway,” I said, pulling out my pen-wand. “It’s been too long since I’ve been able to fight someone for real.”

“If it’s up to me, it won’t get to that,” Shan muttered under his breath.

“We’re staying in the suite like you wanted. It’s about time I got something I wanted.”

The door flew off the hinges with the next bang, my vision of the entrance obscured by him. There were too many sets of feet. A quick count had over ten sets all cramming in through the narrow hallway. Shan didn’t have his weapons, either, but he had his angel magic, which was particularly effective against creatures of Zemterra like vamps and shifters. I didn’t see what happened, but a head rolled to the ground, blood splatter coating the wall, and a short sword came flying in my direction.

Catching it in midair, I gave it to Cas instead. “You should keep this,” he said as he got into a fighting stance.

“I have my magic, and I’m sure we’ll steal more weapons.”

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