Page 32 of Virgo Queen
Then…
With a savage snarl and a bloodcurdling scream…
They fall.
I’m already moving.
I think I never stopped.
I’m tearing the encumbering parka from my shoulders. Slipping and struggling over the ice-rimed rocks. My back and shoulders blaze with fiery heat. I catch a wild glimpse of two figures pinwheeling through the air below. Lev is screaming in an endless spiral of raw terror.
But Jae falls in fatalistic silence.
Plummeting toward certain death on the jagged rocks.
Somewhere far above, two dragons are locked together, entangled in their own desperate struggle. I can’t spare a second to look, but I already know there’s no one close enough to help. No one to save my wolf. No one but me.
And suddenly, I realize, Ican.
Millenia of instinct, the cell-deep heritage of my hidden species, hurl me over the cliff after my wolf like a falling star.
I fling myself into open air, launched and propelled by the atomic flash of revelation that I’m more than Mallory McSnicker, ugly duckling and class joke, First Girl on the Dean’s List.
I’m Aurora Artemis Aurelius, Eagle of the Air, Queen of the Light-Born Fae.
I’ve always been uncrowned and unacknowledged by my kind because I’m half-mortal. I’ve never been able to summon my wings. So my Light Fae kin wrote me off as a dud, a freak, a wingless wonder.
And the mortals don’t even know I exist.
The Seelie—the Light Fae—we hide among the mortals for a reason. As a species, we’re hunted and all but extinct.
Now, in this soul-searing crucible of need and crisis, the skin of my back splits down my spine. My arms sweep wide. My shoulders flex and spread. In an explosion of pewter and silver, feathers burst from my tattooed flesh and unfurl in a powerful sweep of wings.
My chest vibrates with a primal scream of elation that bursts from my lungs and blasts through the night like a trumpet.
As I plummet through the icy air to save my falling love, I finally claim my power.
Chapter Ten
Draco
I’m alone in the den, spraying the last dregs of extinguishing foam over the smoking remains of that Molotov cocktail those Tiberius meatheads lobbed through the window at Zara.
That’s when I feel Jean-Emilien falling.
He’s a strong telepath and we’re closely bonded. Even if he’s still fiercely resisting a mating bite, on account of that whole misogynistic belief he harbors that he and his breed are monsters.
If anyone in this place is a monster, that’d be the stone-cold killer standing right here in my shitkicker boots.
I’ve spilled so much blood for the Mars family business in my short but violent life, I’ll never wash that shit off.
Now, as my guy’s possessive rage floods through every synapse—the mindless, wordless, helpless rage of his wolf—my entire body clenches in shock.
For fuck’s sake, he just ducked outta here a minute ago to check on Mallory. How is this even happening?
He’s fuckingfallingfrom the high cliff behind thedomus.
He’s falling to hisdeath.
