Page 88 of Feral Guardian
“No, Lily, please, I didn’t hear you—”
“You’re just digging your grave, Brunay.”
Trask.
I see red as the slimy fuck emerges from between the trees in a whisper of navy blue smoke. His cowardly magic curls around him and he sets his sights on Lily.
“Stay away from her.” My voice rumbles through me like thunder.
Trask only smirks. “Unlike you, I’ll do what the princess tells me to.”
He lifts his hand toward her in offering. “Shall we?”
Another tear slips down Lily’s cheek. She lowers the shield and hardens her gaze toward me. “Don’t follow us.”
No. No, no, no!
“Don’t, Lily,” I beg, my voice contorted from the demon’s wrath.
Pain ripples across her face, making her chin tremble. A final tear slips down her cheek, and she reaches for Trask.
Rational thought evaporates, and the monster in me takes over.
Chapter twenty-six
Lily
Alastair’s roar is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, laced with so much fury and agony. His body explodes in a wave of red magic and he’s far more monster than man. Two massive dark wings unfurl from his back and his horns grow tall and thick. His skin is black and scaled like a snake’s, and his hands grow talons designed to rend guts and bleed his enemies dry.
Trask’s eyes widen, and then he’s somehow directly beside me, grabbing my hand. One second, I’m standing on solid ground, but before I can even blink, my body is weightlessly floating in cool, blue mist. My feet touch the earth and nausea barrels through me.
We’ve traveled fifty feet in an instant.
“Hold on, princess,” Trask says, wrapping his arm around my waist.
We blink again, jumping fifty more feet. My head spins and everything hurts. I feel as though my bones are all fighting for the fastest way to escape me. My knees buckle on the third blink and Trask hauls me up close to him.
“We’ll never escape him if you don’t pull it together, Hilden.”
I glance over my shoulder to see Alastair tearing across the forest in giant, earth-shaking leaps, his wings propelling him just as fast aswe can blink. He roars my name, the sound so vicious and distraught at the same time. I’ve done this to him…but he made me.
We blink again, leaving him behind by another fifty feet. Intense, throbbing lances of pain spear through my skull on the fifth blink and my legs fall out from under me. Trask holds me up, blinking again.
“I can’t,” I say, fighting his hold on me. But Trask’s grip on my side is unforgiving, and rock solid. He blinks again and I fall, tripping him.
“Fucking hells,” he curses, dragging me into the shadow of a large pine.
I’m hardly tracking our surroundings. The sky is dark, with just a hint of sunset pink and orange. My guts are churning hot coals, and my veins might actually be pumping liquid steel. I’m dying, that’s for certain.
Trask pushes me against the tree and holds out a flask. “Drink. Come on, quick. It’ll help.”
I would give anything for this pain to be over, but Alastair’s warning returns and I refuse the flask with a shake of my head.
“You fucking pain in my ass.” He squeezes my jaw, trying to open my mouth.
I mash my lips together and scream behind them. The longer I’m on solid ground without Trask’s magic whisking me away, the better I feel. I just need a moment to recover, but if I open my mouth to say as much, he’s going to force this shit down my throat.
There’s a warm, soothing vibration emanating from my chest, and I hang on to that feeling, trying to live off it as Trask battles my jaw open. I call for my strength but find very little magic willing to obey my command. I couldn’t rune-write a shield over my mouth or blast him away from me.
