Page 66 of Rifted Hearts
Rhys, it appeared, agreed.
The drakone rose to his feet, screaming words to that effect over and over at Remi as he stalked toward the chute. He held something gold and glittering in one hand. It was the cursed Matchmaker artifact that had transformed into a gold Rolex to tell Kaveh Remi was his match, which had led to Kaveh dying in a futile attempt to save him.
The person Remi had been urged him to do something—anything—to try and escape. He could try to run away as a chinchilla or plead his case with the guardians, but he felt he deserved this awful ending to his life. He reached into his living leathers and pulled out his smartwatch.
“Go,” he whispered, and Bug’s metallic body rose up from the watch’s liquid crystal face and flew off toward the stands.
“He dies now.” Rhys was in Kaida’s impassive stone face, burn marks on his face and upper body now apparent. Snow hadn’t held back at his first attempt to be a true phoenix. “The duel is over, and that’s what I want. For this lying, thieving rat to get what he deserves.”
Kaida remained unmoving for several moments then gave a brief bow. Raion opened the chute gate, and Remi stood face-to-face with Rhys. The drakone’s face was contorted by grief and rage as he reached to his waist for a long knife. A bag hung next to it on his belt, swaying as if it contained something heavy. He hadn’t needed any weapons to kill Kaveh. It had been slaughter, pure and simple, and Remi was next.
“I’m going to hack off your head and send it to that foul beast you call your father.” Rhys grated out the words, the tip of the blade shaking ever so slightly as he pointed it at Remi.
Remi laughed, which was wildly inappropriate and mostlikely a sign of hysteria. All this drama from Rhys for nothing.
Arimanius, Don of the Colony crime family, would only move on to a different plan to get the drakones’ secrets, and take his half-human son’s death in stride. Remi had no illusions about his father’s sentimentality.
Or his skill at exacting revenge.
“He insists on being called Ari, for your information.” Remi had nothing to lose at this point, and enraging the drakone might get this over with faster. He shot a glance at Xiang Jao, who stood frozen, as motionless as one of the guardians. “Unlike your boss, he wouldn’t let a jealous asshole murder someone in our clan who was better than him in every possible way.”
Rhys lunged at Remi with the knife, but stumbled as the ground underneath his feet rose up like an ocean swell.
Remi reached to grab at the bars, trying to stay on his feet as the earth shuddered.
It was an odd time for an earthquake, and Remi hadn’t thought they were common in Arizona. The shaking worsened, and even the drakones became alarmed as the metal bleachers swayed.
The ground behind Rhys exploded, dirt and rocks flying through the air like water from a fountain. A serpentine mass of gleaming blue-black scales twisted out of the earth, and a massive head dominated by two pale fangs dripping with venom loomed over the gray-scaled aerial drakone.
Remi had come close to being eaten by Ceto, an aquatic drakone who could take down an aircraft carrier. He had been tortured and beaten by Rhys, an aerial drakone able to twist the wind into his own personal tornadoes. He had seriously thought a hellhound was about to eat him. This,though, was the most terrifying monster Remi had ever faced.
And the most beautiful.
“Kaveh?” Any doubts about who had showed up to save him disappeared when a drop of liquid from one fang dropped to the ground beside Rhys, flaring into the green flame of summ as it did.
Kaveh was alive and had transformed into an Azdaha earth drakone to kick some ass.
Rhys turned into his aerial shape and launched himself skyward, but he had tried that trick one too many times. The furious dragon that had been the ranch’s educated and compassionate veterinarian arced upward, knocking Rhys out of the air with a twist of his muscular body.
Kaveh was enormous and so damn quick.
Rhys, crumpled in the dirt, went back to his humanoid form. As awe-inspiring as the aerial drakones were in flight, they did their fighting at a distance, with their ability to manipulate the air around them. On the ground, they lost their fighting advantage.
The wind started up again, a blast that died within seconds when Kaveh struck hard and fast, pummeling Rhys with clods of earth and rock that flew through the air.
Rhys screamed in pain and terror and tried to scramble away, but Kaveh wrapped his scaled body around him, tightening the force as his ex-lover gasped and begged.
“Stop.” Xiang Jao walked across the torn-up earth of the arena and stood with both hands outstretched in a pleading gesture. “Don’t do this, Kaveh. This isn’t you.”
Well, wasn’t that rich. She had sat there and watched as Rhys thrashed Kaveh and unleashed a tornado of projectiles, intending to kill him. Now that her boy toy was aboutto get the same treatment, she wanted to settle the dispute peacefully.
Kaveh gave a low hiss, and a ring of green flame roared up around his coiled body, forcing the matriarch to step back.
The mass of coils shuddered and contracted, and human Kaveh reformed, his hands around Rhys’s neck.
He released his hold and allowed the man’s groaning body to slide down to the ground.
Kaveh was naked except for a thick coating of dust. He stood, chest heaving, facing a woman Remi knew he thought of as a mother. But the clan had been willing to let Rhys kill Kaveh, and there was no way in hell the Saguaro Rift drakones weren’t going to pay for that.
