Page 10 of The Fury Queen's Harem

I bolted.

“Is it because of the mask?” he shouted behind me. “Is that it? I didn’t mean to turn you off. I have no choice!”

I kept running as fast as I could.

He gave chase. “Wait! Don’t leave. Let’s talk about it.”

My two-headed hound cut between us with snarls.

“You haven’t given me your name!” Blaze’s complaint was lost in the space as he fended Henry off.

“Don’t hurt my hound!” I called as I disappeared behind a tree.

My jungle came alive with the bellows of the beasts and eerie chirpings of the birds.

Under my order, Henry wouldn’t maul Blaze. While the dragon prince was distracted, I’d stayed thirty or so yards ahead of him, merging into the shadows.

I could no longer hold back my change. Scales covered my body, and a beast burst from me. My bones cracked as two more Furies burst through me, and searing agony shattered me.

Three of me surged up and broke through the thick canopy with shrieks, away from the subject of my lust—the first man I’d been close to fucking after nine centuries of celibacy.

Unfulfilled lust burned in my veins and cursed rage fogged my beast heads.

As I lost the control of my monsters, hell broke loose in my jungle.

Beneath me, shouts, howls, and screams broke out amid the sounds of machine guns and blasters.

And all I could do was flee higher into the sky, an utter failure in my trembling.

CHAPTER 5

I wasn’t a coward, but I wouldn’t fight with my Furies’ brutal force in the frontline while my heads were the prize. The slayers had advanced weapons, so I wouldn’t face them head-on unless it was absolutely necessary.

But I could fight dirty.

Right now, my monsters were fighting the war for me and defending the jungle.

I peeked into Sybil’s mind, who dashed between trees with one wing and ducked light beams and bullets. Two groups opened fire blindly on each other. One group was the dragon men, and the other was from the other ship I had yet to find out about.

My monsters focused on attacking the other party, partly because I’d restrained them from assaulting the dragons; partly because they could sense the beast inside the dragons and somehow felt kinship. The other team, unfortunately, was utterly alien to them, and thus they considered them to be prey and meat.

Sybil went for details with fascination. Through her eyes, I saw a string of bullets pop out of a machine gun and tear into a dragon soldier. He crashed into a thorny bush at the impact and didn’t get up again.

A masked warrior—the lightning prince—roared and tossed a dagger toward the gun man, and the blade pierced the man’s chest.

Blood sent my monsters into a frenzy and they charged whoever was in their range now.

Worry spiked in me. What if my true loves were among the warriors and being cut down?

I sighed dishearteningly. If that was my bitter fate, there was nothing I could do. I could only do what I could control. With my head cooled and the war raging in the jungle to distract all parties, I should go spy on the other two ships and gather more information.

I slipped out of Sybil’s mind, slowed down my sail as dizziness rushed through my head—which always happened when I got into any of my subjects’ minds through our magical bond.

I turned my gaze toward the half-burned City of Nine beneath me.

Looking down from a bird’s eye in the air, one wouldn’t find the skyscraper Witch Tower as tall as when you stared up at it from the ground, but still it dwarfed the surrounding buildings from the high sky.

A squad of fully-armored, horned beings patrolled the perimeter of the shipMistressnear the tower. They were of the same species, except for a hornless tall man among them. He wore a gray cloak instead of armor. He had such stillness that emitted power and grace. He would stand out in any crowd without any effort.

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