Page 39 of Broken Kingdom

Not alone. Likely, not with an army and a nuclear weapon or four, either, but especially not alone.

And I can’t let her make her last stand without someone by her side.

“Get Ophelia to safety,” I shout to Catherine as I strip off my bulletproof vest, preparing to shift. “And make sure the rest of Zion knows Bethany is a traitor. Whoever they decide should rule next, it shouldn’t be her.”

“No,” Catherine says, her eyes blazing into mine. “You can’t do this. You have to come with us. Juliet wouldn’t want this Ford. She wouldn’t want her sacrifice to be in vain.”

I don’t waste time arguing. I just shuck my shoes and pants.

I know Catherine’s right, but it’s not just what Juliet wants that matters here. What I want matters, too, and I wouldn’t be any good to the pack without her. I’m in too deep with her—with my former rival, my best friend, my wife of only one bittersweet, unforgettable night.

I want so much more with her. I want a lifetime, an afterlife among the same stars, an eternity with her hand in mine. But we had one night as husband and wife, and now we’re going out as a team.

Whatever happens after death, I’m following her to the other side.

I shift and start to run, ignoring Catherine’s shout to stop and the higher-pitched voice of Ophelia as she cries, “Wait, F-Ford, I can help.”

I charge toward where Juliet flies in circles around the enraged dragon’s head, narrowly avoiding swipes of his massive claws and bursts of flame. She’s steering clear for now, but it’s only a matter of time before the dragon wins. She’s too small to do enough damage to take it down.

Her only hope would be to make a run for it while it’s distracted, but even as I charge for the dragon’s foot, intending to do my worst with my teeth and claws, I know she won’t.

She won’t run. She’ll stay and fight for me the same way I had to stay and fight for her. We’re two sides of the same coin, two broken halves that together make a perfect whole. I’m tied so deeply to her now I couldn’t fight my way free if I tried, and I don’t want to try.

I just want her to know she isn’t alone, now, or ever again.

I’m about to call out to her with my mind, to let her know I’m going for as big a hunk of scaly dragon skin as I can fit into my mouth, when an inhuman wail keens through the air, sending agony rocking through my skull. Instantly, fluid begins to leak from my ears, and I’m hit with a wave of vertigo so intense I go down face first into the grass.

I roll over to see the dragon stagger and nearly fall, too, seconds before Juliet tumbles from the sky. She looks like an angel plummeting from heaven, glittering gold and pink all the way down.

The good news is that her wings slow her fall, and she doesn’t hit the ground hard enough to do any real damage. The bad news is that there’s something even more monstrous than a dragon striding across the field toward her.

At first glance, the thing seems human, aside from the fact that’s it’s about fifty feet tall. It has arms and legs and a head in the same place a human would, but that’s where the similarities end.

Instead of a hair, the creature has writhing shadows that stream behind it like octopus ink through the water as it moves. Instead of skin, it has a coating of glittering black dust that barely conceals the giant white bones beneath, and where a face should be, it has a circle of pitch black pierced only by shining, dark brown eyes.

I have a beat to think that those eyes look vaguely familiar, and then the creature’s hair transforms into dozens of wailing shadow faces, and the terrible screeching sound comes again.

This time, I manage to cover my ears halfway through, but it still makes my head feel like it’s about to explode. My heart isn’t doing so good, either, especially when the creature bends and plucks Juliet, now in her human form, off the ground.

I struggle to get up, to help her, but instead of crushing her in its fist, or tossing her into its black hole mouth, the giant turns. When it spots me, it draws its arm back and tosses Juliet my way. My liquified insides scrambling to remember how to work together, I shift and surge to my feet in time to catch her before we both go tumbling back to the ground.

“What the hell is that?” she breathes, wincing as I land heavily on top of her.

“No idea, but we should run while the dragon’s distracted,” I grunt as I roll off to one side.

I’m so weak from shifting twice in such a short span of time that my legs tremble as I try to stand. My knees buckle and I almost hit the grass again, but then Juliet is there, under my arm, holding me up as she turns toward the river, where the rest of Zion has already fled.

“A banshee maybe?” she asks as we limp across the field, moving faster as we find our rhythm together. “That scream is…horrible.”

“I think it burst one of my eardrums,” I agree. “Everything on my right side sounds like it’s underwater.”

“You have blood on your ear and down your neck on that side,” Juliet says. “So that tracks. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No, you?” I ask, curling my fingers more tightly around her ribs.

“I’m fine, just tapped out. When I hit the ground, the impact forced my shift. I don’t think I have enough strength to shift back. If we have to fight again, I’m going to need a weapon.”

“Fighting is a losing game,” I say, my shoulders hunching closer to my ears as the banshee or whatever it is lets out another screech. Juliet and I both look back over our shoulders to see the dragon fall to the ground and the skeletal creature leap on top of it. We spin back around, moving faster. “We have to find a way out of here. Out of this dimension or…wherever the fuck we are.”

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