Page 21 of Dark & Dreadful Brutes

I removed the heads from two more guards before one of them finally had the sense to yell that they had an intruder. His head joined his friends’, but by then, there was an unorganized group of raiders sprinting toward me.

“They’re coming,” Laeli warned me.

“I’ll handle it. Don’t distract me,” I growled back, launching toward the first raider. He reeked of shifter, until the icy spikes on my shoulder caught him by the throat. With one sharp roll, they cut through his heart too, and then he smelled of nothing but blood.

The next raider was in her fox form when she launched toward me.

She fell just as quickly as the first.

I cut through the rest of them, one after another. They weren’t warriors; they had no experience with war, or those of us who’d been trained to kill as we learned to walk.

The bodies remained behind as I ran toward Gleam’s roaring. Their friends could bury them if they thought the men and women deserved it.

“Get Laeli and get out of here,” Gleam snarled into my mind.

I ignored her, just as she knew I would.

My steps slowed when I found two men and a woman holding knives to Gleam’s throat.

The men were demons, and the woman smelled like an elf, though her hair was chopped short and her clothing wasn’t the long, flowing dresses the magical women usually wore.

“Any closer and we kill your idorr,” the woman warned. She was on Gleam’s back, her arms around my beast’s neck and her blade already cutting slightly into Gleam’s throat.

The men stood beside her with their weapons, close enough that if Gleam hadn’t been restrained by the magical ropes holding her down, she could’ve bitten their heads off.

They were fools.

I lifted my hands as I tapped into my magic and formed three spears with my ice.

With one rapid motion, I slammed the ice into the raiders’ chests.

The men collapsed to their knees, and a roaring Gleam flung the woman from her back.

I bent down and made quick work of her bindings.

“Are you alive?” Laeli whispered into my mind.

“I’m fine.”

“The gargoyle grabbed me and ran.”

I snarled, “What? Why didn’t you say something? Has he hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine. Just being hauled deeper into the dunes. And you told me not to bother you.”

“Still on fire?” I barked.

“Yeah.”

I threw a leg over Gleam’s back, and she shook her fur out before taking off in the direction we could both smell Laeli’s scent. “We’re coming.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t thank me for getting you captured.”

“Technically, you captured me first.”

I growled into her mind, “I saved you.”

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