The werebear lunges for me, teeth bared. Just as I brace for impact, he abruptly swerves and slashes out at Fyrestar instead. Fyrestar barely evades with a startled caw, and my swords slice through thin air. Two werewolves spring at me while I’m still off balance, and I only just get my blades around in time to hold them off.
Fyrestar and I fight hard. We stay back-to-back, protecting each other and ourselves. I kill a werewolf, and another takes its place. The werebear focuses on Fyrestar, and Fyrestar’s speed and flames are barely enough to avoid the werebear’s thundering hits and huge, knife-sharp claws. A weretiger suddenly blasts between us, forcing us apart. I whirl and slash out, but the werebeast is fast and avoids my sword.
“I’m a heartbeat from flying you out of here,” Fyrestar mutters.
I don’t think Fyrestar and I have the time to mount up and take off. The werebeasts are relentless. They’d be on us in seconds. It would also mean leaving the children.
I push myself harder, killing another werewolf with a lightning-fast feint and stab. The weretiger instantly takes her place. More werebeasts wait in the wings, ready to jump into the fray. I growl a curse. I need to do more, do better. The team still isn’t here, Fyrestar is injured, and I’m tiring fast.
Dread-laced heartbeats bang inside me as I fend off attack after attack, narrowly keeping deadly claws and fangs from tearing me apart. A slice burns my hip. I spin, my blades swinging. A claw rips across my lower back, and I gasp. Fyrestar bats the werewolf away from me with a burning wing. Blood stains my phoenix’s thigh, and he staggers, his punctured leg hindering his balance.
Breathing hard, I fight off pain but welcome rage and panic. Fear burns through me like my own sort of inner fire, and I let it scorch. The only thing that can save us now is me fighting on a whole different level, one I’m already reaching for. I know I can do better. I just can’t always make it happen.
Fyrestar suddenly squawks in pain. I spin, slam the opal-embedded pommel of my sword into a werewolf’s head, and yank him off my warbird. The blood-wet, broken feathers on Fyrestar’s back send a chaotic burst of terror through me, and the thunderclap only I can hear finally hits, abruptly changing everything. My strength increases, my senses sharpen, and I become a blur of speed. I can suddenly focus on everything at once—sounds, sights, smells—and make sense of every detail in the space around me. I’m powerful, precise, fast. We’re still seriously outnumbered, but now we have a fighting chance.
Striking fast, I whirl and kill the snow tiger with one brutal blow. More enemies come at us, and I slice them down. They’re everywhere, and the more frantic I become, pinned in this murderous circle with Fyrestar, the faster I move. I whip to the side and take down a werebear that joins the bigger one still attacking Fyrestar. I slice through his throat as he rises onto his back legs to try to maul Fyrestar, and his blood momentarily blinds me as it sprays into my face from his severed jugular.
I wipe my eyes just as razor-tipped claws sink into my shoulder from behind and tear down my back, ripping through my vest and fighting leathers. Hissing, I stumble forward. Fyrestar screeches a fierce battle cry, spitting fire, gouging with talons, and battering with his blazing wings to drive the weres away from me.
He kills two of them, giving me the time I need to steady myself. Werebeasts litter the ground around us, but now, we’re both wounded, and more enemies creep out of the forest. They’re layers deep. I don’t see an end to them, but grip my swords, still riding the burst of strength that turns me from scary into something so dangerous I don’t even recognize myself.
Pain pulses in my clawed shoulder. Hot blood drips down my back. I welcome all the terrifying thoughts of death and failure circling inside me, because they’re what will give me one more strike, one more kill, one more breath.
Without warning, I go on the offensive, my blades moving so fast it feels like they’re leading me instead of the other way around. I cut down a kidnapper. Another one comes. I dole out death like gold coins on Dragon’s Night, my vision and mind barely keeping up with my body. Instinct drives me, and I listen in a purely physical way, my thoughts wholly focused on the worst thing I can imagine—losing Fyrestar while magic might be too weak for him to come back to me.
I kill a pair of werewolves in a snap of movement, then see the original big werebear suddenly leap over his fallen bear comrade and come down hard on Fyrestar, pinning him to the ground.
My heart stops dead, and I lunge for them as the werebear’s teeth crash toward Fyrestar’s throat. Screaming, I slash through his muzzle before he can bite, drenching my phoenix in blood. The bear rears back, blood gushing down his face. Turning, he swipes at me but staggers. I duck and come back up with a jab that plants my blade straight into his heart. The resistance of the vital muscle against my steel is deeply satisfying.
“Fuck you and your fucking band of kidnappers,” I growl, yanking my blade out.
The lifelight leaves his eyes before he even hits the ground.
A weight suddenly slams into me from behind. I land on my stomach with a pained grunt near a slashed-up and bloody Fyrestar. Claws sink into my upper back, digging deep into muscle and hitting bone. Agony explodes through me. The claws rip downward from my shoulder blades to my waist, and I let out a ragged cry.
A huge paw flips me over. My head spins, white-hot pain erupting as a snow tiger steps on my arms, pinning me. The harsh ache in my clawed shoulder collides with the new, vicious throbbing in my back. Blood pours out of me, warming the ground. My arms feel crushed, my fingers numb. The weretiger cages me under his gigantic body, his hot breath in my face, and his lips curling back in a snarl.
That thunderous force inside me shuts down like a lid snapping closed on a box. Everything comes crashing back to normal speed, and I stare up at the weretiger—probably the last thing I’ll ever see.
“Idallia! No!” Fyrestar’s desperate screech triggers a fear in me that my own death can’t. He’ll blame himself for lifetimes.
Fangs flash above me, and I kick my legs upward as hard as I can. The weretiger jerks back with a howl instead of ripping into my throat. I ram his balls again just as Bale appears, spiraling tightly between two tree trunks and swooping low to reach me.
The weretiger whips his focus toward Bale as relief seeps out of me on a broken sound. Bale’s eyes blaze with amber fire. Shadows spill from his wings. Dusk becomes night as Bale opens his huge, firelit jaws and slams headfirst into the weretiger. He bites straight through ribs and spine. The weretiger breaks in half, his hot blood drenching me.
Bale tosses the parts aside with a flick of his head. I groan out a pained breath, turn over with difficulty, and crawl to Fyrestar. My whole back is blood-soaked, fiery torment. I start to shiver as the rest of the team converges on the werebeasts.
“Fyrestar?” He doesn’t answer. My eyes burn, but he doesn’t. He’s so dim, so mauled, so covered in blood. “Talk to me, love.” I bury my face in his feathers, tears streaming down my cheeks as all around us, the Elite Wing ends the battle in mere minutes.
“Idallia…”
My head snaps up. “Fyrestar?”
“I’m not burning into the next life yet.”
A harsh breath explodes from me. If anything, I cry more, shake harder. “You scared me,” I say so thickly it’s more sob than words.
“You scared me too.” A hint of Fyrestar’s natural glow returns to his feathers, shining through the vanes and across each soft barb. His accelerated healing seems to be working.
