Before she could anticipate it, I lept toward her, startling her.
As I hoped, she reacted.
Whirling towards the incoming threat, her arms extended, sending a stream of flames my way. It blasted against my chest, sputtering into nothing along my fur just as I landed before her.
Finally set free, her blue flames licked up her arms in seconds, engulfing her shoulders and extending onto her spine. A set of large, blazing wings burst from her back the next moment, forming feathers of pure fire and lifting her into the air… away from me, aka the danger.
Pretty pleased with myself, I grinned at her.
“You fucking asshole!” she panted.
The guys chuckled.
“I mean, the shoe fits.” I shrugged. “Wait. I don’t wear shoes as the Beast.”
“Don’t make fun of me, Hannes. I could have killed you!” Natalia snapped, so pissed off that her red eyes suddenly flashed blue.
“I’m mocking myself.” I waved to her, my obsidian claws glimmering in the sun. “Not to mention, that’s not possible.”
“Did you see that?”André asked through the shadows.
“Yeah,”I replied, still smiling at our mate while we engaged in some sort of silent duel with our gazes.
“Her eyes turned blue. Was that Star or her fire?”Dante’s question went unanswered because to be perfectly frank, I had no clue.
“Or Natasha…”Hope accompanied André’s guess but there was no way to tell.
Natalia’s glower fell to my chest, and she swallowed, trying to mask her relief at seeing my fur unharmed.
“It’s okay. You can’t hurt me,” I assured, which served to piss her off even more. Never mind that she was still flying, and she hadn’t even noticed.
“If I wanted, I could kick your ass from here all the way back to New York.”
“Well,” I scratched my head, “you could try.”
Her hands fisted, and my smile grew dangerous.
“Perhaps I should mention that out of the four of us, Hannes is the only one fully aware and in control of his power since he was a child,” Dante gently warned our mate, knowing what was coming. “He grew up training with his father, the king—an Iron Knight—and a literal army of Wolf Shifter knights. Hannes could easily?—”
Natalia’s furious gaze snapped to Dante, and her wings lifted her higher in the sky, seeming to poise her to attack him.
“Never mind.” He lifted both hands in surrender.
“Nothing to worry,Meine Prinzessin.I could never hurt a woman.”
That did it.
“I’m a Vampiress!” Her war cry reverberated through the forest as she lunged for me.
“I thought you were supposed to be the temperamental one?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle with Starlight’s jest as I easily leaned out of the way, watching Natalia’s flaming orb pass by me. Her attack crashed into the cluster of giant pine trees behind us, and our mate’s entire form froze when she realized the destruction that would follow.
Blue fire exploded out of the orb, spreading mercilessly up the trunks and down to the grass patches underneath the trees at an unreasonable speed.
“Stop!”Starlight yelped.“You’re destroying our forest. Our home!”
“Don’t worry, mate. Everything will be fine.”The roughness of my wolf voice was meant to calm Starlight. This forest was unlike any other.
