He overshoots and falls past me, falling to the ground with athud.
“That was also pretty stupid, too—oomph!” The air is knocked out of my lungs when the shifter I stabbed tackles me. “And here I thought I killed you!”
I swing my fist into the shifter’s face. He grunts, but manages to stay on top of me. His meaty hands clamp around my throat, his angry, beet-red face inches from mine. Spittle hissing out between a mouth full of straight white teeth.
“You killed my friends!,” the shifter snarls.
“And I hope I kill more,” I choke out, grinning wide even as I struggle to breathe.
The shifter roars. He pushes further from me so he can put his whole weight into choking me out.
Giving me easy access to the dagger still sticking from his stomach.
I grab hold of the slick handle and wrench it free, only to stab it back in again and again and again. The shifter above me is screaming as his insides become outsides.
When his hold slackens, I throw him off and jump up—facing the tattooed shifter. His clawed fingers squeezed around Thomas’s bobbing neck.
“This all could’ve been avoided, Ketill,” the leader gasps out through a cut-open mouth and broken nose.
Rage cracks down my middle, exploding out of me as I snarl between my fangs, “If youhurthim, I WILL FUCKING END YOU!”
His hold tightens on my soulmate. “All I wanted was the damn egg. Butyouwouldn’t fucking quit!”
I glance at Thomas.
His chin is high even as he shakes, arms wrapped around the satchel carrying the dragon egg that started all this mess, but brought us together. And in the split second I take in my intelligent, funny and horribly brave soulmate, and my heart begins to crack when I realise Thomas is trying to protect the thing.
But I won’t allow Thomas’s life to end for a fucking egg.
“Take it,” I growl. “Let him go and take it.”
Thomas’s arms wrap tighter, and I shake my head once at him. Imploring my mate not to risk his wonderful life for this.
Twenty-eight minutes, or hours, or years, centuries,aeons, and it’d never be enough time.
His chin only juts up higher, and the cracks in my heart deepen.
“Oh, I will. But you fucked me over, Ketill, and I lost people because of it. So I’m going to take the fucking egg. Then, before I rip your throat out, I’m going to make you watch me kill your little toy.”
I surge forward, jerking to a stop when his arm tightens, and Thomas shakes harder. “My brothers will hunt you down! My fucking father. The whole Haraldsson vampire family! Do. Not. Hurt. Him!”
Real fear flashes in the shifter’s eyes before it’s hidden.
Only Thomas’s brother Kai has an idea where we are. But this fucker doesn’t need to know that. “They all know where I am, and they’ll come for you. So take the dragon egg and give me back the boy.”
Our eyes lock. Both our faces full of hate and rage. I will save Thomas at any cost, and the shifter must see that desperate, near-feral need in me. It doesn’t matter if he wants revenge; he wants to live more.
The muscles in the shifter’s arm begin to loosen.
Then he lets out a pained grunt as Thomas’s foot comes down hard on the shifter’s boot. The back of his head knocks into the shifter’s chin, and my amazing soulmate whirls out of the shifter’s hold and away from his claws.
“Back off!” Thomas shouts. “Or…o-or…”
“You’ll what? Smash the egg?” The shifter snarls, spitting a glob of blood.
Thomas won’t.
I can see it plain as day, as does the shifter. So when Thomas falters and hugs the egg tighter, the tattooed shifter rushes for him. My soulmate. My everything.
