Page 34 of The Ice Prince's Fated Mate
“Why wouldn’t you have gotten out of the way when you couldn’t move me?”
I swallowed nervously as Dirk came closer, the intensity in his eyes practically glowing. This wasn’t the sort of emotion I had wanted to reinject between us. All I wanted was to talk with Dirk, not the Ice Prince. Now I had … this man, whom I both loathed and never wanted to be apart from, trying his best to wring a truth from me I desperately did not want to admit—to himorto myself.
“You know, I guess I would have. I just didn’t have the chance to before Caz came.”
It was a lie, but before I had the chance to tell if Dirk bought it or not, his head whipped around as something came charging through the snow and undergrowth at us.
Eighteen
Dirk
Snow immediately swirledup around Ella and me protectively. Everything took on a silver hue as my dragon surged to the surface, lending me its sight and what little it had managed to gather of its strength and power. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough. It had to be. Ella was depending on me.
The sound of branches snapping and snow compacting under heavy weight faded as the creature stopped just out of sight, somewhere on the far side of the huge fallen tree.
Then it screamed. The sound was horrible, a wailing, piercing cry that trailed off into echoes that reverberated off the mountainsides, pelting our ears with the terrible noise over and over.
“Dirk,” Ella whispered nervously, her feet shuffling in the snow.
“Stay behind me,” I growled, stepping back slowly, not wanting to be caught mid-stride when the beast finally did make its appearance. It was going to take everything I had in me to keep her safe. Only one monster in the Wilds of the Ice Kingdom made such a noise.
The massive and predatory beast leapt up onto the top of the tree trunk, its claws digging deep into the incredibly hard wood as if it were made of paper.
The chimera looked down at us with both heads, eyes glowing red with wicked intent. The lion’s jaws parted, and a low growl vibrated the very air, pressing itself on my chest and trying to force me into immobility. A second later the goat’s head protruding from its back let loose with another one of the cries that pierced the night, revealing two rows of wickedly sharp teeth.
Prowling forward on all four paws, the long, lizard-like forked tail whipped back and forth, barbs on the tips causing a whistling noise as the air rushed over and between their many sharp points.
I pulled my attention away from the tail as the chimera slowed its movements, dragging it from side to side in a mesmerizing motion meant to distract its prey. Though I didn’t fall for the routine, I couldn’t ignore the tail either. Those barbs would slice through dragon scale with ease, andthenthey would deliver the paralysis poison that coated them.
The beast was an incredibly formidable predator with all the physical weapons at its disposal, but the animal was only now deploying its main party trick.
“Where’d it go?” Ella hissed as the creature’s fur and skin changed color, blending itself in with the trunk as it crouched.
I backed us up another few steps, doing my best to keep the blurred beast in sight. Despite the way my dragon brightened the world around me as it rode copilot in my mind, it did nothing to help me see the chimera’s outline.
Thankfully, the beast lacked true intelligence, and I, most of the time, did not.
I gestured at the snow between me and the chimera, and it rose at my command, separating itself into individual flakes. With a focused thought, snow then rose all around us in a circle fifty feet wide.
As the monster slunk its way down from the tree, the snowflakes parted around it, providing me with an imperfect tracking system to use to defend against it.
“Aren’t you going to shift?” Ella whispered from over my shoulder.
“It would be on me before I finished. Chimerashatethe sight of dragons and attack them with a frenzy, even at the cost of themselves. This way it just wants to kill and eat us.”
She snorted. “Why didn’t you just say so? When you put it that way, it sounds so much better.”
“You really pick the worst times to try having a sense of humor,” I said, tensing as the outline of the chimera shrank. It was preparing to leap.
“A true comedian doesn’t let a simple thing like being brutally killed and eaten by a wild animal get in the way of a good punchline,” she responded. “Plus, it’s sometimes how I deal with absolute terror.”
The chimera hurled itself at me before I could come up with an appropriate retort.
Grunting, I clenched my left fist. The snowflakes in the air collapsed around the chimera, adhering to its fur and altering the trajectory of its leap so it landed three feet in front of me and not on me.
The overburdened and bewildered creature paused just long enough for me to jump forward and crack it across the tip of its snout with an ice-covered fist. The makeshift armor shatteredinto pieces on impact, but the chimera leapt away with a howl of pain.
“Yes!” Ella cried.
