Page 283 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

Plan aborted.

I sprinted toward the open field, stalks snapping as a slithering, muscular body thundered behind me. I glanced back—and immediately regretted it.

Yep. Giant snake. She’d turned into a giant fucking snake.

The fangs were half as long as I was.

Wide-eyed and frozen, I watched her coil.

“What now!?” G barked.

I just shook my head, reinforcing my shields—not that they’d help.

“Run!” I yelled, following my own damn advice. With a bit of distance, I paused to breathe—just in time to see her mouth yawning open and lunging.

I yelped, shifting through shadows, cursing myself for not drawing more. I solidified ten yards to the right just as her jaws hit the earth. The impact shook the ground, sending me stumbling.

She reared back, twisting. An endless coil of glistening black scales churned up dirt, those void-black eyes locked on mine. Decay spread outward, devouring the field.

We were so dead.

I tried to jump—slammed into a shield or ward—and kept running. Reyna’s shadow birds dive-bombed, their talons swiping for her eyes, but even they wouldn’t touch her. Death pulsed outward, blade by blade.

I sprinted with everything I had, a sob breaking loose as an enormous shadow swallowed the sun.

I braced a beat before a wall slammed into me. A deafening snap rang through my body like a death knell, my ribs protesting the impact.

Then I was rising. Up, up, up.

The ground dropped away beneath me, and the horror below sharpened.

I twisted in the arms that held me—and found myself staring into livid citrine eyes.

Cyrus

“What the fuck was that thing?” I bellowed, red clouding my vision as my arms locked around her too-small body. Way too fucking close. I wasn’t sure whether to thank Lonan or knock him out next time I saw him. Thanks for the heads-up, but what was with the last-minute interference?

“What the fuck are those!?” she shouted back as I descended and deposited her on the ground.

“Poe really said go big or go home,” I muttered, flinching as she jerked out of my hold and spun to face me. Her wide jade eyes scraped over the massive, thirteen-foot gold wings now stretching from my ink.

“You have actual wings,” she gasped, the hazel-gold in her irises shimmering. “You can fucking fly!?”

“We can gush about it later—how do we kill that thing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Fuck that. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That’s what I’m avoiding.”

“I’m not leaving them.”

“There’s a thirty-foot fanged monster devouring the ground and you expect me to let you go back!?”

“It’s cute you think ‘let me’ is in your vocabulary.”