THRAX

by Bonnie Burrows

  I turned to Nick. "Who are the archers?"

  "They're a few dozen women from the community who are very skilled with shooting longbows. During several previous fights, they've been instrumental in helping us kill many of the wolves by shooting them with arrows, stunning them, so that we dragon shifters can go in for the kill."

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "Well, I'm good with a longbow, and I want to help. I'll even practice a lot over the next few days, so that I can become even-"

  "Absolutely not." Tightening his hold on my hand, Nick frowned. "Not a chance."

  "But if I can help, then why shouldn't I?"

  "Because being a Woman of the Star, being that Ezra's main objective for this fight is to capture you, you may as well walk out into the clearing with a bulls-eye in the middle of your forehead. So, no. Absolutely not happening. Your safety is my number one priority. I won't let you anywhere near the fight."

  "I actually agree with Nick." Damien unfolded his arms from his chest and leaned forward, resting them on the table, his gaze on me. "You should be kept safe at all times. You shouldn't be close to the fight even for a second."

  I sighed, giving up. "All right. But being that this is kind of all my fault that the wolves are attacking us, I just wish there was something I could do to help."

  Sighing himself, Nick began stroking the back of my hand with his thumb. "This is not your fault in any way, shape, or form. And as far as what you can do to help, just keeping yourself safe and secure here in the cabin while the fight is going on will be help enough. Though you personally won't have to do anything to keep yourself safe; I'll, of course, have guards posted outside the front door and at all ground-floor windows to prevent any wolves from getting in. That is, if they even make it past the clearing, which I highly doubt."

  The next few days dragged by. More plans were discussed and debated, though everything essentially remained the same. I fully resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be helping in the fight, though this frustrated and bothered me. I started having trouble sleeping at night. However, one good thing was that at least I got to spend my sleepless hours with Nick's strong arms around me, because I'd started spending every night in his bed.

  On Wednesday, the day before the expected fight, he and I ate dinner in the cabin-mansion's formal dining area, a spacious, oak-paneled room with a crystal chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling. But despite the fact that I'd cooked a delicious dinner for Nick and me to enjoy, I found that I just couldn't eat much of it and eventually set my fork down.

  He put his own fork down and reached for my hand, knitting his dark blond brows together. "I know you're probably looking forward to this fight being over as much as I am. And it will be...very soon. And then we can enjoy the last days of summer together, without a care in the...."

  He suddenly cocked his head to the side as if listening to something. I listened as well, and to my horror, hearing something like distant howls coming from outside.

  Not a moment later, a noise like the front door being banged open into the wall sounded from the front of the cabin. Nick flew up from his seat, throwing an arm over me protectively.

  Damien tore down a short hallway and into the dining room, then came to a stop with his hands on his knees, panting. "They must have changed their plans. The wolves are here right now."

  CHAPTER 4

  Everything seemed to happen in a blink. After holding me close for a few moments and then kissing me fiercely, Nick instructed me to go up to the third floor of the cabin, where I'd be safest, after I'd locked the front door behind him and Damien.

  "I'll have guards positioned around the house within minutes."

  He kissed me again and immediately left with Damien, who looked troubled, which just told me something, and not only about the shifter fight that was happening early. When Nick had wrapped me in his arms, Damien had turned his gaze to the side with something like an expression of pain flickering across his face.

  But there was no time to contemplate his unhappiness now. After locking the front door once he and Nick had left, I raced up to the third floor guest bedroom where I'd slept before moving on to Nick's own bed.

  I looked out the window, which faced the wide, maybe even quarter-mile-long, clearing behind the cabin, and saw that the shifter battle was already raging in the dim light of early evening. Large gray wolf shifters were howling and snapping at dragon shifters, who were swooping down from the sky, wings spread wide, breathing fire. I opened the window and the screen to get a better look, but the part of the clearing where the fight was taking place was still at least several hundred yards from the cabin, and I couldn't really differentiate one dragon from another. And I wanted to see Nick.

  Remembering that I'd seen a telescope in a library-type room on the third floor, I dashed down and got it. I returned to the guest room, and it turned out that was just what I needed.

  Peering through it with its stand set directly in front of the window, I could see every little detail of the distant fight in the clearing. I saw two dark brown dragons cornering a light gray wolf who was trying to deflect their jets of fire with a glowing bright white force field around his body. I saw two wolves take a dragon's tail between their teeth and yank him down to the ground, where they attacked him, biting him all over his body, hard enough to tear through his scales and draw blood. And soon, I saw Nick, a massive deep forest green dragon. It looked as if he was the biggest of them all. He positively dwarfed Ezra, who I recognized, and who was the largest wolf shifter by far.

  Nick landed and began engaging Ezra in a fight, sinking his claws into his back and then slamming him into the ground. He then raised one claw, likely preparing to stab Ezra in the heart and then in the eye, killing him. But before he could do so, Ezra was up. Dozens of wolf shifters suddenly surrounded him, snapping and lunging at Nick. Almost immediately, a smallish, dark blue dragon just a little ways away from Nick howled in pain, having been pinned to the ground by at least a half-dozen wolves who were biting his chest to shreds, and Nick went to help him after a quick backward glance at Ezra.

  Nick soon killed one of those attacking wolves by stabbing him in the heart and then through the eye after slamming him into the ground on his back. He then immediately killed three more wolves the same way. Damien, his dragon scales the same charcoal-gray as his eyes, finished off the remaining two. After, he glanced up at the house and then did a double-take, seeming to spot me in the third-floor window. As the battle continued on, he glanced up at the house frequently between kills, almost as if to make sure I was still watching his skill and power.

  Soon more wolves came charging out from the clearing, more dragons descended from the sky, and the battlefield became even more chaotic than it already had been. Archers took their positions on one side of the clearing and began firing arrows, stunning some of the wolves, allowing dragons to move in for the kill. Their firing also had the effect of making the battle creep maybe a hundred yards closer to the cabin as the wolves retreated from the onslaught of arrows. I felt a little pang of frustration that I couldn't help by contributing my own longbow skills to the fight. However, I knew Nick had been right that me coming down to the battlefield would be a terrible idea.

  Within a few minutes, the scene became so chaotic that it became really difficult to spot him. I couldn't see Ezra, either. But I suddenly spotted Nick, just a few hundred feet from the cabin. Wolf shifters, a dozen of them, had surrounded him and knocked him to the ground, and now one was standing on his chest, biting him right above his heart. I couldn't breathe for a moment.

  "Oh, God, no."

  It was then that I realized maybe I could contribute my longbow skills after all. My bow and arrows were still in the guest bedroom along with my backpack, and with trembling fingers, I snatched my bow up, strung in an arrow, and aimed. Nick and the wolves were so close to the cabin that I didn't even need the telescope anymore, despite the increasing dimness of approaching full-evening.

&nbs
p; But then I paused, realizing that if I missed my target, which was the wolf biting Nick, and hit Nick instead, I'd stun him, making it all too easy for the wolf to finish him off. But then the wolf sank his fangs into Nick's scaly green chest again, and I knew I had to act. I just couldn't allow myself to miss. After taking a deep, steadying breath, I fired my arrow, releasing it from the string with a loud twang. Not even a blink later, the wolf attacking Nick fell to the ground, stunned.

  "Oh, thank God. Yes."

  Nick didn't waste any time. After hauling himself up to his feet, he immediately went on a killing rampage, seemingly frenzied, taking out several of the wolves who'd surrounded him. I watched, silently cheering him on.

  But after a short while, one of the floorboards in the spacious room behind me creaked. I straightened up from looking out the window, my blood turning to frozen slush. I turned around slowly, praying to see one of the guards. But, to my horror, the person leaning against the door-frame, arms folded across his broad chest, wasn't a guard. It was Ezra.

  He stared at me, his dark eyes glinting in light from a dresser lamp nearby. "Well, hello, beautiful little Woman of the Star. So we meet again."

  I gasped. "How did you-"

  "Get past the guards and get in here? Easy. Last night I had a few of my spies dig a tunnel from the forest to the crawl space of this house. And from there, I just blasted right on up to the ground floor. Have to admit, all the damn stairs leading up to this third floor were kind of a pain, though." He straightened up from the door frame and took a step closer to me. "And now, for some fun. I was going to kidnap you and take you back to Howler's Creek, and I will, a little later, but right now, I'm actually going to mate with you right here in Nick's own home. This will give me the power I need to run back outside and finish him off for good. Then, I'll take you back to Howler's Creek. Because even though I'll already have all the increased power I need after mating with you only once, I don't think I'll mind having you as a permanent mate at all. Especially if you turn out to be a fighter and a screamer, like I think you will. Can't tell you how much that turns me on."

  Leering, he unfolded his arms from his muscular chest and began moving across the room toward me. I felt frozen in place, though my mind wasn't. I knew I had to do something. And suddenly, realizing two broken legs were preferable to getting raped and kidnapped, I just went for it. I turned and dove out the window, rolling forward in the air in some sort of awkward flip so that my feet would land first. The back of the cabin was lined with tall, dense shrubbery, and I knew if I landed in it, I most likely wouldn't die.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the impact. But the impact never came. Or, at least, it wasn't nearly as hard or as painful as I thought it would be. It really wasn't even painful at all.

  I opened my eyes and saw that I'd actually landed on a dragon's back. I'd been caught in mid-air. The dragon was a very dark charcoal-gray, nearly black. It was Damien.

  Overcome with sudden emotion, I pressed a palm against his scaly gray neck. "Thank you."

  He circled around the battle with me on his back while the other dragons clearly took the upper hand in the battle, killing dozens of wolves. Soon, the other wolves began retreating back into the dense forest in droves. Damien didn't land until every last one of them was gone.

  I hopped off his back, fighting back tears. "Damien, thank you. Ezra came up to the cabin from an underground tunnel, and he was going to rape me. You saved me from probably breaking my legs, or something even worse."

  Within a blink, he shifted into human form and took me in his arms. "I spotted you up in the window, and I was watching you the entire time, just making sure you were safe. And when I saw you jump...." He released me and pulled away a bit to look at my face. "I tore over here faster than I've probably ever flown in my entire life, with my heart in my throat, and....." Heaving a sigh, he wrapped me in his strong arms again. "I'm just so glad you're okay."

  I hugged him back, pressing my hands against the hard ridges of his back. "Thanks to you."

  The sound of someone clearing their throat nearby made me turn my face and look. Nick was standing just a few feet away.

  He frowned at Damien and me. "Are you all right, Daisy?"

  I pulled away from Damien, nodding. "I'm fine."

  I briefly told him everything that had happened, before suddenly remembering that Ezra could still be in the cabin. Nick, Damien, and a few other men charged off to go see,

  but it turned out that Ezra was long gone.

  However, even though Ezra hadn't been killed, everyone generally considered the fight to be a win for us. None of our shifters had been killed, and I hadn't been violated or kidnapped, of course. After all the wolf carcasses had been piled in a heap, awaiting burial in a pit that would be dug the next day, there was a celebration party in the great hall that lasted until well past midnight. Wine flowed freely, and people danced while Uncle Marshall and another man played guitar. Damien seemed to be smiling continuously during the party, and he glanced at me every so often.

  But Nick hardly smiled at all. Not even when we danced to a slow, romantic song after a trio of violinists took over for the guitar players.

  Later that night, in his bedroom, he slid into bed next to me and stared up at the ceiling instead of immediately taking me in his arms like he usually did. "So, Damien was your hero. And you had to save me with your arrow."

  Stunned at both his words and his tone, I rolled over and propped myself up on one elbow to look at him better. "Nick, don't be like this. Don't-"

  "I know." He ran his hands over his handsome, strong-jawed face. "I know, and I'm sorry. I'm acting like a child. I'm acting like an absolute ass. I should be thanking you for helping me with your arrow. You might have saved my life. And I am truly grateful. I should also just be grateful and glad that you're okay, and I am. I'm glad you're okay with every fiber of my being. But...." He ran his hands over his face again, sighing. "Damien was your hero. And he's in love with you; I can tell."

  Sighing myself, I took his hand. "Well, maybe he is in love with me. Or lust, or whatever. I guess I've noticed some little clues about all that. But I don't love him. And he's not my hero. He helped me, yes. He probably saved me from some broken legs, yes. And I'm very grateful to him. Yes. Of course. But he's not my hero. The man that I love is my hero. The man who's brave and strong enough to lead his people into battle and win is my hero. And that man is you."

  After looking into my eyes for a long moment, his own eyes shining in the light from a bedside table lamp, he finally took me in his strong arms, planting kisses all over my face. "I love you, Daisy. I've come to realize that I love you with all my heart. I never want to lose you."

  I gave him a little smile. "And you never will. Because I love you, too, Nick. With my whole heart. You're my hero, and I never want to lose you. So, promise me you'll stop thinking about Damien. Promise me you'll just focus on our happiness together."

  After a long moment, he agreed. "Yes, okay. I promise."

  I pressed my lips to his, hoping that was a promise he could keep.

  CHAPTER 5

  The moment I saw the wolf's glowing green eyes, I dropped my basket of apples, which overturned, spilling the apples all over the grass beneath the tree.

  Trying not to panic, with only partial success, I glanced at Katie, who stood with her back to me beneath another tree just to my left. "Katie...there's a wolf watching us in the hedge about thirty feet away. We're going to have to run."

  It was the third week of September, and we'd been picking bright red apples in one of the orchards on the outskirts of Crystal Falls. During the several weeks since Ezra and his wolf shifters had attacked the town, there had been a few more wolf attacks, though on a much smaller scale. They'd been coming one at a time, and sometimes in pairs. Nick assumed that they were all Ezra's most stealthy spies. And presumably, they were all on a mission to kidnap me because I was a Woman of the Star.

  However, Nick had said
it was safe for Katie and me to go to the orchard that day. He'd positioned his best men around the outskirts of town in a very wide ring. Though now, it was clear that one of the wolves had somehow managed to get past this ring of town guards. And now, this wolf was stepping out from the hedge.

  Katie whirled around to look at me, red curls bouncing. "Where? What are you-?"

  "Now! He's coming! Run!"

  Heart pounding, I turned to follow my own advice and immediately stumbled on an apple. Hearing loud snarling not too far behind me, I sprang up from my hands and knees, already beginning to run even while doing so, but immediately tripped again. On another apple.

  Katie was by my side in a flash, and she grabbed my arm and began trying to yank me up. "Hurry, Daisy! Up! He's coming!"

  "Run ahead! Go!" I got to my feet, trying to push her forward with my free hand. "Go!"

  She finally took off, and I did, too, without even a quick glance behind me, even though the loud snarling was getting nearer, sounding like it was mere feet away, even. I sprinted behind Katie for maybe twenty feet or so before stumbling again. Though this time it wasn't because of any fallen apples. Judging from the feel of sharp teeth just grazing the skin of my lower back, the wolf had taken the back of my long, red, cotton shirt between his mighty jaws.