Sadie

“Rasil,”

Navin choked out. “What have you done?”

“You think I didn’t know?”

Rasil crooned. I tried to take a step away, but Tadei grabbed me by the upper arm and yanked me to his side. The Onyx Wolf pack growled at my back, and I felt dozens of hungry, murderous eyes trained on me, ready to strike. “I knew. I knew from the very first second you looked at her that you loved her, that you wouldn’t do what you must. I came here the very next day to warn the King.”

“Raz,”

Navin whispered. “You’ve betrayed our people, our cause—”

“You betrayed our people with her,”

Rasil hissed. “I am keeping us safe. Our songs were meant to be sung, Navin. You were always too cowardly to see it.”

“Your Majesty,”

Navin implored the King. “Whatever allegiance he promises to you, his goal is to exterminate Wolfkind—”

Rasil whirled to Luo and bowed deeply. “Your Majesty, his lies are just as I warned you. We live to serve our kings, our Gods,”

he said, lifting a finger and pointing it accusatorially at me. “ Rauxtide is not only a defector of the Silver Wolf pack, she is also a skin chaser.” He held the vase aloft to the room. “And Navin Mourad is trying to steal something very precious from you.”

“You think you can fool the Onyx Wolves?”

King Luo seethed at me and Navin. “Bring me the brand.” From the forges burning beyond the doorway, one of the guards pulled a hot metal poker, the end shaped into a paw print.

“No!”

Navin screamed as two guards grabbed him by either arm. He thrashed against their grip, headbutting one before the other landed a right hook square to Navin’s jaw and he dropped to his knees. “!”

I gave Navin one last look, knowing it might be the last time I locked eyes with him, and he nodded back. “I’ll find you in the next life, love,”

he whispered. “Listen for my song.”

I kept that smile plastered on my face as I turned back to Tadei. “Let’s at least go out singing,”

I said to no one but Navin.

“Go ahead,”

Tadei murmured to me, dropping his mouth to my ear in a sinister curl. “Try to shift like that and see what happens.”

He kicked me to my knees beside Navin and I let out a deep, mocking laugh. Tadei’s eyes flared, darting between me and Navin with sudden alarm. Maybe he expected tears or pleading, but certainly not laughter.

Tadei’s hands balled into fists. “What’s so funny?”

I watched his face fall as I yanked, ripping the silver rope free from behind my back. “My hands were never bound.”

In a single breath, I shifted.

A cacophony of sound exploded through the room as my glorious Wolf form ripped my dress and I dropped onto all fours. I snapped out at Tadei’s leg, and my teeth managed to sink into his flesh before he screamed and shifted on instinct.

From behind me, I was vaguely aware of Navin breaking free from the guards and charging toward Rasil. But the crowd seemed to shift in unison, prepared to die to save their King. The room turned into a sea of obsidian fur, tatters of shredding clothing being tossed up into the air and jewelry thunking to the ground.

I spotted Maez rushing through an open doorway and barreling into the crowd. She battled a dozen Wolves from every angle, her silver fur already coated in blood. Tadei was pushed backward, the pack moving in front of him to protect their prince. I drove into the nearest Wolf’s side, flipping them onto their back and tearing out their throat with my teeth. Quick, efficient, merciless. I needed to take down as many as I could as quickly as possible if we were to somehow make it out of here alive. Blood misted the air as the Wolves around me snapped and snarled. One took a chunk out of my side, and I yowled as another’s teeth sunk into my tail, dragging me backward.

So much black fur and blood surrounded me, I couldn’t see. Pain stabbed through me in a million different directions, and I wondered if I was being pulled apart right there on the floor. How many sets of teeth were digging into me? How many had I taken down first? There were too many of them now. There would be no stopping the onslaught of biting and shredding teeth. I let out a mournful howl, thinking of Navin and Maez and how far we’d come on this quest only to fail. Would the others even know how we died?

A sharp crack sounded as brilliant green lightning flashed above me. Suddenly Wolves were being ripped off me by sharpened gold talons. I gasped as I stared up into the bloodstained, chewing mouth of a flying winged creature. It had golden leathery wings, a body of scaled glittering burgundy, and dual lines of spiked ventral scales that ran from its head to the tip of its tail like jagged teeth.

A dragon.

It batted its wings in annoyance, its wingspan so large it could barely fit in the room. Its dark amber eyes narrowed at me before moving beyond me to snatch up its next Onyx Wolf meal.

Gore flew across my face as the monster crunched its next victim in two. Bile burned up my throat and I rolled just in time to vomit. Blood and stomach acid splattered back at me.

I rose up on my haunches, so coated in blood and viscera that I couldn’t see the silver of my fur. I looked up to find Navin, vase clutched in his hand, a guttural war song escaping his lips. His eyes were transfixed on the dragon as he controlled it with his song. Blood trailed from his temple and nose, his clothes shredded and bloody, his muscles straining with the concentration it took to command the beast. Eerie green clouds hung in the air around him—dark magic waiting to find its host.

The dragon easily tore through the Onyx Wolf crowd, devouring them in a horrific circle of sawlike, shredding teeth. I searched the carnage for Rasil’s cream-colored robes and spotted just the faintest trail of fabric as he fled out the side hallway. Tadei hustled out the door behind him along with a handful of guards. A fiery rage blossomed within me, and I was about to charge after him when I heard Maez’s howl.

I turned toward Maez at the other end of the room, who limped as she still battled off three more Wolves.

I ran, my limbs screaming at me with each movement as I bowled the Wolf biting her back over and off her. My teeth sunk into the Wolf’s belly, the coppery tang of blood coating my tongue as I ripped out their innards, their keening screams filling the air. I turned back to Maez, blood dripping from my maw, but Maez’s Wolf eyes were now hooked on something behind me.

I whirled to the sight and found Navin kneeling with a dagger to his throat. King Luo stood there, his robes hanging loosely around him, his skin speckled with blood.

I shifted back into my human form on instinct, my howl morphing into a cry as my knees cracked into the hard tiles slick with blood. “Don’t!”

“Call off your beast,”

Luo snarled. Navin muttered five words, the low hypnotic song making the dragon halt mid-strike. “Good.”

Luo pried the vase from Navin’s grip. Maez shifted forms beside me, her body so covered head to toe in the carnage of blood and fur that I couldn’t see her skin.

“I will be taking this vase,”

Luo said. “And your life, human, for what you’ve done to my pack.”

“Luo, stop!”

I screamed and the King looked up at me with a curl of his lip.

“Or what, little skin chaser?”

he bellowed. “What will you do without your Songkeeper and your beasts? Your pathetic Queen’s court will belong to Damrienn soon enough. And Taigos will be mine. We’ve given you females too much power for too long.”

“You will never have Olmdere,” I hissed.

The remainder of the pack converged around us, and my stomach dropped. We’d killed so many between us and the dragon, but it wasn’t enough to destroy the entire pack, and now with the beast called off, we didn’t stand a chance.

“And who is there to protect Olmdere?”

Luo balked. “I had a pigeon arrive just this morning, telling me of how well that little meeting in the Stormcrest Ranges went.” Luo’s eyes darkened and he sneered as he turned his gaze to Maez. “Your mate, the Crimson Princess, is already on her way home with her new betrothed, Prince Evres.”

“No.”

Maez’s voice was the ghost of a whisper. “I heard her calling to me in my mind, but . . . that . . . that can’t be.”

“She’s gone,”

Luo said with smug satisfaction.

“That can’t be!”

Maez barked, her voice filled with panic.

“She’s already across the Damrienn border,”

Luo said with a laugh. “I know she’ll take a strong hand to break in, but I’m sure Evres is up to the task.”

“No!”

Maez screamed, the sound piercing through the space. Her hands flew skyward. “I will kill you all for this!” she roared and lightning flashed again.

I watched in horror as the green cloud above Navin’s head flew across the room, shoving its magical smoke down Maez’s throat.

“Maez, stop!”

I shouted, but my voice was drowned out over the howling wind.

When Maez opened her eyes again, they were an eerie, violent green. A wicked smile stretched across her lips, and I could see the dark magic churning beneath her skin.

She was the sorceress conjuring the dragon had made.