CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Selena, amazing and brilliant Selena, pulls me from the deathsleep coma, her magic sizzling through me with warmth and life.

Her gasped instructions spur me up and across the ground, the orange cloud of deathsleep thinning with every step.

We’re going to make it!

Yet as soon as I start to feel hope, it crumbles to ashes, her gasp of pain the loudest sound in the world. Along with it comes the leaden heaviness of deathsleep, seeping back into suddenly floundering muscles, painting the edges of my vision black.

I hold her to me as my knees hit the ground, and she makes another choked cry of pain. The sluagh ignores me to attack her, her beautiful soul shining like a beacon to its dark hunger.

No. Fuck no!

I won’t let her become its next victim. I can’t ! Losing Selena will break me. There’ll be nothing left. And if I’m to be a dead man, then I’ll die saving her.

Fighting off the lethargy stealing through my muscles by force of will alone, I cradle Selena to my chest with one arm and lurch back up to standing. Three more staggering steps, and I’m free of the sickeningly sweet smell of the deathsleep herb.

Selena stirs, her magic rushing through me in a wave of energy.

I lay her down on the mossy ground and stand over her, unsheathing my sword so quickly it seems to leap into my hand.

Lifting my sword overhead, I point the tip toward the ground and whirl it around my body in a move meant to block attacks from all sides, the sharp moon steel blade flashing in the sun.

The sluagh shrieks as a flock, individual birds diving in slaps of beating wings. None get through.

None fall to my blade, either. This defensive move is protective, but its very nature means I can’t target the birds. We’re stuck in a stalemate, and unless Dash wakes and joins the fight, it’s a stalemate I could lose. Orcs have amazing endurance, and years of warrior training have made mine better than most, but even I have limits, especially since the lingering effects of the deathsleep coma still plague me.

“Sturrm,” Selena says, and never have I been so glad to hear a sound in my life!

“Stay down,” I blurt. “The sluagh wants you for your magical power, and you’ve already been hit. Or are you able to heal what they’re doing to you?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “I mean, I can make the cuts go away, but the other thing they’re doing to me is something I can’t fix.”

Fuck. I hoped she’d be immune to their soul sucking, just as she’s immune to the deathsleep.

“What can I do to help?” she asks.

“Can you heal me so that I can fight for longer?”

Her small hand presses to my calf, a jolt of healing energy racing through me, cutting away the sluggishness from the deathsleep.

Now that she uses her power, the flock goes into even more of a frenzy, filling the air around me with a tornado of flapping wings and flashing red beaks.

I need to capture one, but I have nothing to make a bag or net from.

But it’s only a matter of time before they turn to the far easier feast waiting for them. Dash remains still, caught in the net of the deathsleep coma. We need to move over there so she can wake him, but I don’t know how to tell her without calling the soul stealer’s attention to him.

My teeth grind. The unicorn may be a pain in my ass, and that mischievous pooka mouth of his is a constant threat due to the tales he can spin for Selena about being my moon bound bride. But he’s also carried us well and true. I cannot—will not—abandon him.

I shift, my calf bumping into Selena’s side. She jolts and frowns up at me, and I tip my head toward Dash and press my leg more firmly to her.

Understanding brightens her face, and she scoots across the ground a few inches. A burst of pride goes through me. She’s so fucking smart!

So slowly it feels like creeping, we inch toward the downed unicorn. But all our attempts at subtlety are for naught.

Even as the last of the deathsleep blows away on the wind, the sluagh turns its attentions to Dash, a black cloud of menace, diving for him.

“Run!” I yell, lowering my sword to a regular stance.

Selena leaps to her feet and darts toward Dash, me pounding alongside her.

My tusks snap at the air. We won’t make it. The first birds are already on him.

A shadow races across the ground, the roar of a dragon filling the air.

The sluagh halts its dive, wings beating hard as the flock fights to change direction, to escape. It rises into the sky. Soon it will be too high for me to reach, even with my sword. If it gets away, it keeps the pieces of Selena’s and Dash’s soul it’s already stolen.

The thought of her losing even the tiniest bit of her life and joy is horrific .

If I can trap a single bird, it will subdue the entire flock and return the stolen bits of soul to my friends. To Selena.

I call my magic to me, pulling on more of it than I’ve ever used. The effort burns along my nerves, but I don’t care. My free hand presses to the thigh of my pants, the only leather I have easy access to. With a pulse of power, they slide from my legs, making a huge bag more quickly than I’ve ever been able to get leather to move in my entire life.

Cock bobbing free for all to see, I leap, scooping a bird from the sky.

The entire flock goes still, hanging above us in a thundercloud of barely contained menace. If the bird I trapped gets free or dies, it will free the rest of the birds to be able to attack us again.

My feet hit the ground, making my cock leap again. I don’t even care as I meet Selena’s startled gaze. She’s safe. That’s all that matters.

A fireball whooshes through the air, incinerating the flock hanging overhead.

The leather of the bag I hold stretches to thinness as the final bird inside morphs into the sluagh’s true form. Skeletal hands burst through, splitting the surface, followed by a gray face filled with blank, white eyes and a gaping mouth, empty of the razor-sharp teeth it would have when strengthened by victims. But the dragon released all the stolen souls from its grasp when it ended the other birds, freeing them to find peace, leaving the soul stealer weakened.

A triumphant laugh bursts from me as I use my magic to make the leather wrap around it in tight bonds. Then I plunge my sword straight into its heart, bloodlust riding me hard.

The sluagh gives one final angry screech, then crumbles to gray ash, carried away by the wind.

“That was amazing!”

I turn to find Selena beaming at me. Then her eyes drop down, the heat in them spurring my erection to life. She licks her plump lips, and a million reasons thunder through my head about how I shouldn’t want her.

I take a step forward, ready to ignore them all.