Page 85 of Quiet Burn

Then we’ll have to face the music with the administration.

Protector

Slash

In the many years we’ve known one another, I have never seen Jasper so out of control without his father present. I have tried my usual basic tricks to coax him back to sense, but they are not working. It is time for more drastic measures to prevent him from getting banned from campus. Lucian will have a difficult time convincing the King, but if enough demons are harmed, my father will advise him that thinning the ranks that should fill our armies is ill-advised. The King will do what he always does—pretend he thought of the plan, take credit, and boast as he drags my brother home to be punished in ways that are best left unsaid.

I will not allow that to happen.

Holding on his scales tightly, I push forward up the enormous dragon until I reach its head. It takes a moment to get close enough to reach his tympanum, but once I do, I speak loudly. “Jasper, you have to get control of the dragonandthe demon. You’re flying over the stadium in a rage, and you haven’t destroyed anythingyet. Now is the time to grab the reins before their fury is not able to be contained. Your caliphate needs you.”

The glass-shattering roar isn’t comforting, so I take a deep breath. I cannot shift to my animal in this environment, but fuck, do I want to bite the living shit out of this stubborn asshole. Harnessing my demon tightly, I let the shark out just enough to shift my features so I have a frightening visage and rows of sharp teeth to make my point. This time, I don’t use my words—no, I dart forward and bite into the dragon’s flesh hard.

My teeth are sharper when I mix the two, so I’m able to catch some of the tender skin between his scales and that makes him roar and buck in pain. Pulling back with his black blood on my lips, I shot again. “Get your shit together, Prince! You are not your father. The danger you’re reacting to is being handled by our brothers. We need you to calm down so you can stay here to lead.”

There’s a pause in his frantic attempts to shake me off, and I have to hold back a relieved sound. It means somewhere in there, Jasper is hearing my words. I can only hope he’s working to soothe his wrathful sides slowly so he doesn’t shift abruptly and send us tumbling to the earth like rocks. My hands grip his hide hard, waiting to see what he will do next.

Please let it be something not involving fire and brimstone.

I’m able to breathe again when the huge serpent tosses its head with a snort, making an annoyed growling sound. My old friend is getting through to his animal and I have to capitalize on it. So I pat its horns lightly, then lean in to speak. “That’s it, Prince. Take us to the ground before you take full control back. We will find our brothers and ensure their safety together.”

That earns me another irritated snort, but the dragon turns about, then angles its wings back to descent. As we get closer to the grass of the arena, I note the red mist Anton and Orielcharged into subsiding slowly. There are bodies of the injured strewn about amongst unmoving ones that might be dead. I have no idea what the fuck happened here before I arrived, but the decimation is sobering. We got lucky that Jasper’s dragon couldn’t see the field of prone demons clearly until the Prince got him to back off.

“Bring us down over by the cloud of magic. I believe we will find them there.” Our descent speeds up and by the time we land with a ground shaking thud, I’m itching to find the rest of our caliphate. I can’t leave Jasper, though, so I hop off and face the beast. “It’s time. Come back so we can tend to the wounded and call for the medics.”

His dragon blinks at me with an expression I’m fairly certain is saying ‘fuck off,’ but I don’t relent until the enormous serpent fades to the form of the man I know. I allow my own visage to shift back, but I don’t go completely human just in case I need to defend my charge. We don’t know what’s lurking in the dissipating mist, so I’d rather be prepared than fail at my duty.

“Fuck,” Jasper pants as he puts his hands on his knees to get his bearings. “That was a rough one.”

I nod, trying to wait patiently for him to clear the animal and the demon out of his mind enough to follow me into the fray. “It was very close, old friend. You need more meditation.”

He gives me a dirty look, but I simply shrug. I’m not wrong, nor am I here to stroke his giant fucking ego. Being a general is, at times, about informing your leader of their inability to see a tactical error before it’s made. Jasper needs to work on harnessing his extremely powerful and dominant supernatural sides more often. If he does not, he will definitely turn into his dickhead father.

“Fine. I’ll… work on it.” His muttered assent is all I need, so I jerk my head at the disaster zone ahead.

“We need to find them. Can you handle it?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s move.”

By the timewe wade through the crowd of downed and actively fighting demons, I’m ready to rip something to pieces myself. I was keeping my distress harnessed to help get Jasper back to equilibrium, but my anger is rising. Darkstar orchestrated this mess, even if he didn’t predict the outlandish outcome correctly, and I want to make a slow fucking meal of him.

But I can’t and it chafes hard enough to earn him a permanent spot on my ‘to eat’ list in the future.

“There they are! I see the shrimp,” Jasper says and I’m surprised to hear the amount of relief in his voice.

My eyes follow the direction of his gesture, noting that the little demon is sitting upright. That is good; I’m not quite stable enough internally today to handle another trip to the doctor with him unconscious. Salem is standing off to the side in his bear shift, and Oriel is also perched high as the bird. They are likely healing from whatever injuries they had, so my eyes flick to thegolden glow on the ground with a grunt. That’s Anton and he’d never be on the filthy ground unless?—

“Xerxes is injured,” Jasper growls. “There’s no other explanation.”

The fury roils inside of me, but I clamp down on it hard. It is not the time for bleeding my anger—no, we must take control of this mess and get our brother to the doctor. “I will call for Doctor D if you alert the medics at the infirmary.”

Jasper’s jaw tightens, but he knows it’s his responsibility to get the clean-up crew and the medical staff here. “Make certain you find out who is injured and how badly so the Doctor is prepared.”

Leaving him to find his clothes and tech, I stomp over to our brothers. In my head, I’m reciting the dark alphabet backwards as I try to calm myself. My worry for Xerxes is high, but since Anton hasn’t gone nuclear, they are likely going to be okay. Salem and Oriel will be fine if they’ve retreated to their animal forms to heal. The real clawing at my gut is for the small guy sitting on the bench looking wrung out, even from here.

I need to make sure that the little demon is not more injured than he seems from here; it’s essential.

---