Page 95 of His Greatest Treasure

I looked out through the hole and saw the army running and, yes, as I watched they seemed to slow down. A couple of them stumbled as their feetcaught in shrubs and vines, but the plants couldn’t grow fast enough to stop them.

The wait was awful.

I felt so helpless, standing there. All I could do was watch as they got nearer and nearer.

Alfie began to move from foot to foot and I looked up at him. I raised my eyebrows, asking him silently whether he was okay.

He leaned down and whispered, “I don’t know how to make my dragon come out.”

I leaned into him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “It’ll come out when it needs to, my darling. You just wait there. I’m going to do something, okay?”

He nodded and I placed a kiss on his cheek.

I had no idea why I was so calm. Perhaps it was because I got the impression that, if I panicked, Alfie would panic. I needed to be calm or it would set all of us off in some kind of chain reaction.

I walked closer to the gap in the boundary and I saw the mass of people struggling towards us. Reaching down into my wick, I gathered my power to me. I rarely created fire that wasn’t a part of myself, but I didn’t want to leave the territory to burn among the enemy. Besides, I knew that thehag had a pincer spell that could grab my wick and I wasn’t prepared to risk that again.

As I drew my power to me, I realised it was easier than it had ever been before. Mating Alfie had somehow made me more… solid. I was aware of my body in a way I never had.

My wick burned and I simply drew my fire up from there and launched it into the mass of bodies running towards us.

My aim was off, since I’d never done this before. But I still managed to engulf two of the people there with flames. One was a lion shifter who yowled and rolled about on his back as my flames scorched his mane.

I’d thought maybe I could hold them back if I created a wall of flame, but I didn’t and the mass of bodies charged towards us. The flickering fear that I’d been pushing aside burned hotter. If they got inside, they’d kill us all. They’d kill my Alfie.

I backed away from the gap in the defences, and I didn’t have any idea of what to do next.

Alfie snarled and surged forward. His dragon was out and he streaked past me to the gap, filling it with his body. He snapped and slashed at the first few people who arrived to attack.

The dragon shifter dropped out of the sky and almost landed on Alfie, but Regina shot through the air and knocked into it. They crashed into the ground and rolled together, biting and clawing.

Alfie screeched and went to attack the dragon who was hurting his mother, and I realised with sudden, awful clarity, that we couldn’t win. We were just too inexperienced.

If even one of us had the experience of being in a battle, we might stand a chance. None of us did. The dragons around me were moving off instinct, and their instinct was to protect their family. Alfie had pushed himself completely through the gap in the defences in order to get to his mother, but that meant he was now surrounded.

My own instinct flared up. I burned into my flame form and flung fire at the group. I could burn any of them, since Alfie and Silvia were both in their dragon forms and wouldn’t be hurt. I flung fire and there were screams, but there were just too many of them.

Three of them, including the biggest bear shifter I’d ever seen in my life, and the ogre were already inside our territory. They were so big,and they loomed over me.

I was burning, which meant it was only the hag who could capture me. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be hurt, if they hit my wick with something. And outside the territory, Alfie was roaring with pain.

I wanted to fling myself at him, burn along his back to protect him, but the ogre charged straight at Isabella, and even though she shifted, he swung a club with spikes on and it slashed through her shoulder before she could dodge out of the way.

More were pouring through the gap.

Instead of doing what I wanted to do, I stepped back. It was a struggle to make myself think, especially in this form, but I did.

We were losing because none of us were warriors.

But I knew where we had a warrior.

It took me another thirty seconds to convince my body to move, but I did. I grew large, as big as I could get, and streaked away across the open territory, covering the ground as quickly as I could with my long, burning strides.

In my flame form, I could sense the fire inside him clearly, and it didn’t take me long at all to find Glimmer. He was standing with the other man I’dheard before, and they were looking down at a mess of bodies.

When he saw me, he slipped into a fighting stance, as did the man he was with.

They both watched me with suspicious eyes.

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