Page 43 of All's Fair in Lion and War
Tor mirrored the sound.
Kann stopped a little further up the hill and looked back to both of them. The same vibrating half-purr-half-growl emanated from the younger lion’s big barreled chest.
Saul’s mouth widened. His fangs grew longer. He could taste the other lions in the air.
A group of Rivian’s warriors were close and they were on the move.
Saul exploded from his statue-like stance, racing through the trees and up the powder-covered mountainside in enormous ground-eating strides that would make a snow machine jealous.
Kann and Tor were right behind him and the dragon males kept up best they could in their human forms. None of them dared to shift yet. Not until they could be sure not to injure a hostage.
An angry roar on Saul’s left made him leap to the right, narrowly evading an excellently swiped claw.
The lion male gnashed his teeth and leaped at Saul again, but this time he was knocked out of his flight path by a flash of orange and black.
Tor hit the lion like an avalanche snapping trees on it’s way down Denali’s slopes.
Another snarl from ahead. Then another. He and Kann were surrounded a moment later.
They closed the circle on the two of them like the forest wasn’t full of vengeful dragons. Like they hadn’t even noticed that the three of them weren’t alone.
He scanned the area for a hostage. Kann had said all the pods had them, but he couldn’t see anything. Smell anything.
Kann’s head was methodically moving side to side in a wide arc to cover the brush around them.
Where were the rest?
They were both thinking it.
Tor bounded through the ring of advancing Ka’Lagh lions and turned to face them, guarding their backs. His tiger was large, but not as big as a lion. He was at a disadvantage in this fight, but the brave idiot wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving them to fight alone.
Saul admired him for it, but Dawn would kill him if he died out here.
Dawn would kill them all if they let him die out here.
He braced himself, crouching down, waiting for hundreds of pounds of flesh and bone and claws and fangs to collide. Multiple shots rang out.
Two of the advancing lions collapsed into red-stained snow. The other two shifted into men, making themselves a smaller target and shouted into the trees.
Branches snapped and snow crunched.
Saul followed the movement and saw the rest of the group these four lions had broken off from. There were three more males deep in a thicket of underbrush and one of them was carrying something over his shoulder. Something large enough to be a person.
He shifted out of his beast long enough to point to the trees hiding the other part of the group. “Follow them!” His words bellowed out into the descending darkness. Then he with the ease of a breath shifted back and leapt at one of the closest remaining Ka’Lagh males.
The other male didn’t shift back fast enough. Saul’s weight crushed the man into the snow. His massive jaws tore the lion’s throat from his neck. There was a gush of blood and then he went limp under his paws.
Saul looked up, straight into Kann’s gaze. The other lion’s mouth and fangs were bloodstained. He glanced to the right and then to the left, looking and breathing in the mixing scents. Where had Tor gone?
Damned tiger.
He roared at the movement in the trees. The dragon males were closing in. The Ka’Lagh were still trying to make it past, but they didn’t realize how many dragons they were up against. Several more shots cracked and popped and bodiesthunkedheavily into the snow.
He heard shouting.
Then Tor’s stripes showed in a quick patch of moonlight.
Saul leapt in that direction, followed by Kann. But by the time they got to the other side of the underbrush, the rest of the Ka’lagh were dead and a shivering woman lay in a snowdrift, her arms wrenched behind her back at an angle that made Saul’s stomach heave. They’d used the same bindings on Lorelei to prevent her from shifting or fighting.
