Page 22 of Unicorn Shifter Academy
I noted that the beast named Khimaria didn’t have a horn. Maybe that meant she wasn’t from this realm. So, what was she doing here?
Other than trying to kill us all, of course.
The lion snarled, then opened its mouth. The air shimmered from the raw heat as the creature drew in a breath.
Angel had summoned one wall of water just a moment ago. She tried to do it again, but she couldn’t.
I closed my eyes, bracing myself for my short life to be over in a blaze of fire with my stomach still full of bubbles and poisoned Skittles.
RAZE
Damn female.
She’d actually wounded the legendary beast—a feat that proved to me that Bonny was special.
And that meant she needed to be protected—even the Elders wouldn’t be able to argue with that now, not after what I’d just witnessed.
We needed her alive.
For once, my duty aligned with the burning desire that scoured through my heart. Even if she had been worthless to the Elders, I knew it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. I couldn’t let anything happen to her.
She had to be protected.
At any cost.
Rushing in front of her, I summoned a wall of fire that rivaled Khimaira’s. It wouldn’t block all of the heat, but it would keep the female at my back alive.
“Raze!” she shouted as her fingers dug into the back of my robes.
I roared with pain as fire washed over me.
As a Unicorn Guardian of the Ruby House, I had been baptized by fire in my youth.
I knew what it felt like, but this was different.
Khimaira wasn’t from this realm.
She was a Fate Witch’s familiar, one of the lost gods and a danger to all the realms.
Because Fate Witches had all but died out, leaving powerful familiars like this one to go mad without its master.
It had been contained among the other trapped beasts of the ruins within the Enchanted Forest—so how had she gotten out?
Raw agony ripped me from my thoughts as my skin blistered, followed by the sharp sensation of claws raking across my abdomen.
I clasped one hand over my stomach and shot out the other, releasing a concentrated blast of Purity magic.
Khimaira’s claws were coated with deadly poison, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take for it to have an effect on me.
Based on the burn raging through my veins, it wouldn’t take long.
The lion flew backward from the cluster of glitter and rainbow crystals of my attack. Its massive body slammed into the trees and crashed through a section of forest. The dim light of dusk filtered in through the new opening, straining through the dense smoke as the ground around us burned.
My vision wavered as the beast’s poison seeped through my blood.
I wasn’t going to be awake for much longer.
I needed to change into my Unicorn Form.
