Page 56 of Red and Her Dragons (Dirty Paranormal Fairytale Haremlan 4)

I hated the idea of one of my men being severely hurt. And I hoped with everything in me I could make it to him before it was too late. And I prayed to any deity that would listen to me that I wasn’t.

22

JAX

I wanted to rush to Bret. More so to snap at him for not waiting for the signal than to save him from his mistake. I should have known he would do something to mess things up. He couldn’t follow directions to save his soul. But before I could take a single step in his direction, the wolves and humans standing in front of me had looked toward the direction of the commotion, and found me.

I groaned and stretched my neck as far as I could to make myself look more menacing. Sadly, it didn’t work.

The wolves and humans lunged at me. Chaos erupted around the cabin.

Taking on an army of wolves and humans with enchanted weapons wasn’t my idea of a good time. Then again, there had been a lot of not-so-good times as of late. But this one was the worst. Especially since we were all separated, and the enemy had gotten the drop on us instead of the other way around.

As the saying went, the best plans always went astray. Except for this situation, it wasn’t a “suck it up and deal with it” scenario. This one had deadly consequences.

My foes came at me by the handfuls. But I wasn’t going to let them intimidate me. If they wanted to attack first. Fine. So be it. But they were going to find out exactly who they were dealing with.

I lowered myself to the ground, angled my head, and let out a deep, rumbling growl. Frost billowed from my snout. It was a warning to them what they were getting if they insisted on taking on an ice dragon.

They didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, they attacked me by the handfuls. Each round, the number of humans and wolves was different. And every time I took a few out with my claws, some with my tail, and others with my teeth. Somehow, they managed to get me just as much as I got them. I couldn’t tell how my brothers and Emily were doing from this angle, but I had a bad feeling it wasn’t much better than I was.

Especially for Marcus. I knew his roar anywhere, and it had sounded pained. My heart raced with the sound as worry for my friend and brother took my attention from the fight in front of me. I didn’t have time to break away and run to his aid, no matter how much I wanted to. Because it occurred to me that the army of wolves and humans had one particular goal in common for this fight. And the goal was separating us.

Well, it worked.

Six shifters and a witch, fighting side by side was more than even these numbers could handle. But barely. We would have had this war done shortly after it started. But we all had played right into their hands. And we were paying the price for such a dire mistake.

Likely with our lives.

But I wasn’t going to go down so easily. It was going to take a whole lot more than a few bumps and scrapes to take me out.

The latest of the waves was a group of four wolves and one human. The human held a weapon in his hand. A hunting knife if I saw correctly. I snorted at him. He could do some serious damage with that blade, but I wasn’t going to show him a lick of fear. He was beneath me. I was more powerful than he could ever hope to be, and his courage was only because he held a weapon that could actually cut through my scales. I was willing to be he didn’t have an iota of an idea enchanted weapons existed to take out dragons before joining this army of idiots.

Once I took care of this latest wave of attackers, I might be able to gain the upper hand. From there, I my goal was to increase the momentum and take out as many of their numbers as possible.

Then a howl cut through the air, signaling a retreat. The wolves turned tail and ran.

“Don’t you dare stop fighting!” Collin screamed. “The wolves were cowards!”

Oh good, I thought. He was exactly what we needed to deal with. A maniac leading a band of humans who had knowledge they shouldn’t have.

I growled in response to the sound of man’s voice, but the humans in front of me hesitated. They had a variety of weapons that I was sure would prove interesting if they tried to hit me with them. It didn’t seem possible for all of them to be enchanted. In the least, figuring out which ones weren’t enchanted would be somewhat entertaining.

Painful, but entertaining.

Nevertheless, I faced the humans and sucked in a deep breath. Ice filled my throat as I prepared to launch my magic onto my foes. I wondered if human popsicles were in Collin’s great and terrible plan.

Probably not.

Still, I sought out the challenge and exhaled frost.

The humans ducked and dodged my attacks. Some ran away. The ones that didn’t, stood by and waited for their moment to attack. I didn’t want to follow them in every direction they went because I needed to be careful of where my ice magic hit. I wasn’t sure where my comrades were, and I didn’t want to accidentally freeze one of my friends or Emily.

I would never be able to forgive myself for that if she had gotten hurt because of me.

Footsteps pounded the ground, collecting around me. Instantly, sharp piercing pain entered my body in all directions. My wing was torn. I groaned out and swiped with my talons, hoping to decrease the amount of pain that entered my system.

But it was no use.

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