Page 36 of Scaled Hearts

I need to warn Angurus and have him fly Kara out of here. Maybe he could take her back to his island. They could live there peacefully without the threat of orcs coming for either of them.

I turn to shout for them at the doorway, when a sharp pain radiates along my arm. I gasp, and turn back to grab at it. Blood trickles through my fingers. The cut from Chet’s knife is deep and hurts more than I imagined it would.

I scream and fall back when his hand arches back around to get me in the face.

Right as my hip hits the ground, I hear Angurus’ roar of fury.

“What have you done!”

I can’t tell if he’s yelling at me or the men surrounding me, but before I can even suck in my next lungful of air, he batters through them with his strong body.

Most of them go flying, tumbling to the ground a few yards away from us. I try to tuck my knees to my chest in order to push myself up to sit but it’s hard with how bad my arm hurts while also trying to keep pressure on it to slow down the bleeding.

Angurus rips through the men one by one. Blood soaks the ground around him in a maroon sea that makes me sick to my stomach. A twisted laugh leaves his lips when he grabs one of the men by the top of their head and flexes his fingers together until the man’s head explodes.

He does this all so effortlessly that it makes me wonder if I’m hallucinating.

I know that he has a temper to him and he can be downright aggressive, but this all seems unusually cruel.

Is this the same dragon that I’ve mated myself to?

I finally get up high enough off the ground to swing myself into a sitting position. I feel woozy from both the blood loss and the gore surrounding me. There are chunks of flesh and other kinds of human matter littering the ground that make it hard to focus on anything else.

A groan leaves my mouth.

“Come here.” Angurus growls out.

I look over to where he is and see that he’s pinned Chet down underneath him. The man screams and squirms under him, desperately trying to find a way to claw his way out of the situation he’s gotten himself into.

I watch with little emotion as Angurus fists a hand in his hair and yanks his head back. His other comes around to pry at his jaw, unhinging it wide enough that Chet groans in pain. Angurus sucks in a quick breath and breathes a densely packed fireball into the man’s mouth.

I wince, looking away quickly as the screams are drowned out by gurgling.

“Ugh…” I mumble.

I try to focus on the pain in my arm instead of the image of Chet’s face melting from the inside out. I can safely say that that is something that is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I hear Angurus walk over to me and crouch next to me.

“Let me see.”

His words are surprisingly soft and much warmer than I’m expecting. It makes me look up from where I’d been focusing on the blood drenched ground.

He takes my hand off of my arm and examines the cut running up the side of it.

“I truly hate humans.” he says and leaks a yellow glowing magic into my skin.

Immediate relief follows, making me sigh in relief.

Oh, that feels good.

“You’re all a bunch of mindless animals,” he continues.

I try my best to ignore the comments. I pretend that he isn’t lumping me in with whoever it is he’s talking about, but I have a feeling that if I ask, he’ll avoid my question with some kind of long-winded anecdote.

So I don't bother to.

As my arm heals, I let myself relax. I can’t believe Chet sold out my sister to the orcs. What a bastard. I’m going to have to somehow hide her so that they don’t come around to collect their debt while I’m gone searching for the Lotus.

“Are you both alright?” I hear Old Agatha say from her doorway.

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