Everything hurt. She’d skinned her legs and she didn’t even want to look at what the crows had done to her back half. But nothing mattered except Tory, laying in the dirt. She was struggling to get up, but her wing wasn’t working.
It wasn’t fair. They’d almost gotten away, and now the sky was filling with crows above them. They almost made it out together. Together.
Trina limped to Tory and stood over her sister as she looked up into the sky. She hated them. Hated everything about them.
She screamed a war cry. Fucking bring it. She wouldn’t ever make it out, but she was going to take down as many crows as she could. These stupid numbers. Stupid new members, gifted to Manning by Trina’s own council Crow Blooded father. He’d helped to kill his own daughters. Would he even take responsibility, or would he just see their deaths as a casualty of war with Krome and his Crew?
She’d never asked to fight in this battle, but here she was—kicking, biting, trying to keep the crows off her struggling sister.
Nuke. Nuke had fought for his family too, and everything had gone wrong. What an awful fate that they shared.
War with the Crow Blooded was chaos. They were an ever-moving cloud that dodged out of the way of her teeth and hooves, and snuck in to bleed her. Razor claws cutting into her skin. She ran on instinct, just trying to protect Tory. She was hurting. Slowing.
Desperate to keep the crows from getting to Tory, she lowered down and tucked her wings around herself and Tory’s body, put her head down and took the razors.
Caw! A crow screamed in her ear and Trina eased her eye open. The crow sat right beside her in the chaos, her eyes questioning Trina. Her blue eyes.
Ren?
A crow crashed into the side of her face, and Trina staggered to the side, splayed her legs and lifted her wing enough to let Ren under. The cawing of the crows above her was deafening, and the cuts were less. Trina looked skyward, and crows were fighting crows. There was something more. A massive eagle dove into the ball of war and three crows went sprawling, black feathers raining down on her.
The Crew was here…
So that meant…Nuke.
He was walking across the clearing, his muscles popping, his veins like cords of rope in his arms. His eyes were full of fire and they were trained on Manning, who was on the ground, backing away.
As long as she lived, Trina would never forget what happened next.
The air rippled with heat and singed her skin as Manning bunched his muscles and leapt into the air, changing to his crow as he went. Nuke exploded, and in the aftermath of that bomb a horrific black-scaled dragon ripped out of him and pushed off the earth so hard with his spiked claws, he left craters. He scooped Manning into his mouth and beat his enormous wings. The ground shattered where he had pushed off, the cracks reaching outward like spider web threads, and the wind he created with that one beat of his wings flattened everything and everyone in the clearing.
The crows still fighting dropped from the sky, and the long spike on the tip of one of his wings lowered straight toward Trina. She ducked, waiting for the pain that didn’t come.
And when she opened her eyes again, the dragon was fully loose and spewing his first stream of fire into the woods.
Amos and Krome changed into their human forms on either side of her.
“And there’s Armageddon,” Amos murmured, his wide eyes tracking the monster in the sky.
He was right. Nuke was huge, and unstoppable, covered in black scales that faded to a gunmetal gray on his belly. Sharp spikes adorned his cheeks, his spine, his long tail, and the tips of his tattered black wings. He was scarred, and missing scales. A row of impossibly sharp teeth was only visible for a moment before another stream of fire lit up the woods.
The roar that belched forth from the monster shook the ground and hurt Trina’s ears.
“He just ate one of the crows,” Amos said. “Like…he ate him.”
“We should go,” Krome murmured. “We should go right now.”
Yep. Trina stood up as best as she could and let Ren and Tory out from the canopy of her wings. Ren changed quick and picked up Tory, tucked her wings gently and cradled her against her chest. “The car,” she said in a panicked voice.
She had to cover them.
Trina couldn’t change back. She had to make sure they got away.
“Are you coming?” Ren yelled behind her as she bolted toward the woods behind Amos and Krome.
“She can’t,” Amos yelled. “She has to stop the dragon.”
And she would. People were going to see him. People were going to know he existed, and she needed Nuke to tuck away the monster.
The pain in her body was relentless, but she stretched her wings and tested them out. One beat of them, and her hooves lifted off the ground. She was unsteady, but she could still fly. Trina touched the cracked dirt and used it as a springboard to become airborne again, wincing as her battered wings stretched cuts she couldn’t heal fast enough. A glance below her, and a few of her feathers were floating back down towards the clearing. Crows were scattering, not so worried about her when there was a dragon heading directly for the clearing and Manning’s house.
He burned it. God, he burned it, and the heat from that river of fire blistered her skin. Below her, she could see the car on the dirt road on the edge of Manning’s territory speeding toward the main road out of here. Good. Get Tory out of here. Please, let her wing heal.
The dragon was firing short bursts now, chasing crows and scorching them out of existence one-by-one. They were so small compared to him. His vision was very good, his hunting instincts unmatchable, and his aim with fire was like nothing she’d ever witnessed.
The woods were burning, and Nuke…her Nuke…had really come for her.
She pushed her wings and chased the dragon, who was pulling a wide circle, posting lines of fire as he went. He dove down and rolled in the ashes, coating his scales before he aimed for the sky again, trailing the smoke and remnants of the earth he’d scorched.
He was lethal, but there was a beauty about him as he reveled in the ash he was creating. He was destruction, and she’d never been more awed by a being in her entire existence.
There was a clicking sound in his throat before each flame he released, like a firestarter. The crows were gone, Manning’s house was in flames, and the woods were smoking from the dragon’s fire, but still, he searched. For what?
It wasn’t until he aimed in the direction his truck was traveling that she realized what he was doing. He wasn’t going to let anything out alive.
Did the monster remember every person who had been in the clearing?
He beat his wings and headed straight in the direction of the truck, and she took off. Beat her wings against the wind and used her speed to start catching up. He ticked his head toward her and roared, but the firestarter didn’t click. It was just a warning, perhaps.
She pushed harder, because he was following the road now. There were other cars beneath them, driving away in panic, and some were pulled over.
But the dragon was following the truck. Nuke’s truck.
A couple of clicks filled his throat. Shit.
Trina flew faster, pulled up beside his face and looked into his black, glossy eye with the silver pupil. No, Nuke. They’re yours to protect. Not to hurt.
They had to be going ninety below them, trying to get out of the line of Nuke’s sight.