Page 133 of Jay's Silence

A demon sunk its claws into my flank, only to be pulled off by a scale-covered water dragon. I couldn’t get distracted. With Gorm dead, everything else would be kindling for my flames. We formed up around our battling mate and waited for our opportunity.

Wiggles threw one of her knives and then the other at Gorm’s face. Clearly not expecting a physical attack after all her magic, one of the knives nicked his cheek while the other bounced harmlessly off his forehead. Jay flipped backward, giving us room to bellow.

Power and adrenaline pumped through me. Fire streamed out of my mouth, joining my brothers and turning into a white ball of soul-destroying righteous energy. Gorm screamed. Black smoke churned and rose off his burning body, but he still stood. My lungs squeezed. I needed to breathe, but I couldn’t stop. I would not be the first of my brothers to drop.

Suddenly, Gorm exploded into an oily black ooze that mixed with the fluorescent-green I now knew would eat through my scales. His essence splashed onto us and coated my mate, standing just out of range of our flames.

She hadn’t run, not that I honestly expected her to, but she could have at least taken cover behind one of us. Fear froze me in place as I waited for my pain and her screams. But nothing came.

Wiggles ran her hands through the oil and let out a bitter laugh. “I’m still protected, Gorm.”

Something crawled along my scales. I lifted my front leg and found the oil moving, almost bubbling with glee, as it fruitlessly searched for a way into me. Just the feel of it made my scales crawl, and I shook like a dog.

Pain stabbed into my side and stopped my futile shaking. The pain doubled, and I turned to find one of the undead dragon’s tail spikes buried in my side. It charged me, tearing its spike free and tackling me like we were fecking humans.

The oil on me bubbled before rushing from my scales onto the undead dragon. It rolled off of me and froze. More oil whipped past me, only to stick onto the unnatural black scales of the undead dragon and slurp between them. The dragon’s body grew, but its wings did not, leaving tiny pricks that would never get its massive girth into the air. Its horns took on a familiar curve.

Gorm. Our combined elemental flames hadn’t been enough. The confidence I’d felt died as the god, now in a demonic dragonbody, lifted its head to the sky and breathed out a stream of pure poison, which rained back down on us. Partially shifted dragons screamed, racing for the trees. I skidded towards Jay and found myself with my mates, wing extended over her to keep the poison from eating her alive.

I looked to Rehan, our leader, whether I liked it or not, only to find his gaze darting around, just as lost as I was. Poison dripped onto the top of my head and ran toward my eyelid, threatening my vision. Pain pierced my wing, and I looked at our layers of outstretched leather only to find the white on the top full of burning holes. Although I blew fire on it, eating some of the poison, the damage was already done.

Pain deeper than anything I’d seen filled Lux’s gaze. His aura turned so black the only emotion I could match to it was despair.

Missing an arm and a leg, literally, the only place my mate could feel normal was in the air. I turned back to Gorm. Pure rage rippled off me in waves that distorted the world.

I locked my gaze on his rotting body, dug my claws into the ground, and prepared to charge.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

JAIYANA

Time slowed down. My ears rang.

In slow motion, Lux pulled his shredded wing into his back. Tyson and Rehan both dug their claws into the poison-dotted ground, their nostrils flaring with pure rage. Ogden bent his dragon legs, clearly intending to take to the sky.

They were going to pull the same move, and they would win. But just like the last time, Gorm would move on to the next body and the next until we had nothing left to fight with.

We couldn’t defeat a god.

“You made that face when you left me,” Brad’s wheezing voice drifted to me.

I took a step. The sound of my foot landing on the ground echoed. More of my mate's muscles bunched, each one connecting with power and ready to spring. The mad energy of battle hovered like a wave, moments from crashing. It wasn’t just my sense of time that slowed… actual time ground to a halt.

Everything except me and Brad.

My ex and a mad god share a body.

Hot?

I wished I could hit myself.

Not where I was going with that, more along the lines of a dramatic: who knows what he’s capable of anymore.

I stepped to my ex’s charred husk, where it lay in a pile of blood and poison-soaked robes.

Not capable of healing, apparently.

I knelt. “I didn’t make the same face.”