Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 90404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
I haven’t full-out fought my brother in many years now, but we were often set against each other in the past by Creator-Father. I only hope the time in the dungeon has made him weaker instead of more vicious.
I run on my powerful legs straight toward him, opening my mouth to let out a powerful lion’s roar.
Thing is fast, and we collide in the center of the grand room. We clash with an explosive thud, tangling claws, and snarls.
Thing has so many arms and a multiplicity of claws tearing at me, but I have wings and I rise from the ground above him. He rears on his legs, but he cannot stand like a man for long, and he falls back onto his knuckles. Still, he has two pairs of arms that reach up for me.
But I have another target.
I fly straight at Remus, whose own wings have flared out, ready for me. His teeth clench, neck veins straining. He holds out his arms, and his hands begin to glow blue with angel spark.
Fuck. I can’t let him gather too much. I fly faster.
The Great Hall is as big is the castle is wide, but I still reach him before he can complete the rune-lights.
What he has gathered is still enough that when he forces his hands outward and the rune-lights fly at my chest, I’m knocked backward, all the way to the wall.
Where Thing is waiting to pounce. All six hands full of claws dig into my chest and tear across my face.
I roar and snap back with my teeth, flipping us so that Thing and I roll across the floor. Muscles and bodies and wings and claws and teeth—
He’s on top.
And then I’m on top.
He rolls us again, and his fangs aim for my throat, but I have more teeth, and I snap back, then use my wings to fling myself again so we roll. I roar, “Submit!” as he lands below.
I pin him beneath me, holding two pairs of arms to the ground with my forearms and the last pair with my dexterous wings. Thing roars in fury below me, but I finally have him in a submissive hold as his eyes glow red.
At least until another blue blast of runes comes from Remus, knocking me clear away from Thing, almost all the way back to the door where I started.
My wings smoke, the smell of seared feathers raw in my nose as I immediately flip back upright to charge Remus again. I leap into the air, flying over Thing’s head.
Remus is in the air, and we collide near the ceiling, arms locking as we try to force the other backward. His tail whips around my waist, adding to the force trying to drag me down. I regret keeping him so well fed, because for several moments, it’s a true contest.
And then he clenches his teeth and strains his neck.
I grin. “Fighting two battles?” I hiss. “There’s a reason Creator-Father chose me as favorite.”
Remus howls in fury at me, hands clenching at my biceps. Except he doesn’t have claws. “You can’t even keep hold of your consort!” he seethes. “And we both know you were not the favorite. That was Layd—”
I do have claws, and I dig them into his shoulders where I’m holding him back.
He screams in pain even as his neck veins strain further. The red fire drains from his eyes the next moment, even as his neck begins to contort, his head spinning.
Below us, Thing howls.
I laugh as Remus’s grip on my biceps loosen.
Moments later, I’m looking into Romulus’s cool gaze. “Well, brother. What have you gotten us into now?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
HANNAH
It’s dark out. Nighttime.
And I’m finally warm again. I’m not quite sure how.
I should have frostbite on at least some of my toes from that exposure, but when I finally pull them out of the blankets to stuff them in some thick socks the old man presents for me, I’m able to wiggle all my toes. And fingers, and my nose. My host also offers me an oversized flannel shirt, sweater, and corduroy pants I’m only able to keep up with a belt that we have to bore some new notches in to fit around my much smaller waist.
Sure, he fed me soup and more hot-chocolate-coffee until I felt all of it sloshing around steamy in my tummy but still…
I don’t know much about how to convert temperature into Celsius, but I do know that 0 degrees means freezing. And the thermometer stuck to the outside of the window of his small kitchenette read -40 degrees.
Maybe I avoided frostbite because I was moving constantly?
Or… far more likely, it’s because of something the Beast did when he healed me.
Apparently, he performed more miracles than one.
Am I… superhuman now or something? Or just able to withstand cold? Did he do it just so I’d be able to parade more comfortably around naked in his freezing castle or is it an unintentional side effect?