Claws attached to the spiked crown which ran down my spine, and I was jerked back, painfully, as a handful of hair caught in that hold and ripped out in chunks.
I flipped over, flinching as more flesh and hair tore from my body, but I didn’t let that stop me from clawing out. I was too close to freedom to give up now. The light was at its brightest about twenty yards from where we fought. My dragon could cross that in seconds. I just needed a distraction or something.
My claws dug in deeply. The belly was about the only soft place on the crimson beast, and I didn’t hesitate to tear free masses of flesh. Blood rained across me. Larky bellowed again, but didn’t fight. He was only trying to contain me.
Maybe that was my advantage.
I lunged for his throat, my claws again finding traction in the soft belly, my teeth slicing through scales to rip into his flesh. The dragon king could do nothing but hold me. I was too close to his body for him to defend against my attack. He was bellowing, feeling the pain, but not enough for his grip to loosen. I clamped my jaws harder and tore in a clean jerk. Bone crunched, flesh tore, a rain of deep, rich blood almost black in color washed across me.
Larky swayed then, and I knew that this time I’d hurt him. He wouldn’t die, but maybe it was enough to escape. His hold on me felt precarious, and even though I knew it was going to hurt like hell when I tore myself from him, I didn’t hesitate. I thrust my wings sideways and propelled myself away. Sure enough, pain cut through me like a knife, sharp and burning, rending away chunks of hair and flesh, one or two of those large spines ripping from my body.
The pain was excruciating, but I’d been hurt before – I could do this. I continued flapping, my rainbow vision growing tunnel-like. My movements were like a swimmer trying to backpedal in a lake to escape an alligator, desperate and uncoordinated, but I was making distance. I heard movement behind and knew Larky had started to recover, his dragon body repairing. His beast was damn strong.
But I was almost free.
Black dots danced in my vision. I managed to hold on until the light was so blinding that it was impossible to see anything else but the white of the land. As my mind went all gray, the world blurring, I realized I’d made it. I was out of the labyrinth.
With that thought the world went dark.
Chapter 6
The first thing that registered through my haze was the snarling. A multitude of angry howls seemed to be shaking the land on which I lay. I had no problem recalling the last few moments before the blackout. I’d been trying to escape, hoping to lead the dragon king from Jacob…
“Jessa babe…”
The low, harshly-uttered words wrapped around me. Familiar. Safe. Family and pack all in one.
“You better fucking repair every ounce of damage, Louis, or I’m going to enjoy the taste of sorcerer blood.”
The guttural nature of Maximus’s voice deepened and my heart started this strange pitter-pattering, even though I was struggling to rise from the last of my unconscious. Pain was there, in these wave-like jabs, but much of that was dulled in my half-aware state.
“I am fixing her. I’m starting to find it less amusing the way you Compasses continue to threaten me when you know very well that I love Jessa too. I’m a goddamn level ten sorcerer. I have entire supernatural races cowering at my feet, but not you four hotheads.”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it. You’re all amazing and powerful, but you can add dead to that list if you don’t start healing her. Oh, and shut the fuck up while you’re at it.” That was Tyson, my wizard quad. They were all here with me. My heart swelled and the pattering increased to some sort of gallop.
The boys’ advanced hearing would be picking that up, hopefully reassuring them that I was okay.
As much as I was ecstatic to be with my pack, where the heck was Braxton? Of any of them, he would have been the first at my side, so something must be wrong. It was this thought, teamed with another ground-shaking roar, that gave my body the kick-start it needed to clear the last of the fogginess. The pain hit me harder, sharp and biting, no longer dulled by my mental state. I was hurting – not the worst I’d had, but enough to give me more than a moment’s pause.
My eyes fluttered open. The brightness of the world overwhelmed me and I was blinded for a few seconds. Heat washed over me. I’d been healed enough times to recognize the sensation.
“Holy shit, thank the freakin’ gods,” Tyson said as his strong arms wrapped under me and lifted me into his body. “Dammit it, Jess, I’m starting to think Maximus was right all those years ago.”
“I’m always right,” Maximus said from somewhere to the side, “but for the record, if you’re talking about not being friends with girls, I might make an exception for Jessa. Life wouldn’t be quite the same without her.”
I shook my head against the hard shoulder it was pressed to. Wrapped in Tyson’s arms, my body started to relax, and I barely noticed as Louis finished the last of his healing. I could see the handsome, aristocratic features of the sorcerer from the corner of my eye. He gave me a wink, and I flipped up the edge of my lips in a semblance of a smile. A quick glance down assured me that not only was Louis healing the holes in my body, but he’d also clothed me in jeans, a tank and nice ass-kicking boots. I loved magic – except when it was used against me, then I hated it. It was a complicated relationship.
I finally pulled back to see Tyson clearly. His auburn hair was quite short at the moment, spiked up in a mini-mohawk style. I’d never seen it like that, and for a second something hurt inside of me. Okay, it was a stupid thing to get upset about after everything that had happened in the past month, but to feel that even a small part of these boys was unfamiliar to me, well, it was a slippery slope to a division in our pack. I would never accept that. Never.