The woman in his arms belonged to another man, was on fire from the inside, and was currently half conscious. Three problems he was choosing to address in reverse order.

The heat that poured off her skin blistered against his jaw. His wolf was restless. And somewhere south of them, through miles of jungle, was the one man in the world Nicholas needed and hated in equal measure.

His Beta lifted his nose, searching for Drakencrest’s signature. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

A faint nod. South. Faint, but there.

Nicholas adjusted her weight in his arms and moved.

The jungle was dense enough to punish speed.

"Hold on, Guinevere. Stay with me."

The dark blur came from the left.

It hit with a speed that bypassed his reflexes entirely, ripping her from his arms with a force that spun him sideways. One second she was pressed against his chest. The next she was on the ground, pinned flat, dark wings spreading over her body in the cocoon formation he had seen described in Sterling’s briefing and had hoped was exaggerated.

It was not exaggerated.

A high-pitched, blood-curdling scream ripped from her throat, tearing through the canopy and scattering birds from every tree.

Nicholas was already moving. His blade cleared the sheath in one motion, and the stroke took the fae’s head before its fangs reached her neck. Black blood sprayed across the ferns in an arc that caught the fractured light and turned violet. He kicked the body sideways, before it collapsed on her, and pulled her up against his chest.

His free hand covered her mouth. Her tears spilled over his fingers, hot and fast, running between his knuckles in lines he could feel more than see.

She was shaking against him. The kind of shaking that lived past fear, in the territory where the nervous system stopped distinguishing between threats and just trembled at everything.

"That scream was heard in four kingdoms, Guinevere. On the bright side, if your husband is within ten miles, he is currently running this direction with murder on his mind. On the less bright side, so is everything else."

"Don’t worry. I won’t let them get you."

He scooped her up and made it half a minute before the canopy went dark above them.

Fae dropped from the canopy in a ring. Seven of them. Coordinated. The formation of a hunting pack that had done this a thousand times.

Nicholas stopped. Damon pressed against his leg, teeth bared.

He set Guinevere down. Her legs buckled and she caught herself against a trunk, one arm wrapped around her ribs, her green eyes wide in the dark.

"Stay behind me."

Damon shifted to human form, pulling blades from two sheaths. Two wolves, two swords each, back to back, with a feverish woman between them and a closing circle of dark wings.

The first one spoke. "The vessel runs and runs. We can smell her womb ripening from here."

A second one dropped lower, its augmented eyes locked on Guinevere. "We will split her open from navel to throat and drink the fire from her spine."

Damon lunged. Two heads left two bodies in a cross-stroke so clean the fae beside them flinched. Black blood misted the moss.

Three more dropped from above. Their mouths moved together. "The dragon’s flame warmed the seed. Upon harvest we shall feed."

Nicholas’s vision went full gold. His wolf pressed so close to the surface that his jawline distorted, fangs dropping past the human threshold, and the sound that came from his chest was territory and fury and the specific violence of a male hearing his mate described as prey.

He killed three in the time it took the fourth to draw its blade. Damon took two more from the flank.

More came. A fae flanked Nicholas from his blind side. Its blade came up in a thrust aimed at the center of his chest, the killing stroke, committed and fast.

Guinevere moved unnaturally fast for a girl who had nothing left to give. The blur that sat between wolf and dragon flickered once, just enough, and her hand closed around the flat of the blade three inches from Nicholas’s sternum.

The dark magic hit her system like venom while the blade burned against her palm. Her fingers locked around it in a grip her body refused to release, the muscles seizing, the gold light under her skin recoiling from the contact in visible waves.

Nicholas saw her on her knees, and felt it through the matebond. His own hand cramped. His own ribs ached. The fidelity of it staggered him, and for one disorienting second the line blurred between his nervous system and hers.

"Guinevere. Drop the blade."

She couldn’t. Her hand was locked.

Nicholas lowered into the Alpha register.

"Release."

Her muscles tried, the involuntary response to alpha command, but couldn’t. Nicholas felt it.

He moved, ripping the blade from her hand with his own. The motion tore skin from her palm. She gasped, and the sound hit him in his own chest.

He pulled her behind him. More fae were coming at unnatural speeds.

A blade pressed against Damon’s throat from behind.

"Drop your weapons, wolf. Or I open him."

Damon stayed calm. The eyes of a man who had been in bad positions before and trusted his Alpha to get him out.

Guinevere’s hand came up. She was aware, but not in control. Gold flame erupted from her palm in a focused column that hit the fae behind Damon’s center-mass without touching a hair on his head.

The fae absorbed the gold. Its wings brightened. It staggered back two steps, releasing Damon’s throat, drunk on the flame it had just consumed.

The opening lasted one second.

Two fae moved in a blur. One grabbed Guinevere from behind, arms locking around her waist. A second pressed dark steel against her throat. It burned against her skin like silver would.

"Weapons down. Both of you. Now."

Nicholas’s jaw worked. Damon wiped blood from his neck. They looked at each other.

Their swords hit the moss.

The fae holding the blade to her throat grinned. His free hand slid down her arm. "The vessel cooperates. Good. We will enjoy—"

Guinevere grabbed the blade at her throat with both hands and shoved it sideways. Her arms were shaking so badly the motion should have failed. It didn’t. The steel cleared her neck by an inch. She drove her knee into his groin with every pound she had left.

He folded.

His hands loosened on the blade. She grabbed his wrist, both of her shaking hands wrapping around his fist, and drove the blade backward into his own stomach. His eyes went wide. She kicked him in the face before he hit the ground.

He dropped unconscious, stabbed with his own weapon by a woman with a fever who was close to passing out.

Nobody moved.

The silence lasted two full seconds. Every fae in the clearing stared at the woman standing over their fallen soldier with blood on her shaking hands and nothing on her face.

"She is not pure blood," one hissed. "The true vessel is not capable of killing."

"I have no desire to be your goddamn vessel," she clipped. "Spread the word."

"What is she?"

"It doesn’t matter. A half breed cunt."

Guinevere’s fist connected with the first fae’s jaw before the word finished echoing. Her knuckles split and she swung again anyway, connecting with the second fae’s jaw.

The fear had floated somewhere above her, detached, watching from a distance, and the woman standing in its place was someone else entirely. Someone who hunted these things and didn’t care if she killed them.

"Contaminated or not, the flame is real. Hold her down and I will take her myself."

Guinevere lunged, grabbing a wing. She shoved her boot into his back at the same time, ripping it off. He screamed and she felt zero remorse.

"YOU LITTLE BITCH! KILL THE VESSEL."

One swung for her right as her knees buckled. She dropped to all fours, and his blade whistled over her head, slicing through the fae on the other side of her.

It looked like she’d timed that perfectly.

Nicholas used this stunned second to dive for his blade, Damon right behind him.

Nicholas swung, cutting off the head of the fae still standing above Guinevere. Then the field erupted in chaos. What followed was pest control. Heads came off. Black blood sprayed.

Damon covered Nicholas’s blind side without being told, matching his moves in a way only possible from growing up with Nicholas. For thirty seconds, they were winning. Then the canopy above them went dark with wings.

The fae started coming in droves. For every fae head removed, three more fell from the trees to replace it.

The ring around them tightened.

Guinevere understood with clarity that she wasn’t going to get out of this. But the two wolves who’d try to help her could, and their window was rapidly closing.