Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Two wolves and a wild dog that towered above them, built like a brick house. They ran with the enhanced speed and agility of shifters. Blake wasn’t too far from them. Only one lumbering rock formation separated them. They snapped at each other from the thrill of the chase.
Fuck.
I dove as I roared out a warning. Blake came to a skidding stop, dust rising up and clouding his legs. I swooped around the rock formation just as they split up around it.
The wolf closest to me kept to the rock formation. The shifter tried to make it under a decent-sized outcropping that would have protected him from my talons.
Too late. I flared out my wings to slow my descent before I grabbed the wolf like a mother grabbing her pup’s scruff.
They struggled in my grip. I had no sight line on Blake. I took back to the sky, the wolf still in my claws. They shifted back into their human form, the man beginning to beg, my claws wrapped fully around his body.
But my attention was on Blake. They had him surrounded. All three snarled, but Blake looked like a runt next to the two massive death dealers.
I dove back down. I tossed the shifter before I hit the ground, his body cracking hard against a tree.
The other two shifters were taken off guard as I ran at them in my human form.
I blasted one in the face with sand, which sent the big dog down to his front paws as he tried to rub it out. Blake leapt at the other, claws and teeth out. They tumbled into a chaotic ball of fur and snarls. I had to trust he’d handle it because the bloodthirsty mastiff quickly shifted into a bloodthirsty man, built as solid as his animal form. A tangle of muscle that appeared to be made from the very rocks that surrounded us.
He launched a fist. I blocked with a forearm. The impact sent me reeling backward, the sharp pain radiating out through my entire arm. I pressed the assault. Ducking as he tried hitting me again, landing a punch to his gut. He sent spit flying as his eyes bulged. I twisted around him and kicked the back of his knee.
The tower of muscle dropped to the ground. I was about to roundhouse kick the back of his head, but he rolled forward and smoothly rose back to his feet. I risked a look over my shoulder. Blake had the advantage. Good.
I turned my focus back to my assailant. He was done playing with fists. A silver dagger with a serrated blade glittered with the promise of death. He smiled, the jagged scar across his cheek pushed up to his coal-black eyes. He wore a dark jacket with what appeared to be a broken hourglass emblazoned on the chest. He kept his canines from the shift. They were as lethal as the dagger. His other hand hovered over a black satchel dangling off his hip.
“I’ve got you now,” he growled.
He closed the distance between us in a few strides. He must have thought his speed would catch me off guard.
It didn’t. I lifted my arm, a shield made of densely packed sand floating in front of my forearm and absorbing the stab from the dagger. His black eyes went wide. He tried to pull the dagger out but couldn’t.
I yanked backward. It was the shifter who was caught off guard. He stumbled. He desperately tried to untangle the knot on the satchel, but his huge fingers wouldn’t allow him to. I grabbed the dagger and let the sand fall to the floor. In one swift motion, I sank the dagger into the shifter’s side. He gasped as he realized his blood flowed freely to the ground. The shifter dropped dead to my feet.
One left.
A yelp made me swing back around. Blake no longer had the advantage. The larger wolf had him pinned to the dirt. His jaw was latched around Blake’s throat. A few more seconds and Blake would have his throat ripped out.
That meant I had time.
The world slowed as I pulled on the tightly wound threads of reality itself. Being a golden dragon allowed me to reach through the veil and manipulate what would otherwise be impossible to even conceptualize. It wasn’t the easiest ability to pull off and did have its limitations. There was no bringing back the dead, and I could only rewind for a total of three seconds—which was something that increased with age.
Three seconds was all I needed.
The world moved backward. The jet-black wolf on top of Blake reversed back into the air, his jaw opening like a monstrous blooming rose. Blake rolled back onto his four legs. He cowered as he helplessly watched the wolf above him.
There was a short readjustment period as the rest of the world caught up to the shift. It was in this period that I could move at regular speed while everything around me moved by centimeters. I ran over to the seemingly frozen scene. I held my hand between Blake and the other wolf.