Chapter 48 Chapter Forty -Eight
"Asher, careful with those thorns, darling..." A soft, familiar voice reached my ears from the darkness, and when I opened my eyes, I realized I was seven again. I was back in the garden of my childhood home. And the familiar voice?
That was my mother's.
How long has it been since I thought about her? Why was I remembering this one particular memory now of all times?
Her soft smile. Her kind eyes.
It hurt so much I wanted to cry for the first time in more than two decades.
But that was just a distant memory, the shearing pain I felt when the weretiger's paw caught me across the chest with the force of a sledgehammer was enough to pull me back to reality and then I was airborne.
Flying backwards through space until I hit a tree hard enough to drive all the air from my lungs and crack my mask in half.
Pain exploded through my body.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't do anything but lie there gasping like a fish on land, but I heard my name being yelled.
Through blurred vision, I watched the weretiger advance on the others. I watched Calhoun try to stand on legs that wouldn't support his weight anymore. I watched Aquila try to catch the beast off guard, but get swatted away.
We were dropping like flies and what was I doing?
Omira, the twins, Kael, and now Calhoun?
No.
'Get up.'
My mind yelled, but my body wouldn't cooperate with it. I couldn't feel anything other than anger and determination, but it wasn't enough.
I tried to push myself up again, but my body screamed in protest.
I was their Alpha.
"Come on... move." I gritted my teeth as my hands found purchase on the ground and I pushed. Although my vision swam and I coughed out blood onto the wet ground, I forced myself to my knees, then my feet.
Because stopping meant watching everyone die.
"Damn it all to hell."
If this wasn't a last resort moment, I didn't know what else was.
Forcing the pain down, I reached into the deepest part of my soul and pulled out my transformation.
Transforming now would mean risking my corruption spreading faster, but the longer I hesitate, the less chance we have of survival.
The dragon inside me answered immediately. Eagerly. It had been waiting for this moment.
My bones began to shift and reform into something larger and more dangerous.
My skin rippled as scales forced their way through—black as midnight, harder than obsidian steel.
My spine twisted then elongated as a tail whipped out behind me for balance.
Wings erupted from my shoulders with wet tearing sounds that should have made me scream but I was beyond screaming now.
The pain was indescribable.
Not just the physical agony of transformation but the corruption inside me screaming as the magic accelerated it through what little time I had left like I'd thrown it on a fire.
But I pushed through it all to protect my pack.
When it was done, I stood nearly twenty feet tall. A black dragon with scales that absorbed light, claws that could tear through stone, a tail that could shatter trees, and a roar so loud it shook the forest for more than five kilometers. That was five times the roar of the werebeast.
The weretiger, which had seemed massive in my human form, suddenly looked almost small as I glowered down at it with a growl.
It turned toward me, green-yellow eyes finding this new threat.
With one powerful fwap of my massive black wings, I closed the distance between us like it was nothing at all. And although it cost me too much, the truth was that I was far more efficient in this form.
My powerful Dragon body collided with the weretiger with the force of a bullet train and we went down together, rolling through the clearing in a tangle of scales, fur, and claws.
But I was stronger now. The difference in strength was almost an overwhelming disadvantage for the creature. But it was only natural, because even among my own kind, black dragons were considered the most ferocious. We were built for this kind of combat with overwhelming strength, sadly I was the last of my kind.
Another roar consisting of clicks and trills erupted from my core as I closed my claws around the creature's torso and squeezed hard. Hard enough to feel the way its ribs cracked beneath my grip the same way it had hurt Omira. Calhoun. Jorik. Kael... Aquila.
Anger burned through me like something primal as I pressed my weight harder against the weretiger's chest without mercy.
The weretiger thrashed. Snarled. Tried to tear at me with its own claws but they skittered uselessly off my armoured scales.
I leaned closer, opening my maw as I felt the heat building in my throat with fire that would end this. That would turn this creature to ash and eliminate the threat forever.
One breath. That's all it would take to end this fight.
The fire coiled tight in my throat, searing and ready to erupt, but a small, sharp cry sliced through the red haze of my rage like a blade. And I froze, jaws inches from the weretiger’s skull, the heat inside me receding just enough for clarity to cut through.
Between chaotic sounds of nature, the heavy thrashing of the beast caught in my hold, and my own beating heart that sounded louder than thunder in my ears, I shouldn't have been able to hear anything, but the sound was close enough that I did. It was faint, trembling, but unmistakably afraid. My eyes, now slitted and golden, scanned the chaos beyond the creature pinned under my weight. Half-hidden behind the splintered trunk of an old oak was a cub.
I hesitated.
If I breathed fire now, the blast wouldn’t just consume the weretiger. It would engulf the clearing, the trees, and that small, shaking figure watching from the shadows.