sp; A feral roar comes from my left as the direction changes again, because that stupid son of a bitch is clearly dematerializing in a forest you’re not supposed to do that in.
He really is suicidal. What the hell is he doing?
Another roar seems to call to me, and I spin, not having too many obstacles to face since everything seems to be concentrating on the most disruptive being at the moment.
Sliding over what I hope is leaves, I shift my direction again, hearing that roar vibrate through my bones, feeling the agony in it as my sprint speeds up.
My heart is racing when I hear the thunderous buzzing, and for the first time, I catch a peek at Slade in lycan form.
His monstrous form is twice the size of any lycan I’ve seen before, including Amy. When he roars again, I see the power burst free, slicing through the throngs of inky warriors who seem to be rising from the ground.
Well, that’s unnervingly new to me.
He’s fighting a battle with a forest that has been growing stronger for decades with an endless power supply.
He bowls through them, ripping them apart, but they simply reconnect because they’re not living entities. They’re just protectors of this forest.
I race into the fray, stupidly releasing my own burst of power that hums through me with that drugging, addictive taste.
It’s enough to create a hole in the chaos that I leap through and crash into the scarred and mangled flesh of the huge lycan.
He roars, then his head whips around, silver eyes brightening as he growls viciously. The fear I should feel is absent as I force us to dematerialize, using more strength than I should to launch us out of the forest by some miracle.
Slade is cut to pieces as he pants heavily, still growling and still in lycan form as he circles me. My eyes scan his side, taking in all the scars that apparently exist in every form he has.
New gashes are bleeding heavily, dripping onto the ground in the circle he’s pacing. The growling finally tapers off, though I barely even notice it, because my eyes are on his when they seem to roll back in his head.
He collapses to the ground, and his body shrinks back to his human form until he’s naked and ripped up all over. My breath catches in my throat when I see how bad the damage really is, and I slide to his side, dematerializing us into his cabin.
“Holy shit,” Kya says, her eyes widening on us as Slade and I appear on the floor in front of her. “What the hell happened?” she snaps, dropping to her knees.
“He fought the forest, even though I don’t know what the hell he was thinking,” I growl before I bite into my wrist and hold my arm over his lips.
So long as I let it run into his mouth, and no venom is involved, we won’t have the uncontrollable urge to have dirty, feral sex.
Then I can properly yell at him the way I want to right now, as my heart continues to panic in my chest.
Her eyes pop over to mine then down to him, and she releases a heavy breath. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have said what I did to him,” she tells me quietly, her jaw ticking.
“What do you mean?”
She gestures to him. “I forget how damaged he truly is, because I keep forgetting how much longer he was in there than I was. Some wounds go too deep,” she says without looking at me.
A single tear rolls down her cheek as she stands.
“Where are you going?” I ask her, noticing a couple of his smaller wounds start to close.
“He wouldn’t want me to see him like this,” is all she says as she walks out.
“Are there any blood packs?” I ask loudly, hoping she’ll pop back in.
She doesn’t.
I need her as a distraction from the piece of me that is wanting to use more magic. The piece of me who wants to go take on the forest myself as punishment for it brutalizing him.
Instead, I focus on Slade, since he needs me for a change, instead of the other way around.
My healing powers are hit and miss, and I’m already on the cusp of not being able to stop using right now, so I stick to simply feeding him blood.