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Kaiden directed the aerial legion and they took out wads of the hounds before they reached them, but the clash of those creatures on their armor was deafening.
Adelina screamed her battle cry and Varan joined in. Nash roared as he swung his massive sword once and took out three of them. It had never been their skill as opponents. It had been their numbers that had made the hounds so dangerous.
The Drakesthai took out hundreds of them from above as the rest of them beheaded as many as they could.
But there were still so many their forward progression had been halted. They didn’t have thetimefor this.
“Got any ideas, mate?” Varan asked Nash as they pressed back to back, guarding Adelina as best they could. But she was too wicked fast. She sliced heads off like Death with his scythe.
Nash gritted his teeth and grunted as he ripped the head off a hound who’d tried to take a bite out of him with his bare hands. “We make a path and send a team to the palace while we hold the hounds off.”
Nadyah screamed and Adelina whirled. She threw a blade and in that moment everything stopped.
The hound that was on top of the courtesan had its head sliced off by Ian a breath before Adelina’s blade hit the brain stem. Another hound came up behind the prince and those claws wrapped around Ian’s chest, trying to rip and tear and shred—yanking him back.
Varan had tomove.
Then Adelina cried out and Varan hesitated.
She’d been distracted and a hound had her pinned. It was Ian or her in that moment – everyone else too busy with their own problems. “Save him,” Adelina gritted out. “Do it Varan.”
The dominance in that command forced him to obey.
True despair hit him for the first time since they’d left Draga Terra. Varan had never been forced to obey his queen, and this time she was sacrificing her own life for her brother’s. He’d known something like this might happen after Giselle, but he hadn’t expected the force to overcome his own will.
Varan beheaded the creature and watched the blood cover Ian who went straight for Nadyah.
Then Varan turned, praying Nash had gotten to her, but she was still struggling. The hound had already bitten through the arm of her armor and red blood mixed with all the black.
Adelina screamed her fury as Varan ran toward her, throwing knife after knife, but the angle of the hound’s head was too awkward – too close to his mate for him to risk a throw for the eye.
Peyton reached her first, plunging the knife into the beast’s neck. Three more hounds pounced on the queen’s guard and Varan kept running.
Nash was under four others and it was like the hounds somehow knew. They understood to some degree how important this was and were deliberately keeping them from the palace.
Two more hounds landed in front of Varan and he roared his frustration. He gutted them without stopping and then whirled to behead them so they couldn’t sneak up on him later.
Adelina pushed off the dead hound and struck upwards as another attacked her. Everyone was frantically trying to reach her as the hounds closed in.
Yells from freed slaves reached his ears and they started working their way in from the outside of the mass of hounds.
They may make it to the palace yet, but if Adelina couldn’t handle those hounds…
Varan was out of knives. He had one blade left and his pistol. Firing plasma blasts only did so much when it took three to the brain to take out one hound, but it did clear his path.
Watching three hounds leap onto his wife—his queen…Varan never knew terror like he felt in that moment.
Then the ground shuddered hard.
Kaiden stood from his crouch; wings spread wide, and ripped the head from the hound with one hand.
Varan managed to take out the other two and panted as Kaiden helped Adelina stand. “Took you long enough,” he joked, trying to catch his breath and ease the fear at the same time. “So dramatic.”
Kaiden gave him a look. “You’re welcome.”
Adelina thanked them and then was gone, back into the fray.
“Bloody hells,” Varan muttered.
