Page 130 of Mate of a Monster

I open my mouth to answer and then frown as something new stirs under my skin.

“Beast?”

Legend frowns, listening.

“Not me, Hellpet.”

Power rises sharp and sudden through my spine, so quick I don’t even have time to brace before the ground falls away beneath me.

I jerk and in the next breath, I’m fucking hovering several feet above the courtyard—and only lifting higher.

“Luda, what the fuck?” Zev blurts, grinning.

London laughs. “Well, that’s fucking cool.”

The air curls beneath my feet like invisible hands, steady and sure, lifting me higher until I surpass even the dragons. My black hair whips around my face while the jewels at my temples blaze hot enough to hurt, and below me every dragon in the courtyard lowers its head.

Legend looks up.

The expression on his face almost knocks the breath out of me.

It isn’t just awe.

It’s reverence. Pride. Something deep and male and feral that says mine so loudly through the bond I can practically taste it.

My lips twitch.

Then I laugh and shoot higher.

The wind catches me hard as I rise, arms spreading without thought while the power carries me in a smooth arc over the courtyard. I spin once, black flames flickering at my fingertips, and for half a second the grief eases enough for something almost like joy to slip through.

Below, the dragons answer with a collective roar.

Then reality punches all of us in the teeth.

A portal tears open above the far side of the courtyard. It splits the air jagged and wrong, and something drops through it so fast it hits the ground with a wet slap that turns my stomach inside out.

“Is that—”

A fucking body.

Time seems to stop for a moment before another portal rips open not far from the first.

Another body falls.

Then another.

And another.

The air fills with the scent of blood so thick it coats the back of my throat. The courtyard erupts into a confusion of shouts and scraping steel as gifted surge backward, trying to understand what the fuck they’re looking at. Warriors and guards storm in from every angle but keep their distance until their kings give an order.

I drop fast.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hear Legend shout, looking to see Zev running up to one of the bodies.

“Haide!” he shouts but I’m already following as he drops beside the fallen boy.

Creed gets there first, voice low and disbelieving. “That’s the boy from the photo.” He looks back to me. “The one you saw at the murder site in Darkadia.”