Draygon Inferno | Book 2 | ✔️

Chapter Three

           Siobhan threw up her hands, when she stepped off the last step both the buildings and witches vanished. She turned around in time to watch the bone building ripple and fade into the darkness of the dead drakewood trees replacing their live counterparts.

"You couldn't have waited until I at least got back to the inn?" Both hands rubbed against her arms. It wasn't that she was cold, Draygon rarely got cold when they had ice flowing through their veins, but the Drakewood forest gave her the creeps. It was as if eyes watched her from the heavy fog coating the dried, cracked ground. The feeling was even worse now that she knew the trees weren't supposed to be reaching for the sky as if it were trying to strangle the moon.

"Talking to yourself, Ice Fang?" Ayla stepped out of the shadows, biting into the half eaten carcass of a fox.

Siobhan tried not to gag at the strips of raw flesh dropping from the lionesses bloody mouth. There were many crude habits Siobhan had picked up on the streets, eating raw meat fresh from her kills wasn't one of them. Shifters always preferred their meals unsullied by even flame. It was in their animal nature. Didn't make it any less disgusting to watch.

"I was talking to the damn hags who decided to drop me in the middle of nowhere." She intentionally raised her voice, knowing the Witches of Drakewood could still hear her even in their illustrious Second Realm.

"So they finally showed their shriveled faces?"

"Aye, but they weren't shriveled this time. Aside from Lady Lenore, they were identical sacks of beautiful flesh. It was disturbing."

"Why? Because they looked the same or because you wanted to screw them?" Ayla grinned as she bit into her fox and tossed the remains of the carcass back into the dead bushes.

"Take it you've been talking to Wren."

"Kind of hard not to when the human won't shut up even when I tell him to." She wiped a thumb against the blood on her lips, licking it off the way she'd groom herself in her lioness form.

"Where is our annoying moron? Shouldn't you be watching him?"

Siobhan smiled at Ayla's grunt. The lioness wasn't keen on having to follow the two of them around like their dutiful pet. All three were caught up in a game the hags were playing, a game that apparently the hags themselves didn't know all the rules. It was a fact that should've frightened Siobhan. Even the all-knowing Witches of Drakewood were lost. Yet it didn't. It pulled them down from their all mighty pedestal and onto a level where she felt even with them.

"Wren is . . ." Ayla stopped and shook her head. "It's better if I show you."

They stepped off the fog covered path heading back to the secure Drakewood Inn and into the darkened depths of the forest. Even Ayla's shimmering tattoos lost their sparkle, blending in with her dark skin until Siobhan didn't know where she began and shadows ended. Her eyes didn't adjust to the pitch black the way a shifters did, leaving her at the mercy of a guide that would be more than happy to enjoy watching her stumble lost in the Witches layer.

Siobhan stumbled forward, cursing when her hooded cowl snagged on branches reaching out for her. Though Ayla didn't make a sound, Siobhan could practically hear the smug grin on her face, enjoying every fresh scratch blemishing Siobhan's bronze skin. Shifters were the worst of the worst, and Ayla might as well have been their queen.

"Watch where you're going, Ice Fang," Ayla snapped when Siobhan rammed her face into her strong back.

"Next time warn me you're stopping! Even if I was using my true vision I can't see in the dark as well as a shifter can."