eyes off the fight all around me just to watch the fire. In my defense, cockatrices can’t ignore pretty colors like that. It’s science.
Reaching up, I catch the second fist before the dude can hit me again. I look up into the man’s growling face and find none other than Beast—the wolf shifter from the cafeteria. He’s finally back to settle the score.
I give him a beaming smile, which only serves to piss him off even more. I’m still clutching his fist, and we both wrestle for control over it. I laugh. I’ve always loved the game tug-of-war. Wolfy growls and swipes at me with his other hand, but I catch that too.
“What else you got, little fella?” I chirp excitedly, loving the look on his face that tells me he didn’t think I was this strong.
Pain suddenly rips up my back, and I gasp from the shock of it and push the wolf shifter away from me. I turn to find another wolf, this one fully shifted, his claw-tipped paw extended. I can already feel blood dripping down my back where he swiped those razor-sharp nails down the length of my spine. He snaps his teeth at me.
Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be? Just going to chuck fair fight right out the window and go for someone’s back? I thought my family was bad, but at least we always fight face-to-face. I mean, what’s the point of winning if you can’t do it the right way?
With a blink, I pull my beast forward. My cockatrice is simultaneously pissed and excited at the lesson we’re about to teach these two dishonorable shifters.
I feel armored scales rip out of my skin, covering my torso and legs as I grow ten-times the size of my human height. My arms extend, and sharp spurs shoot out of my wrists. Thick bat like wings spill out of my arms, ribs, and middle back, and colorful feathers in every shade of red, orange, and yellow sprout down my spine. The tip of my tail has spikes that join the plume of tail feathers there to be battle-ready.
“It’s a dragon!” someone screams, as I flash from woman to beast in seconds.
I reach out and catch the attacking wolf with a taloned hand and throw him across the field like he weighs nothing. He slams into the surrounding fence, and it sends jolts of electricity painfully into him before he crumples to the ground in a cloud of dirt. I let out an eardrum-rupturing screech.
Not a dragon.
I mock-spit on the ground at the thought.
I’m a motherfucking cockatrice, bitches!
I spin, accidentally whacking into and knocking down a bunch of fighting inmates with my tail.
Oopsie. It always takes me a few minutes to adjust to my large size when I shift.
Walk it off, folks.
I lock my bright yellow snake eyes on Wolfy and snap my bird’s beak at him. He stares at me, mouth open, and I stretch out to my full height so he can truly appreciate how badass I am.
He just stands staring up at me, stunned.
I know, right! I think cockily.
He’s clearly too enraptured by my beauty and powerful prowess to move. I roll my eyes and then bitch slap him lightly with the non-pointy underside of my tail, reminding him to get his head in the game.
Unlike some people, I like a fair fight.
The slap up the back of his head seems to do the trick, and Wolfy starts to shake like a wet dog as he moves to shift.
An alarm starts ringing in the background of all the chaos and noise, but I ignore it as I wait for Wolfy to be ready. This bitch is going down.
My tail goes full golden retriever and starts wagging excitedly, forcing me to knock more unsuspecting fighters over.
“Crap. My bad,” I squawk unintelligibly at them over my scaled and spiked shoulder.
Come on, tail, don’t embarrass us.
But then I see the reason for its wagging. Rook, in all his prison guard glory, is stalking my way.
I get stuck watching him for a moment, because it’s like one of those slow-mo moves in action movies where the dude walks away from an explosion or some shit. Fire blazes behind him, fights seem to magically part as he walks toward me, and his muscles are bulging with every step and swing of his arms.
My tail starts thumping so fast, it’s like the bunny’s foot from Bambi.
“Watch it!”
I look back and see that my tail almost took out Medusa.