The Frozen Prince (The Beast Charmer #2) - Maxym M. Martineau Page 0,25

ears stood on end, and he abandoned the man he’d been tossing around like a rag doll to target Dominus and Onyx. Hackles shot upward in his mindless rage, and he crouched low to the ground. He leapt into the air and snared Onyx’s wings with his teeth, smacking him to the ground and dragging him through the dirt.

“Onyx!” Leena made a move to run to him, but I anchored her to my side before she could put herself in danger. Wild eyes pinned me with fear and rage. “Let me go!”

“You’ll get yourself killed if you get in the middle of that.” I hated the way she damned me with her stare, but I couldn’t put her at risk. Between Calem and the assassins, there was no telling who would strike first—or when.

Dominus yowled and rammed into Calem’s side, dislodging his jaw and setting Onyx free. Both legendary beasts hissed and spit, circling Calem with quivering muscles and otherworldly fury.

“Noc, on your left!” Kost moved to join us, but a red-haired assassin appeared and kicked him to the ground.

Shadows detonated in my peripheral vision. A blade pierced Leena’s shoulder from behind, and the sharpened point broke free just beneath her collarbone. Her pained cry echoed through the air and stoked the fire building in my core. Pure rivers of red chased away the shadows in my mind, leaving me with nothing more than the desire to kill.

Heat flooded my fingertips, and I willed my blood to form into a deadly serrated blade. And then I struck. Hard. The weapon sawed through flesh and bone, coating the ground in a spray of tantalizing red. Sick happiness flooded my senses, and I fought against the urge to smile.

But then Leena’s soft whimper grabbed my attention. Clutching her wound, she stumbled but remained standing. A clean strike and not life-ending. Why not go for the kill? She pulled her bloody fingers away from the hole in her shoulder, and fresh anger swelled in my veins. Drowned my thoughts. Carried me on a swift current to a place of sheer chaos, and in that moment I didn’t give a damn if I ever found my way back. Slipping into the shadows, I manifested by Kost’s side where he was still locked in combat with one of our former brothers.

The traitor froze when he saw me. I stuck him right through the gut and lifted him in the air until his feet skated above the ground.

“Wait.” Leena followed, her focus divided between the clashing of beasts and the red-haired assassin in my grasp. “He ran into me on the way out. He must have told someone we were here.”

Kill. The feminine drawl in my mind shook the very essence of my reality. My body went stock-still. My gaze raced over the clearing as I tried to find the source of the sound, to find the woman who was begging me to end this man’s life. Who was she? Why? A dull ache formed at the base of my skull, and my panic deepened. No one was here.

Kill. Just a whisper, and yet so powerfully tantalizing that my fingers twitched on their own. The man squirmed. With a shaky breath, I tried to ignore the allure of her command. To focus and find control.

“It’s Brody, right?” I managed to rasp.

His hands fluttered around the space where my blade entrenched in his gut. “Y-yes.”

Wrapping one hand around his neck, I kept him suspended and allowed the blade in his belly to disintegrate into a pool of blood. As it rushed into him, I felt the connection snap into place. An invisible line between us that granted me the power to command him at will. I poked at it with my mind, and he winced. Again, a small part of me cringed for using this power I had always told myself would be the last resort. Objections started to surface in my mind as guilt threaded my gut, but the suffocating red haze was faster. It weighed down those concerns, dragged them somewhere far away, and the only thing that mattered was exacting punishment. A strange sense of surety settled deep in me, and I felt myself smile.

“Good.” I dropped him to the ground. “Don’t move.”

He barely mustered the effort to breathe as my command took hold and gripped him tight.

“Noc.” Kost didn’t bother to smother the fear threading through his voice. He stared at the space where my blade had been before swallowing twice, dragging his