my heart nearly stops in my chest when I see my mate within feet of the door, lying helplessly beneath another male.
The fairy’s head jerks up with surprise stamped clearly across his face, his blood-smeared lips gaping wide. It’s satisfying to know that I have taken him by surprise, although it’s not a mystery as to why he was not expecting me to intervene. Truthfully, if not for the goblin, I know that I wouldn’t have arrived in time.
My lips peel back from my wicked teeth, and he pales despite his attempt to snarl at me. The bone-crunching flat teeth at the fore are nothing compared to my long leonine fangs that few, without being on the wrong side of a unicorn, ever realize that we possess for our defense. He might have been spared such a sight if my mate hadn’t been found unconscious beneath him, her blood staining his lips.
With my tail flagged high behind me, I stamp my hooves in high, powerful steps as I approach. I want to make him suffer, and if that means breaking him bit by bit before my horn gores him, then I will happily take it.
Even though my hooves are shredding his gray wings with every strike that misses his torso and limbs, it’s my horn that he stares at as he gives a fearful shriek. Although it hurts my ears, the sound is satisfying. As is knowing that my enemy trembles before me. Electric sparks are flying from the tip of my horn, skittering down its length as I snake out my head and jab with it, and tiny bolts strike the floor, charring the carpet every time he manages to slide out of the way.
I grimace at the damage, not wishing to destroy my mate’s house, but with my overriding concern for her safety, I won’t give him quarter. I advance ceaselessly as he scrambles back toward the kitchen. Ironically, if he had not moved in that direction, I likely wouldn’t have noticed another pair of fairies exiting. They freeze at the sight of me, their wings drawing up around them as they glance down at him and then at me once more. Eyeing her, I lift a hoof and bring it down with a loud crunch on the muscles of the wing extended from the back of the male attempting to crawl away from me. He lets out a scream of agony that makes her bristle, and my muscles stiffen at the resolve that fills the female’s face.
I expect her to attack. Female fairies are aggressively territorial of their males and young, and nature has provided them with their own unique defenses—not the least of which are the venom sacs that female fairies possess—and so I’m not at all surprised when she lets out an angry hiss and expels a stream of venom in my direction. Rearing back to avoid the splatters, I am a bit surprised, however, that she doesn’t take advantage of her opportunity to rescue the male at my hooves. Instead, she grabs the arm of the male beside her and drags him with her as she shoots toward a window.
With a loud growl, Grimsal leaps from my back to intercept them as I continue to restrain the male with my front hooves on his wing, but even with the pop of translocation, the goblin doesn’t manage to arrive at the window before they bolt out of it with a loud crash of glass. He pulls to a stop at the window, staring after them as they wing across the sky lit with the fading early evening light. He rubs the back of his neck and turns back to me helplessly.
“No catching them now. I suspect they will be reporting this incident to whoever sent them. No doubt you’ll have fairies up your ass from here to your grotto.” His eyes fall at the broken-winged fairy moaning in pain as, his wing tearing free in a tattered mess, he attempts once more to crawl away from me. Grimsal jerks his chin toward him. “What are you planning to do with that one?”
I snort disdainfully at the male beneath me and step back a pace to comfortably resume my fae form. It doesn’t give him reprieve for long because I bring my foot down on his other wing, forcing the male to buckle beneath my weight. My eyes cut to the goblin as I give him a cool smile.
“I discover what secrets he has, of course,”