Betrayal Foretold: Descended of Dragons, Book 3 by Jen Crane Read Free Book Online

ripping down the middle to let the light escape.
    I could see the power leaving my body to join Mother and Bay’s, adding white to their orange flames. A fourth stream met ours, and I followed the line of dark, smoky magic to Gresham, his gold eyes closed in concentration. If the force of my power was light, his was soot, the smoldering remnants of charcoal.
    I jerked my head in confusion. Whatthehell? The variation of my fire, and the evidence of Gresham's raw power didn't seem to concern Mother and Bay, and so I doubled my effort. With one final burst of magical energy, our unified column of flame sent Brandubh to his knees. He gasped for breath, hands scratching at his throat.
    “ He’ll never leave us alone ,” I said to my comrades. “ We have to kill him. I think I can keep this up. Can you ?”
    “ This one’s mine, baby. And it’s a long time coming. ”
    I looked to my mother, whose eyes shined with aggrieved vengeance, and lowered my head in deference. Brandubh deserved a gruesome death for the lifetimes of suffering and death he'd inflicted on so many. But no one had reason for revenge as much as Edina Drakontos.
    We descended below the tree line, our growing proximity to Brandubh steadily increasing the intensity of our barrage. Mother withdrew her fire. Bay and I followed her lead. Gresham reined back his assault.
    Brandubh raised his battered face to my mother, a demented smile pulling at his cracked lips. He opened his mouth to speak, but she had no interest, no patience for his boisterous ramblings.
    She opened her hinged mouth in a deafening roar, her dagger-like teeth slick with saliva. With lightening speed, she struck out and bit into him with fervor, his head cracking within her jaw teeth like hard candy.

Chapter 8
    B ack in human form , I stood slightly bent with hands at my hips, taking short, shallow breaths to recover from the physical and mental exertion we had just endured.
    “Wheel, that’s that, then,” Bay said in a sing-song voice incongruent with our circumstances. I lifted my head to raise eyebrows at her, and she shrugged good-naturedly.
    “Men, your coats,” Gresham instructed his officers.
    While nakedness held no shame in the world of magical shifters, we were surrounded by a crowd of strangers and in the middle of a scene of mass destruction. Bay, Mother and I hastily donned the scratchy uniforms, thankful for the cover.
    Ewan stood unaffected by his nakedness. I cleared my throat twice before he grasped my meaning and tied one of the coats at his hip, covering the important parts, at least.
    My mother had gone still as death. She was probably in shock, the sudden force of her fight and freedom from Brandubh too much to comprehend. I couldn't understand it, either.
    "I can't believe he's really gone," I croaked. “Was that normal? That light?” I looked to my friends and family for clues about my fire. “I never imagined it could be so intense.” Neither Mother nor Gresham registered I’d spoken.
    Bay opened her mouth to answer, but Ewan cut her off. “Ladies, I think it’s best you take off. At least for now.”
    The vicious mob had taken cover in the forest during our battle, but when we were back on two legs, a brassy few reignited the others. Fear and hatred spread like wildfire in a drought. Angry murmurs began low but grew louder as vocal incendiaries gained approval from their cohorts. There was no clear leader, but the collective was doing well enough on its own. “Dragons are killers,” and “They’ll kill us if we don’t get them first,” and “History always repeats itself; we know the stories,” rushed from mouth to ear, the cycle repeating and amplifying until the crowd of angry people encroached again, forcing us backward.
    “What now?” I said, my tone sounding more whiny, more afraid, than I liked.
    “Your kind belongs in captivity,” someone shouted.
    “Captivity, hell,” someone else spat. “They should be exterminated, like we thought