5. Max
MAX
I had a fever dream.
In the tormented haze, the demon kept updating me like some deranged sports commentator who couldn’t shut up.
The trio is utterly fuckable, it said, its voice seductive and jaded all at once.
Not sure if I have a favorite yet. The redhead has wild beast energy.
The red-eyed one watches you like you’re the last meal he’ll ever have.
And the blue-eyed one…mmm, he’s like winter and starlight.
And don’t worry, Max dearest. They decided not to reveal that you’re a large woman with no dick.
I didn’t know what to do with that information. They shouldn’t have found out in the first place. If I hadn’t passed out…if that man hadn’t grabbed my?—
The red-eyed one isn’t carrying you, but he’s definitely checking out your ass.
What a creep!
We don’t mind creeps. The demon nodded at me, perking up at my mental protest like it fed on my discomfort. You can’t lie to me. I know you better than you know yourself. I know what makes your pulse race, what makes you bite your lip when ? —
I’d meant the demon itself had a creepy personality, but then I remembered the rules: Don’t engage. Don’t respond. Don’t give it power. So I went mute again, retreating into silence like I’d done since I was a child when it first appeared.
Shit. Not only did I have a demon in me—now the three predators were taking me somewhere unknown.
I hadn’t exactly gotten a good look at them when I’d briefly woken up.
Just fragmented impressions. But the red-eyed one in my limited field of vision had been too easy on the eyes to be a monster.
Sharp cheekbones. Sensual lips. Remarkable, well-kept features that shouldn’t exist in this broken world.
He’d also fondled my breasts quite thoroughly while I was passed out, which made him a monster regardless of his beautiful face. Who gropes a half-dead girl’s chest in the middle of nowhere?
A fucking pervert and a psychopath, that’s who.
Yet I’d woken to a jolt of pleasure I’d never felt before, like electricity under my skin, like something dormant suddenly stirring to life.
Shit. I didn’t need another thing waking up inside me.
I already had a demon. Though the creature insisted it wasn’t a demon.
Not exactly, it had said once, cryptic as always.
It loved to taunt me, hiding knowledge from me even as I knew it was ancient, older than civilizations.
They have a team waiting, the demon informed me again.
Unbidden and unwanted. Seven in total. We’re riding with the redhead.
He’s carrying you like a prize he won’t share.
The red-eyed one trails three paces behind, and he hasn’t stopped staring at your neck since he picked up your scent.
But the third one—Aelindor, they called him— is whom you should watch.
He’s hard to figure out. More dangerous.
This is great, Max! This is the adventure I’ve been waiting for.
We’re finally among equals. You made the right call escaping the mines, and the deaths of your boyfriend and friends were worth it for this ? —
With every ounce of strength, I shoved the entity back into its cage. The mental effort left me gasping.
I sank back into utter blackness.
Silence was gold.
Silence was survival.
I didn’t know how much time had passed. Could have been hours. Could have been days.
But a great sense of danger slammed into me an instant before the demon in my head screamed, Wake up, Max! Battle ready!
Battle ready? Seriously? Even fluttering my eyelids and moving my eyeballs was a struggle. My body felt like it had been buried under tons of rock. But whether through pure fear, a desperate rush of adrenaline, or whatever energy the creature pumped into me, I forced my eyes open.
And regretted it immediately.
Everything happened at once, chaos erupting in every direction .
Just as several pairs of hands lifted me onto a stretcher, a giant man built of muscle and barely contained violence advanced on me, radiating menace.
His cold gray eyes locked onto mine, surprise and suspicion flickering there alongside something else I didn’t want to name.
My body responded in a way I didn’t understand and appreciated even less.
A need pulled taut in my chest. It felt like my soul recognized him, even though I’d never seen him before in my life.
He wore a high-collared dark charcoal uniform, twin gold stripes at the shoulders. A roaring dragon crowned with flame gleamed in gold over his left breast. High-ranking, then. A commander, at least.
Behind him, a woman in her thirties wearing a white doctor’s coat struggled to keep up with his long strides.
I’d arrived at an enormous courtyard of weathered stone with impossibly high walls. The symbols of four Zodiac Houses—Leo, Virgo, Sagittarius, Aries—merged seamlessly on banners hanging from the ramparts, marking the alliance of heirs.
Just as I registered this as a military stronghold built for war, the world exploded into chaos.
Piercing shrieks tore through the air, icing my blood.
I needed to cover my ears, but lifting my arms was beyond me; they felt bound by invisible weights.
It was a miracle I’d even managed that punch to the red-eyed man earlier.
Urgent shouts rang out across the courtyard, overlapping.
“Wyverns have breached the wards!”
“Defense positions!”
“Move, move! ”
What had appeared as distant dots in the sky suddenly enlarged with terrifying speed, taking shape— leathery wings, sharp talons, dagger-like fangs. The wyverns came in a swarm.
The men who’d brought me here snapped into battle mode. The red-eyed one and the redhead drew their weapons as they barked orders. Aelindor flicked his wrist, and thick, thorny vines shot out from the ground, rising with impossible speed to meet the attacking beasts.
Archers on the walls notched arrows, aiming skyward.
Fire and wind hit my face as the giant with cold gray eyes—the one who’d been advancing on me—shrugged off his clothes in one violent motion. Flesh rippled into scales. Bones cracked and reformed. Man became beast in the span of a heartbeat.
A black and golden dragon emerged, the size of a building. Wings blotted out the sky.
“I’m your backup, Drakken!” the redhead shouted, launching himself onto the dragon’s back and landing in a crouch between its massive shoulder blades.
The moment his boots made contact, the beast launched skyward with a deafening, enraged roar that shook the ground beneath me.
Together, they tore into the mutants with fire and savage claws.
“Get the boy to the infirmary! Now!” Aelindor’s voice cut through the chaos. He didn’t look at me. His focus remained locked on the monsters descending from above .
The men carrying my stretcher ran toward a concrete building, boots pounding against the stone.
Three wyverns dove toward the courtyard in a screaming mass, one breaking through the defensive line, faster than the others, coming straight for me like I was a beacon drawing them in.
Fight! the demon in me screamed, as if I could do anything. I’m still weakened from a decade of exposure in the mines.
The men carrying me ducked. The wyvern’s claws swiped—one man screamed, throat torn open, blood spraying hot across my face. I toppled from the stretcher and hit the ground, pain lancing through my broken rib.
A scream tore from my lungs, raw and useless.
Talons missed my face by inches. I felt the rush of air, smelled rot. Yellow eyes locked onto mine, intelligent and hungry. It wanted to capture me. Somehow, that was worse.
My heart pounded, my throat parched. I raised a shaking hand in an attempt to fend it off. At least my limbs were moving now, even as pain and exhaustion throbbed through every part of me.
A vine shot through the air and gripped the wyvern, yanking it away from me. But the monster caught the other man carrying the stretcher in its jaws before Aelindor’s magic crashed into the beast with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. The soldier was dead when he hit the ground.
The sky had become the monsters’ playground, their bodies blotting out the light.
The dragon poured fire into a purple-scaled wyvern, incinerating it mid-flight.
The redhead on his back tossed cards at the wyverns surrounding them, and the magical cards exploded on impact.
Blood and body parts rained down. Flaming arrows flew toward the sky like a deadly firestorm.
Two hands lifted me with surprising gentleness. Intense crimson eyes locked onto mine. The man pressed me to his chest, shielding me with his body as he dodged through the chaos. I felt the solid muscle, the cool skin, the steady rhythm of his heart—slower than a human’s.
Ooh, vampire, the demon realized in delight.
The vampire’s arms were strong and sure.
As he sprang like nothing could stop him from getting me to safety, blackness crept in at the edges of my vision.
Exhaustion won the battle against adrenaline.
And somehow, despite everything, I felt safe with this monster who protected me from other monsters.
I blamed it on the fever dream.
The demon didn’t stop talking. We’re free, Max. No more sea of Coldiron to shroud you and bind my power.
A final realization clicked into place. My blood ran cold.
Coldiron.
I hadn’t been caging the entity with my willpower or my silence.
The sentient metal had.
And now, without it surrounding me every day in the deep earth, the entity was free.
Free to grow stronger.
Terror seized me. Unconscious to the world beyond, I was at my weakest. The barriers in my mind were thin, breaking down. I tried to wake up, to claw my way back to consciousness, to prevent the creature from taking over. But my body was full of lead.
All four of them want us, the demon purred with satisfaction. Did you feel it? One of them is a dragon! Do you know how rare that is? They haven’t walked this earth in centuries.
It had never been this chatty, never this active.
I could feel it stretching inside my mind, testing boundaries, pushing against walls I’d built over years of practice.
I could no longer stop it. The entity grew stronger with each passing moment away from the mines, without Coldiron suppressing its power.
Are we in heaven, little Max? it preened.
I was afraid I’d just landed in a personal hell.