His promise to limit the damage Jac did was forgotten the moment that enormous, beautiful hammer first connected. Each time, Tobei felt the vibrations in his chest. This woman was incredible.
Jac let out a yell as she reared back, sweat sparkling like flecks of gold leaf on her skin. Her lip was curled, her face ferocious and still so delicate, and Tobei was so busy admiring her wound form, the thrum of power in the air around her, that he nearly let her crush him into pink paste.
Not a bad way to go.
He couldn’t let that happen to his best girl Nani, though, and Tobei slipped out of the hammer’s range, his violin held safely at his side.
“Where the hell,” Tobei asked, making her spin to look at him, “did you learn magic like that?”
Her cute little nose was scrunched in a snarl. “Where’d you learn to tuck tail like that?”
“You want me to fight?”
The forest had gone silent, all the bugs and beasts and birds that normally chattered away having fled. Only the stream, its path now mangled, voiced its bubbling protest to this violence as it pooled awkwardly in the newly hammered craters.
Tobei had never been a fan of silence—if it was too quiet, he could hear his own thoughts.
“Alright,” he acquiesced with a grin.
Tossing his wet hair back, Tobei stood tall and lifted Nani to let her nuzzle against his neck. Jac’s bright, burning eyes followed the bow as he gave it a pretty twirl, making sure that its blade sent slices of morning light all around the clearing. The mixture of skepticism and derision on her heart-shaped face was a familiar one—it was one his opponents wore whenever he showed up to a movement magic fight with a violin.
Jac at least had the sense to brace herself as Tobei put blade to string. But he didn’t cut the first note right away, he waited. To watch her tense with anticipation, to savor the way he commanded her full attention.
Trying to look unimpressed, Jac sucked her teeth and said, “Your pal Ben spoke the truth. You are an asshole.”
Tobei winked.
He gutted the silence in one clean, violent slash, and beautiful, bloody Chaos spilled out.
It wasn’t exactly movement magic, and it wasn’t exactly music magic, but some messy, chaotic marriage of the two. Tobei danced and Nani sang, and their audience screamed their appreciation, rained blood-red roses at their feet.
But Jac was nearly as fast as she was strong, and she braced her hammer before her to block the melodic onslaught. It took her no time to counter, and the brain-rattling sound of her hammer meeting earth became the percussion to ground his song.
Tobei couldn’t help but grin as they danced around the clearing making some of the most beautiful, violent music he’d ever heard. He could see it in her, too. That electricity, the way she came alive. The way that, all the time they traded blows, dodged and blocked and thrust, their gaze was never broken. And if he wasn’t mistaken, that snarl that curled her lip was half smile now.
Mother Dark, he wanted to fuck her.
The handle of Jac’s hammer caught Nani’s blade and Tobei twirled her away, slashing at Jac’s side. She parried him again, then let that parry continue into a swing for his chest. He bent back and sent his magic directly up into the head of the hammer, knocking it off course so he could slip under it. But, though the hammer missed him, the pulse of magic that came off it didn’t. It hit him like a steam engine, blowing him twenty feet to the side. He landed on the balls of his bare feet, sliding another few yards in a crouch.
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By the time he came to a stop, he was already drawing a high, sweet song of death across the strings.
The two were so consumed with consuming each other that neither noticed the fast, heavy footfalls rushing their way.
Kunin barely had time to burst out of the undergrowth in all his silver-furred splendor, with his flashing blue eyes and pearly teeth, before Tobei called, “Behind!” and Kunin whirled into place behind Tobei, planting all four paws.
Maxea and Drauge hovered at the edges of the battle, the three Wolves creating a triangle around them, each alert and ready to dive in at the first sign they were needed. Jac took each of them in, surprise stuttering her step. But it was only one step, and then the dance began anew.
As he ducked and lunged and thrust, voices began to pop into Tobei’s awareness. The whole camp must be awake with all this racket, and those brave enough to investigate gathered around them—on the other side of the boundary created by the Wolves, of course.
“Tobei!” Ori rushed toward him.
“Nah, nah, nah!” Tobei called, slicing through the shockwave of Jac’s latest swing so it parted around him, whipping up his hair. “She’s mine!”
“I don’t belong,” Jac grunted with her next swing, “to anyone!”
Tobei darted out of the way. “That makes two of us.”
This had all been play so far, neither really intending to damage the other, but with all these eyes on him, Tobei felt inspired. He couldn’t help but take the risk, to finally get in close.
Nani quickened her tempo, and his movements kept time. As Jac wound up, Tobei dashed forward—
His face appeared over her left shoulder just as Nani threaded under Jac’s raised right arm and came to rest against her glistening chest.
Into her ear, he whispered, “Checkmate.”
A thrill went through him at the little gasp she made. Right before her elbow to his sternum stole the air from his own lungs.
Tobei found himself on his ass, his back against a tree root, unsure how long he’d been sitting there, lungs burning and black starbursts all across his vision.
His first thought: Is Nani okay? And when he looked down to see her lying safely across his lap, his second thought was: How does my hair look?
Jac dropped her hammer onto one of her shoulders. Chin high, she tried to pretend she wasn’t panting, like that had all been no more than a light jog for her. She started to take a step toward him—but then his vision was all silver fur and Wolf penis. Kunin was crouched over him, snarling and snapping. Tobei heard Max and Drauge moving in as well, and before Tobei had gotten his breath back to call them off—
“Enough,” a familiar growl around a man’s words silenced the Wolves easily.
“Ku,” Tobei wheezed, shoving at his Wolf’s leg, “get your dick out of my face.”
Kunin stepped aside to reveal the small crowd parting—for Daivad. He wore his Leader Face as he traversed the craters toward Jac—but his expression didn’t match the scent that rode to Tobei’s nose on a breeze. Emotion scents—a lot of them. Nowadays, Tobei rarely caught anything more than irritation coloring their leader’s aura. Well, that and sexual frustration.
The smell of human was on him too. The same one that was mixed with Jac’s.
Daivad took in the damage around them without so much as a blink. To Jac, he spoke in a flat tone, “She’s fine. Leave that hammer and I’ll take you to her.”
“Sweet shit, she’s fine. You threw her in a pen.” Jac held Daivad’s gaze, her face every bit as expressive as his wasn’t. Her golden eyes were burning and that snarl was back.
Daivad stared her down, and Jac stared back. Tobei was back on his feet and walking stiffly toward the glaring pair by the time Daivad finally glanced to one side, irritated. He stared at nothing, his jaw flexed, and seemed to steel himself. Finally, in growl that bubbled out through gritted teeth,
“She said ‘bubble sandwich.’”
Immediately, tension melted from Jac’s shoulders. But she didn’t look any less pissed. Without breaking eye-contact with Daivad, Jac shifted her grip on the hammer so the head swung down. Everyone except Daivad and Tobei tensed, but Jac just strode forward and offered the handle to Daivad.
When his hand closed over the handle, she released it. The weight of the hammer jerked Daivad forward so hard that he nearly fell over, and the hammer hit the ground with a powerful thunk. Tobei snickered at the surprise on Daivad’s face. Jac just strode past, in the direction Daivad had come from, head high.
Daivad shot Tobei an icy glare, then tugged on the hammer. It wouldn’t budge.