Page 52 of Ensnared

“Oh, please,” I say. “I barely poked you.”

But when it spins around, I’m regretting everything. Where’s the prince?

“Why would I tell you that?”

I have urgent news from our leader about human troop movements.

Whoops.

“So. . .you’re not trying to kill him?”

Today, I did not expect to learn that dragons can glare.

“The thing is, you kind of broke into his house, and that seemed a little hostile to me. So, I know that I stabbed your butt, and you could get angry about that, but I?—”

The dragon doesn’t warn me in any way before opening its mouth and zapping me.

Once, as a kid, I touched an electric fence. I wanted to know how it felt. Yes, I was that idiotic as a child. Anyway, it didn’t feel great. I shot back about a foot and a half and landed hard on my bony rear end.

That was nothing to this.

The electric charge that channels into me rattles me down to my genetic code, probably jumbling my DNA beyond repair. My pain sensors are shaking, they’ve been so overloaded. I can’t breathe, I can’t see, and my brain shuts down. I can’t even recall my own name.

But then the world sort of bows outward and then shifts back in, and the weight of my poor choices slams into me like a freight train. It feels like someone’s inverted all my cells and is playing a song with them.

All of that misery pisses me off.

Royally.

“I think you lied to me,” I hiss. “You aren’t here to convey a message at all, are you?”

The dragon hisses, but this time, I don’t aim for its butt. I stab that nightmare right next to its front leg, hitting who knows what, and it howls even louder than it did the first time.

And it bleeds black.

It’s throwing its head back, ready to zap me again, probably ratcheting the power knob all the way up to demolish, when the bathroom door opens.

“Axel, really?” I can’t believe it. “Shift, already, would you?”

“Are you using my swords?” He sighs. “You didn’t even ask.”

“I’m about to die, here.”

“I know,” he says. “I heard.”

“You were awake?”

He shrugs. “I told you we don’t sleep. Of course I was awake.”

The stupid silver dragon zaps me again while he’s chatting, and it hurts even worse this time. But by the time I regain consciousness, lying sideways on the plush carpet of Axel’s master suite, I can see the carcass of the awful silver monster that tried to kill me.

“You still alive?” Axel doesn’t even look worried.

I can’t feel my toes. I’m drooling. My tongue feels too big for my mouth. My hair has probably fallen out. I’m positive my teeth are loose. But I manage to moan, “I hate you.”

He chuckles. “I feel it, too. I wasn’t the idiot who got shot.”

I find the thread of the bond and I lean on it, hard, projecting all my misery, all my anger, and all my frustration at him like a right hook.