I Married A Dragon (Prime Mating Agency)(65)

“No!” I hissed in a whisper, when I felt the tingle of Nero starting to shift us out of there. “Release me! Cedros is coming.”

He hesitated for a second, but me activating the energy shield on my armband while grabbing my blaster forced his tentacles to release me. That broke the stealth aura that had hidden us from view. The golden male noticed us, shock and horror descending on his now fully draconic features, just as he was vanishing from view. Almost at the exact same time, the other male and female also vanished.

I realized my terrible mistake as the aqrats burst out of the portal into the rift’s hub. With the Kwesars having phase shifted out of here, the beasts switched their focus on Nero and me. I never thought the apprentices would cut and run, leaving me behind to face this mess. But then, they hadn’t known I’d been here until they were already mid-shift.

I opened fire on the aqrats, but Nero activated his insanely badass beast mode. The shadow dweller’s size quadrupled in a blink, his tentacles glowing with an almost blinding purple light, while electricity crackled at their tips. The potent static energy had my hair standing on end, and a cold shiver ran down my spine when he emitted a terrifying roar that even the void couldn’t dampen.

Purple lightning shot out of the tips of his tentacles, striking a dozen aqrats at least. Those who had the misfortune of getting hit in the face never realized what killed them. Their heads exploded like overripe watermelons. Others ended up with massive gaping wounds or severed limbs. But even as more of them pressed into the small space, Nero grabbed them and the wounded with his tentacles, effortlessly tearing them in half like one would a piece of paper. He discarded them like so much trash while chomping the head of another right off with one bite of his insanely enormous mouth.

Barely twenty seconds had elapsed, and yet corpses were already piling up. Things were happening so fast, I felt as if I was moving in slow motion as I fired at the creatures. I was turning my blaster towards a handful of aqrats rushing towards a nearby pathway opened onto the outside world when Cedros came bursting out of one of the shadowy walls of the void, already in his battle form.

In the time it took me to fire two more shots, Cedros had already assessed the situation. He flicked the portal closed with a wave of his hand while smashing two creatures trying to exit into the real world to a pulp with his tail. The battle ended in a blink, with Nero grabbing the last aqrat, holding it helpless in his tentacles, then ate it alive in four huge bites.

I swallowed hard, feeling a little creeped out as I looked at his crazed and nearly feral expression. The sphere that was both his head and body had grown bigger than two-thirds of my body. He glanced at me from head to toe with his glowing purple eyes, then at Cedros, before turning to the corpses on the ground.

Before I could say or do anything, Cedros scooped me up into his embrace, even as he was morphing back into his normal form. Behind him, Nero hovered over the fallen beasts, his tentacles splayed while electric tendrils shot out from their tips to crawl over the remains. Seconds later, the corpses began collapsing in on themselves, deflating into mummified-looking carcasses before vanishing into smoke.

“My Kaida, are you hurt?” Cedros asked, moving away from me just enough to examine me for any sign of injury.

I absentmindedly shook my head, stretching my neck to look at Nero over his shoulder. “What is he doing?”

“Are you sure you’re not injured? Did any of them scratch you or inject you with their toxin?” he insisted.

“No. I’m fine. What is Nero doing?”

“Kaida, if toxin—”

“Cedros, I’m fine!” I exclaimed, interrupting him. “Stop worrying. Now, please tell me what he’s doing.”

Despite his obvious desire to insist, Cedros yielded and cast a glance at Nero. “He’s siphoning their lingering life force to replenish the energy reserves he expended.”

“Oh,” I said, looking at the shadow dweller with awe as he was finishing draining the last corpses. “He saved my life. I made a stupid call, and he saved me.”

“What happened here?” Cedros asked in a severe tone.

I quickly recapped what I had witnessed. When I told him about the apprentices phasing out of here, he lost it.

“They abandoned you?!” he shouted, displaying anger for the first time since I’d met him.

“No! It wasn’t like that. They did not know I was here. When the aqrats showed up, I called you and got out of Nero’s camouflage to help them fight. The golden male saw me just as he was vanishing. Since this is an unstable rift, I doubt they could have just waltzed right back here to assist me, even if they had wanted to.”

While my words somewhat mollified him, they had definitely not appeased his fury.

“They still created this dangerous situation and fled,” Cedros hissed, before pointing an angry finger at the open doorway onto the real world the aqrats had tried to go through. “This portal leads off-world. Had you not called me and stopped them from jumping out, aqrats would be roaming that land and decimating innocents!”

“What?! But… I can see outside! I thought common people like me could only see on the other side of a portal if the destination was nearby?”

“That is true with a common portal. But you could see on the other side of a master portal, one infused with tremendous energy. Did you not see the terrace of my lair through the very first portal I had sent for you and Kayog on the day you moved to Dramnac to be with me?”