Thankfully, Eden is racing toward me, her purple dragon wings catching huge air, but the ball is starting to vibrate so hard that I don’t think I can hold on much longer. Plus, I’m a little afraid I’m going to lose a finger. But this is for the bloodstone. This is to get Hudson out of my head. So I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing that will get Cole off me. I lift my other foot up and kick Cole straight in the face as hard as I can.
He screams, but he lets go, falling about fifteen feet to the ground below, and I turn around and throw the ball straight at Eden.
She catches it with a dragon’s roar and a thumbs-up, and then she’s racing toward the finish line. She’s almost there and the crowd is on their feet, chanting for her—and so are we—when one of the witches from Cole’s team hits her with a spell that has her spinning wildly toward the ground.
Shit!
Fear grips me by the throat as I worry about her getting hurt—dragon or not, that’s a really long fall, and if it’s a nearly fatal one, she’ll be disqualified and magically removed from the game—but Jaxon blasts out with his telekinesis and keeps her from slamming into the ground. Before one of us can get the ball from her, though, the other werewolf on Cole’s team swoops in and grabs it.
Macy and I race toward him, but he dives into a portal right before one of us gets there. To my surprise, Macy dives in after him. Twenty-five seconds later, they finally emerge, but he’s lying stunned on the ground and she’s got the ball. It’s burning red-hot, though, so she throws it to Xavier, who catches it on the fly.
The only problem? They’re all the way at the other end of the field again, and Cole’s entire team is between them and the goal line. Then again, so are we.
Xavier runs for twenty seconds, dodging hexes and dragon fire and even a vampire bite to the shoulder as Mekhi and Jaxon try to fight off a witch and a dragon so one of them can fade to him.
Gwen and I race forward, happy that everyone else is occupied, but before either of us can get to Xavier, Cole brings him down with a body slam about halfway up the field. Xavier’s not going out with a fight, however, and he rolls away, clutching the ball to his chest as it burns hotter and vibrates so hard, I can hear it halfway across the field.
Just then, Cole slices a massive claw straight toward Xavier’s arm. I wince in anticipation of how much it’s going to hurt, even if Xavier’s magically protected from the claw piercing skin. But at the last second, Cole flicks his wrist and the claw misses Xavier’s arm entirely.
But it turns out Cole wasn’t aiming for the arm at all. Everyone in the stadium gasps as, instead, he slices the magical bracelet on Xavier’s wrist clean off. We watch it fall to the ground as if in slow motion. Xavier’s eyes widen when he finally realizes what the rest of us have already caught on to. Cole’s next blow, his clawed hand already arcing above Xavier, is headed straight for Xavier’s unprotected throat.
My heart stutters in my chest. Gwen is pretty close, but not close enough to help Xavier. And neither am I. No one is.
The whole stadium is on their feet as Cole’s razor-sharp claws close the distance with Xavier’s neck in the blink of an eye. There is a collective gasp. It’s a death blow. There’s no way—
There’s a huge roar from the crowd because… I blink… Blink again… Wow. Not a death blow after all, because Cole is now…a fluffy white chicken. His soft feathers gently caress Xavier’s neck as his small chicken body falls the three feet to the ground to squawk angrily.
My gaze darts around the arena until I connect with Macy, who obviously popped up through another portal about thirty feet from Xavier in the middle of all the drama. She looks as white as a sheet. Also hella pissed. And deeply satisfied at humiliating Cole for such a cowardly, and almost deadly, move.
But we don’t have time to savor the image of Cole clucking, because the spell won’t last much longer and Xavier is on his feet in a split second, the comet still burning bright in his hands. The stadium erupts in cheering and foot stomping.
Quickly looking around, he spies Eden and tosses her the comet as she swoops in from behind. She’s climbing now, her powerful wings taking her fifty feet in the air in seconds. But Cole’s team isn’t out, and one of the witches slams Eden with a lightning bolt and Eden is tumbling from the sky, the comet no longer in her hands and falling as well.
I launch myself into the air after it. The only problem is that one of their dragons has done the same thing, so we race each other to the ball. My heart is pounding faster and faster the closer we get, and I’m determined to win the race as another burst of energy from Jaxon via the mating bond sizzles along my skin.