Read Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Book 4) for Free Online Page B

he was in front of her, the next five feet to the left.
    Her instinct to protect those she cared
about caused her to do something she’d been trying to avoid. Her skin began to
prickle with electricity. As the air charged with power, Mina closed her eyes
and exhaled. She focused on the pounding of her impossibly fast heart.
    The screen door slammed, and she opened
her eyes. Nix rushed out of the house screaming with the fire poker in his
hand. He jumped off the porch and landed among the rocks, skittering the
smaller pebbles along the ground.
    The wolf turned, zeroing in on the new
threat. Nix held the poker out in front of him, then swung the metal rod toward
the animal, trying to make the wolf back up.
    The wolf dodged to the side and ran away into
the trees.
    Nix watched him retreat into the darkness
before he turned around to ask, “Is everyone all right?”
    Brody nodded and moved to stand near
Mina.
    The black form darted toward Nix from a
different direction, releasing no warning growl.
    “ Nooo !”
Mina screamed, releasing the power she’d gathered to herself. A flash of lightning
came out of the night and struck the ground inches from Nix. The startled wolf
flew off of the Nixie, landing on his back. A second bolt of lightning struck
the wolf, burning off a patch of fur and searing the skin, filling the air with
the smell of burnt flesh. The wolf yelped in pain and disappeared into the
night. This time he did not return.
    Nix blinked his eyes and looked at the
scorched earth inches from his prone body. “Well, I’ll be. I thought lightning
never struck the same place twice.”
    “It doesn’t usually.” Brody answered,
coming to survey the damage. His right arm had some nasty cuts, and the teeth
marks had gone deep.
    “Well, thankfully, mother nature was on
our side tonight.” Mina shivered as she struggled to release the energy zinging
through her fingertips back into the atmosphere. She had saved them—she
knew it. Mina wasn’t sure how, but there was no denying that she was the one
who called down the lightning. It had struck exactly where she’d wanted it to.
    Nix stood up and eyed Mina suspiciously.
“Yeah, when you see her next, tell her thanks from me.”
    Mina ignored him and went over to Brody, who
was staring off into the night where the wolf had disappeared.
    “Let’s get inside.” He turned and put his
hand on Mina’s lower back, ushering her up the porch steps in front of him.
    “You don’t need to tell me twice.” Nix
scampered up the steps and into the house before either of them reached the top
step.
    “We should call animal control,” Brody
said as soon as the door closed. They latched the lock.
    “And tell them what exactly?” Mina did
not want to be the one to call attention to her family.
    “That I think a large rabid dog is on the
loose.”
    “A dog? You think that was a large black
dog?” She asked in disbelief.
    “I don’t know. I could have sworn it was
a wolf, but then when it attacked me, I saw its eyes. Wolves don’t have blue
eyes.”
    “How do you know they were blue? It was
dark. You could have been mistaken.”
    “I’ll never forget those eyes. They were
so blue they looked human.”
    Mina’s stomach dropped. She’d thought the
same thing. She would never forget that shade of blue either, because it
haunted her every night in her dreams.

 
    Chapter 7
    Never in her wildest dreams would Mina have
thought Brody Carmichael would be sitting shirtless on her bathroom counter. Of
course, as dreamy as this was, his bare muscled chest was the last thing on her
mind. Okay, maybe it was the second to last thing on her mind.
    The first was applying hydrogen peroxide
to the long cuts on his chest. Nix was taking care of the more serious injuries
on Brody’s arm. He’d already cleaned up most of the blood with a clean towel,
being careful of the torn skin surrounding the bites.
    “I think I can make a salve for this,”
Nix said after evaluating Brody’s