The Were stand still, watching me with twitching tails and flattened ears. The Imperial looks as if he wishes for anything other than the choice they face. Should he throw his people needlessly to rescue me, or flee and live to see another day? Leadership is making the hardest choices and living with the consequences. It is why I never wish to lead.

My eyes find Flash, and his are slit and flashing with an emotion other than humor. I quirk an ear, and gesture with my nose for them to leave. I won’t have more perishing today. Hopefully, this monster will play with my corpse long enough to let them escape.

My head hangs as my body protests its lack of air.

Blackness edges out the light as I give in to what I know is coming; and yet, next I know I’m thrown into the air, coming to with a gasping breath and flailing paws many horse lengths from ground. I don't recommend being thrown into the air like a rag doll. It's not as fun as it would seem.

I yelp as the ground grows ever closer. I land on something soft and warm, hard enough to send us both tumbling. Other large cats soften my fall, all of us flailing in a bunch of legs and bodies in a mixture of yelps and muzzles smushed into the dirt.

Gritty dirt and snow makes a foul coating in my mouth as I look into blue eyes on the black as night panther who took the brunt of my fall.

“Flash?” I ask.

His worried eyes swim in and out of my vision.

“Yep. Now hang in there, crazy kino,” he says with a grunt, snuffling around my neck and sneezing when my still-smoking ear hair tickles his nose. It says a lot I don't even growl at him.

I almost chuckle, happy with being alive, then remind myself everything hurts and it’s better to stay still.

I turn my head and force my limbs into a seated position. What I see strikes my heart. She-Dragon is fighting. She has found the strength that has been growing inside for a very long time--it's always been a part of her.

A howl of joy arises in my throat, but I squash it down. She doesn’t need distractions at the moment. But the monster does.

I watch with bated breath, filing and discarding ideas left and right as the battle rages.

She swings her barbed tail at his legs. He jumps out of the way; she follows right behind and uses her bulk to send him tumbling. He crashes into the cliff face hard enough to send rocks the size of small cottages dropping from above. I duck with the rest of the Werecats as the concussion of the rocks sends more, smaller rocks towards us. A few the size of my palm pelt me with bruises, but thankfully nothing worse.

She-Dragon stands between us and the monster. With a loud cry, something between that of an eagle and a hawk, but vastly more powerful such that it leaves my ears ringing, she challenges her former mate.

He growls low in his throat. His eyes convey surprise at his mate’s courage, plus a hint of... fear. I hadn’t recognized it until then, but... she's bigger.

Even a kind and gentle soul can only be pushed so far.

He spits a stream of flame, the roaring flame scalding the tip of my nose and making my skin feel tight under my fur, even as it stays many dragon lengths from me and with She-Dragon between us and the flame. She makes an odd coughing roar, and sears through a wall of flame with a ball of fire that obliterates his. He comes for her, a growl of rage rumbling in his chest. With each footfall he makes the ground tremble... this aggression surprises her, and she hesitates. That costs her.

He rips into her foreleg with long claws. She spins with her tail to get him off, but not before I see him clamp upon her neck. He lets go before she can claw him, but blood streams down her chest and legs... she seems to be losing her drive. Before I can double guess my actions, I dart forward.

Bites and claws fly as the two clash in a battle of wills. I dash around offending muscle and tissue, racing to the male. I finally make it underneath his belly and use my fangs to draw a jagged line along the soft tissue there, as I would disembowel an elk if I were hunting with a pack.

A shrill scream, not unlike a crying baby, comes from the monster, and I can’t help being faintly amused. This guy genuinely is a big bully used to pushing his weight around. But that’s a boatload of weight.

My amusement drops suddenly as he cranes his head around to peer at me with red eyes, smoke snorting from his nostrils. I back peddle quickly as he tries to squash me like a bug with those vast claws. She-Dragon sends me an image.

It makes me jerk to screeching halt, which, quite frankly, saves my skin. A ball of flame rushes over my head and brings my mind back to the fight.

I turn, just dodging another stream of fire that makes my tail smoke. She-Dragon is waiting with her wing on the ground and the panthers prowling at her feet.

I argue with her the entire way. This is not meant to be let out. The anger I have bottled away could end very badly should it get away from me. The Cynic has been highly more helpful since our talk and he’s kept The Beast caged much of the time. But what she’s asking? If I let it loose... it’s likely I could kill us all. It wouldn’t be the first time.

But she thinks it's the only way. I shake my head, jumping the last few scales to her back as she sends a heated inferno at the male to keep him off of us.

The fire takes something from her... she's weakening. I send the Were the image She-Dragon wants, with a few added instructions. A few minds question me, but I shove them off. Now isn't the time for questions. We all die unless this works... and I hope we don't all die even if this does work.

A few of the panthers break off to distract the male. They dive underneath him using claws and jaws to disembowel. They only succeed in making him angry, but I don’t mind. The angrier, the better. Get that calculating gleam out of his eyes and make him react with anger. Then he can be manipulated. Then he can be conquered.

Now the tricky part of making it from the dragon’s back to her head as she bends that monstrosity down so I can climb her sinuous neck to her forehead. There’s just enough room between her two curling horns for me to crouch. The bristling feather-like scales on the top of her head are still raised like a cakatoo and are taller than I am. I'm able to use them as stabilizers. I lean my body against the tall scales with soft edges and wedge myself in until the proper time. Having a moving floor beneath you is not all it's cracked up to be.

The panthers rush in from all sides, streaming like a multicolored patchwork quilt. The male turns, swatting with abandon at the little bugs biting his feet. He honestly looks like a housekeeper fighting against a swarm of fire ants, hopping and thwacking with his tail like a broom.

I prepare, feeling for the ball at my core. It rolls and coils like a pit of molten lava. It begs for release.

I feel her weakening beneath me as blood splatters from the wound in her neck. She needs me. And I need her. She throws a ball of flame at her ex-mates head. He crouches, spinning around to hiss, and his red eyes meet mine where I am atop She-Dragon.

She sends the image again, and I lick her forehead. She’s waning, so am I. We need to end this. It worked before. I hope it works again. I’m calling myself an idiot for using the same tactic twice, but there’s only so much I can do in such a situation.

As soon as she ducks her head, I leap. His furious eyes are all I see as I latch onto the membrane at his wings and She-Dragon spits a ball of flame at his head at the same time.

Any remaining Werecats race back to safety, getting behind She-Dragon. The monster gives a growl that shakes the very earth. His head snakes around and his bright, animalistic eyes meet mine in the hatred reserved for only the most dire of enemies. If looks could kill... but he has other methods of death.

With a snap of his wing, he sends me to the ground. He moves his sinuous neck to snap me in two. I get my feet beneath me and dart to the side, letting a small amount of bitter, tumulous anger free.

The Beast feeds out, a small patch of snow around me showing scorch marks... but then the anger abruptly retreats, tail tucked between its legs to slam back into my body, knocking me onto my back.

Oh, come on!

The dragon had darted back as The Beast trailed a ring of blackened soil around me and toward him, but as soon as the black tendrils seep back into my soul, he grins with rotting teeth, reptilian lips pulled back, exposing purple gums.

Never in my life have I seen something so ugly.

Work, work, work, I chant in my mind, but the ball I call The Beast only quivers and retreats further into the cage I made for it, refusing to come out when I actually need it. I dub thee The Coward.

Cynic, DO SOMETHING!

I'm trying!

Try harder! We're going to be chomp-smash.

That makes Cynic chuckle. Chomp-smash? Is that even a thing?

Not. The. Time! I grunt as I dodge a foot larger than me by many times.

She-Dragon leaps on his back and smashes him into the ground. He heaves her off, and she sends me a pleading look.

I know. I know.

I dig deep into my soul, grab the quavering beast by the tail, and drag it out kicking and howling.

Well, that's one way to do it, I suppose, Cynic says.

I howl in pain and fury just as the male spins, catching She-Dragon with his barbed tail and smashing her against the rock face.

With a growl, I walk up to them, and just as the dragon is bending his head down to kill his mate, I send the screaming and fear-filled fury at him. It catches his wing and foreleg, peeling back flesh and eroding the muscle like an acid.

He screams in pain and fear, and I whine from the high-pitched sound.

But then some of the black tendrils dart to She-Dragon, and her pain-filled trilling hurts something in my soul.

I can't control it, and it makes a large mark on her already bleeding chest. I do everything in my power to call it back, but nothing I do works, not even grabbing it by the tail like I did before.

The male turns, a flash of fear making his eyes glow crimson for a split second, before fury so deep and so black turns them darker than I have ever seen in any creature... except for in my own eyes. It is almost as if I were looking in a mirror.

I don't like what I see.

I howl as something around the prison in my soul gives and I flop to the earth, weak and drained beyond any physical brink I’ve ever pushed my body to.

As I lay prone on the earth, the cool ground and the muddy soil soaks into my fur, making it grimy and uncomfortable.

The darkness is done, so it trails sizzling paths in the earth as it returns to me, seeping back into my skin, tingling as it returns to its cage with an anger directed, not at the world as usual, but at me. The tingling turns into white hot pain stabbing into my paws, then moves up my legs and into my body. My muscles lock in pain, and I bite my tongue, tasting coppery blood.

I can’t move, even as the dragons continue their fight.

She-Dragon seizes the initiative after I collapse, capturing her ex-mate's throat in a death-lock. She keens a warning. He drops his tail to the ground and allows his wings to droop out from his sides and near the earth, one with holes in the thin membranes from my attack. He trills back complacently, begging for mercy from one he's never given mercy.

Flash, the Imperial, and a few other Were grasp the scruff at the back of my neck and pull me further from the enfolding drama. Somehow, I can’t seem to care about the rocks scraping beneath my fur and making my head bounce.

Everything is hazy and indistinct, but I squint to make out the two dragons. Waves of pain flow from my paws and into the cavity I created inside to keep The Beast in. The Cynic screams, and it takes all I am to keep my watering eyes on the fight and make sure She-Dragon wins.

She slightly cracks her jaws at his surrender, and he snaps his neck around to capture hers. Out of her big brown eye one glistening drop falls, slowly reaching for the ground as the eye it once belonged to closes in grief.

She bites down, crunching through tissue and bone in a matter of seconds, then throws him over the edge of the cliff. His screams grow fainter, but they held a note of question within the sound, as if he were surprised.

I can’t help wondering why. He would’ve killed her in a heartbeat. Did he not think she could do the same?

The splash of something large slapping the face of the water rises from the raging torrents far below.