But then those human troops had shown up and he’d moved inside this cave, sending out his fighters to engage the humans. When that grew boring, he’d sent out one of the stupider fighters to pretend to be him. That one would die and then, when the human soldiers thought the worst of it was over, he’d reemerge and finish them. A good plan, even had a human to help because they’d given him some gold. Gold only meant something to humans; it meant nothing to ogres. Only meat and blood and death meant anything to them. Only battle and war meant anything to the mighty ogres.

His plan had been working well, too, but then that traitor was found out and the human soldiers had tracked the rest of his troops to these caves.

But he had no intention of dying now. Not at the hands of these weak humans with their fragile skin, tiny size, and fancy armor and weapons. True warriors didn’t need all that armor to cover their body. True warriors fought without it.

“Blood Leader!”

The Leader looked up to see a human female walking toward him. She’d used his proper title in his language to call his attention. She wore little armor but had many fancy weapons. She was tall for a female but brown of skin. Strange. He’d never seen that before. But she was sturdy, strong. She’d make a good breeder.

Too bad he’d have to kill her instead.

The Leader lifted his axe and challenged with a nod of his head. The human strode toward him, short sword brandished; then she was charging him flat out.

Lip curling, the Leader swung his flint axe. The woman, fast considering her size, ducked his weapon and came charging at him again. She made no sound as she charged—no warning battle cry, no scream of rage. She simply ran at him with her short sword at the ready.

He swung the axe again, but the woman leaped up, her foot colliding with his chest. She shoved herself off and spun, bringing the sword around and down against his neck. The woman was surprisingly strong, her sword cutting past thick green skin and taut, layered muscle, burying itself there.

The Leader staggered, his blood spurting from the wound. But he wasn’t dead. Not yet. Not for quite a while. It took much effort to kill his kind, but he sensed she already knew that. Knew this wouldn’t be an easy fight. Ahhhh. A true challenge. How nice.

He lifted his mighty flint axe. This axe was only wielded by the leader of the tribes and he was the leader. The strongest, the meanest. He’d made sure everyone knew that when he’d eaten his firstborn whole. It had proved his point and had been no great loss. It had been a female after all. Just another breeder.

How could killing this human be any harder?

His axe was coming down again, aimed for the human woman’s head, but as he nearly reached her, she raised her arm, caught hold of his weapon’s handle and held it.

She held it. Held him. Growling, he tried to pull the axe from her, but she held it. He knew he hadn’t weakened that much. Not enough that this human female could stop him from holding on to his weapon. The weapon that made him the Leader. But she held tight, eventually yanking it away.

The Leader reached for her with his bare hands, enraged that she’d dare take his axe. But she stepped to the side and swung the axe up, over, and down, cutting off his arm that was closest to her.

The Leader gazed down at where his arm used to be, and that’s when she kicked him in the back of the leg and dropped him to his knees.

Around him, he could hear his troops dying, screaming to their gods. He’d give these humans none of that from him. Not now, not ever.

The human stepped close, studied him. The Leader sat back on his heels, his life’s blood pouring out of him.

She lifted her booted foot, pressed it against his chest and shoved him to the ground.

“You can’t be that big a fool,” he snarled at her in his language, knowing she’d understand. “To think I’d die so easy.”

With the arm he still had left, he reached over and grabbed a club from the body of one of his dead. Grabbed it and was swinging it toward her with the intent to break her leg and then her head.

But something wrapped around her waist. Something long and scaled and blue. One second she was above him, raising his own axe to finish him off, the next she was pulled away and the Leader looked up into the face of the biggest dragon he’d ever seen. He didn’t know there were dragons that big.

The beast took a big breath in and even before the flames covered his body, he knew this would be the thing that killed him.

The flames burned hot and removed his flesh and muscle and, as darkness surrounded him and the dying screams of his troops filled the cavern, the Leader heard the dragon say to the human female, “So can we go back now?”

As soon as Izzy’s feet touched the ground, Brannie quickly threw her arms around her cousin and held her. She held her tight because she knew that Izzy killing Éibhear probably wouldn’t be overlooked by the rest of the family. Most likely.

Although Brannie knew for a fact that her mum, Ghleanna the Decimator, would completely understand when she found out that Éibhear had gotten between a warrior female and a kill. There were just some things one didn’t do among the Cadwaladrs and that was a big one.

But Brannie understood that Éibhear was too self-absorbed to have a death wish, so there had to be another reason he was doing all this.

Determined to find out what that was, Brannie carried Izzy away from Éibhear and the other Mì-runach. She stopped by Fionn, Izzy’s next in command. When she released her, Brannie immediately saw that Izzy was way beyond mere anger. She could tell because Izzy hadn’t said anything. She hadn’t done anything. She was simply standing tall and straight like a statue. Not a good thing. The last time Brannie had seen Izzy act like that, an entire army had been wiped out. It hadn’t been pretty then, and it wouldn’t be pretty now to see the same thing happen to blood kin, so Brannie knew she had to handle this.