I rushed forward without another word and leaped forward in a lunge toward Elisiana. She sprung into the air, narrowly gliding over my claws and brought a foot down in a heavy axe kick onto my right shoulder. I twisted immediately to counter attack and managed to grab onto her injured arm. My flames immediately started surging up to try engulfing her with fire, but she flicked her wrist and the lasso whipped around my neck. She tugged downward with insane force and I lost my grip as I was swept off my feet by the rope around my neck.

She smiled wickedly as her good arm grew in size and started hurling me around like a toy on a string. I was slammed hard through a dying tree and the air left my lungs as she flung me over head in a wide arc before slamming me into the ground again. What kind of absurd strength do these shifters have? I cut off my thoughts as she flung me back into the air for another slam. Right as I was at the height of the arc and above her head, I gripped the rope from my end and jerked at it with all of my bodyweight.

The move didn't manage to break her own grip on the rope, but it was enough to arrest my momentum and lead me into a dive straight down toward her. She narrowly dodged out of the way as I crashed into where she just stood, but I had anticipated her movement this time.

I instantly followed with an upward slash that tore three red lines on the arm she brought up to defend with. Now it was my turn to smirk as I surged into a frenzy of relentless strikes and slashes. She fought back with her own deadly claws and used the rope as a tool to aid her attacks. We were trading damage for damage and wound for wound, but I was used to pushing through injuries and it was clear she hadn't been hurt in centuries or more. It distracted her every time she took a hit or failed to bring me down.

I breathed a wave of fire at her filled with all the fury I had grown over the fight and she barely managed to dispel it with her own wave of frost. She leaped back and pulled at the rope to drag me on the ground with her, so I took the chance to shift into a greater wolf and bounded after her faster than she could move.

She couldn't hold onto the rope if she shifted into any other form, so I took advantage of my increased speed to run a circle around her, binding her in her own rope. "You mangey beast!" she snarled as she started to free herself. She dropped the rope entirely as she realized she couldn't keep up with me like that, and shifted into a sparrow to escape.

Big mistake. I put force and fire into my hind legs and jumped at top speed, shifting as I took off. It was my fastest transformation into a werewolf in memory and I didn't have a second to spare as I wound up and smacked the royal sparrow back into the ground with the back of my fist.

Making yourself small enough to fly might have its advantages, but it lowers your defenses. And a full strike from a 300-pound werewolf is nothing the scoff at. The force of the strike sent the bird at an angle into the frozen hard floor and ricocheted her into a nearby tree.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to pull in all the might I had in me. Then roared with a full force fire burst straight toward the princess. There was a blur of movement from my right and something hissed past the tree right before my attack exploded.

There was a loud boom as the tree shattered and a white light flashed. A second later, there was nothing but a pile of burning wood where the sparrow had been.

I turned to the left of that to see a great white wolf clutching an unconscious silver sparrow by its wing and blazing neon eyes glaring incredulously at me. It was Prince Bastian whom I had left back at the castle. He must have closed the distance to come back up his sister.

Just as I recognized him, the familiar pressure he exuded seemed to push me back a step like an invisible wall. I couldn't fight him. That last burst of fire had nearly drained my strength and I was seconds from falling out of combat form. But upon looking closer, I could see that he hadn't completely avoided my last attack either. There were some scorch marks below the mist on his fur. It still wasn't enough damage for me to consider a fight with a second Lycan.

Bastian's voice resonated through my head. We will remember this act of aggression, Mongrel! It sounded like both a threat and a promise. But with those words, he turned back to where he'd come from and dashed out of sight faster than I had any hope of keeping up.

By some miracle, he decided to retreat with Elisiana instead of double-down and fight me. Maybe he thought I still had a lot of fight left in me, or that I would have backup on the way. Either way, I was lucky and grateful because now I could take a moment to recover and decide on my next move. This battle was a win, but the war had only grown twice as large.