Free The Battle Sylph by L. J. McDonald Page A

back, stumbling against the wall and nearly falling.
    Heyou ignored the old man, focusing on the other two. Solie’s father was only a little taller than himself, his balding head sparsely topped with bright red hair. The second male was even taller but overweight, nearly the same age as Solie’s father, and he was frowning.
    “Go away,” Heyou growled, trying not to use his aura in case it woke his queen. Not unless he had to.
    “You,” her father snapped, pointing. “You’re the one who was with my daughter. Where is she?”
    The second man gaped. “She has a lover? I didn’t pay your bride price for Solie to have a lover!”
    “She doesn’t!” the father assured him frantically. “She’d never do that. She’s a good girl.” He shot Heyou a hateful look. “Who the hell are you?”
    Heyou snarled. It still felt good to say his name, but these men angered him. They had no rights when it came to his queen. “Go away. Solie is mine.”
    Both men wore identical looks of shock. It would have been laughable if Heyou was amused at all. His real form itched under his skin from an urge to hit them with the aura of his hate, to flex it the same as animals showing plumage to drive away their rivals. Their own hatred was nothing. They couldn’t even be food to him. But his queen was asleep. He didn’t want to wake her.
    “You…,” the father started to say, his face flushed with anger. “You lousy little—”
    “Don’t,” Mr. Chole gasped. He pushed himself away from the wall, clutching his chest below a white face. “Don’t provoke him. He’s a battle sylph.”
    The fiancé gawked, not understanding fully, while the father barked a laugh. “That’s a sick joke!”
    “It’s not,” Chole promised. “I felt his hate. I worked for years with an air sylph. I felt the battlers many times. She told him to hide it, but I felt it anyway. He’s a battle sylph.”
    “That’s impossible,” the father snarled. “How could my daughter get a battler?”
    “I don’t know,” Chole wheezed. “But I beg you, don’t anger him.”
    “Saml,” the fiancé whined to Solie’s father. “I didn’t buy into this.”
    “It’s all lies!” Saml snapped. “He’s no battler, he’s some reject, sniffing after her. Well, I’m going to march in there and drag her home. I’ll make her regret defying me!” He went to push past Heyou, shoving with a farmer’s strong muscles, and was surprised when his opponent didn’t move. Pausing, Saml blanched.
    It was too much, endlessly too much. Threaten his queen? Attack his queen? Every instinct Heyou had flared, and the rage burst out, his aura of hatred expanding. Minor sylphs would run from this. Other battlers would prepare for bloodshed. Named males would prepare to kill. Entire hives went to war over a battler’s temper, unless the queen said no.
    His eyes changed from the gray-blue Solie found attractive to a searing battler red. Heyou heard the old man wailing, running out past Saml and after the fleeing fiancé, but Solie’s father still gaped at him, frozen. Heyou snarled, and lightning filled his mouth as he spoke. “Stay. Away. From. My. Queen.”
    Saml screamed then, stumbling backward out the door and falling over the step, landing on his back in the dirt. He stared up in terror, with Heyou already losing his shape. The battler advanced and changed to smoke and lightning, his aura flashing out over the town as he himself expanded, suddenly as big as the cottage as he flared his mantle and spread his wings. His voice boomed across the village, and he felt the tiny humans in it scream with fear. This territory was his—nothing could defy him—and he roared, his scream echoing through the valley and up into the hills.
    Other battlers answered, screaming their own challenges back. The gate! He remembered it suddenly. There had been other battlers at the gate, males older than he was. The gate was a reasonable distance, though. He had a few minutes to