“I’m sorry, Mandi.”
Grayson growls under his breath and reaches for me, knocking into my shoulder before hurling me onto his hip. He adjusts before we both lose our balance and carries me out of the briars.
My lungs seize. There isn’t enough air to make them work, not when the blood in my veins goes sluggish. Spots dance in front of my eyes and a strange queasy heat starts in my stomach and curdles.
I can’t take much more.
Which only fuels my terror.
This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a moon-mad wolf and I’m not ready to die as Grayson carries us both through the dark. I haven’t come this far. I haven’t swallowed down secrets like soup only to lose it all now.
A stray root catches beneath him. We both go flying and I land hard on my stomach, the impact driving sanity from my brain and the air out of my lungs.
The creature barrels toward us. It reaches for Grayson, grabbing him around the ankle and dragging him backward.
I glance up in time to watch him curl up, snagging a branch as round as his thigh and using the wolf’s momentum against it. The beast releases him when it slams into the branch, bending in two from the force. Grayson drags his legs back and uses his weight to angle onto the balls of his feet, swinging the branch and slamming it into the wolf’s legs.
Wood smacks and something snaps.
The moon-mad shrieks with the shattered bone, but it will only stay still for a moment.
I know it.
For one terrifying moment, silence stretches, more awful than the creature’s roar or stench.
“Grayson, come on, we have to go, now.” My gaze meets his crazed one.
There’s something about his eyes, about the rich pools of topaz, the fear he hides like his own version of a dirty secret. I manage to gain my feet again despite the screaming protest of every muscle I’ve got.
I reach for him, both of us searching, desperate for a relief we can’t find.
Not when the moon-mad wolf recovers.
In the brief moments between blinding panic, my mind conjures up all kinds of terrible ends met at its teeth. My throatbobs at the thought of those teeth tearing me open and draining me. Or worse. A bite, a scratch, a life-changing injury that will devolve me into the same kind of beast. It might not be within hours like we originally thought but?—
“I’m fine. We’re fine. Keep running.”
Grayson snags my shirt and drags me off course, veering to the left. His superior strength is flagging. The trembling of his fingers vibrates through me as he ducks and weaves through the trees, using the maze of trunks like obstacles on his own personal football field.
The creature curves around us, eyes gleaming, red rimmed, vicious. Vile. It lunges in front of us with white bone poking from its calf and only Grayson’s smart thinking pulls me out of the way of those teeth at the last minute.
Sharp fangs snap the air where my hand was a split second earlier.
I stumble again as the bottom drops out of me. Grayson tugs on my wrist to get me moving, the creature pivoting.
Its movements score the ground and the scent of rich loam and dirt fill the air, a strange contrast to its rot.
It won’t give up.
We’re guaranteed to tire first. Lacey fought several of these creatures and won, but she had training. She knew how to use a sword because Colt trained her. That’s what they said when we met at the witch’s magically protected hole-in-the-wall, the Hollow.
What do I have?
My throat closes and I choke, only the steady feel of Grayson’s hand on mine keeping me moving.
I have a responsibility I can’t shake, a will that refuses to die in spite of everything.
“There!” Grayson’s yell breaks the litany of terrible thoughts.