Chapter 45
CAMERON.
I closed my eyes and waited for the bite of Serath’s teeth, but long seconds passed, and it didn’t come.
I cracked open an eyelid and stared into his graynite eyes.
“Ubron? What is the meaning of this?” the general demanded.
Serath’s left eye twitched, and a low, menacing growl rolled up his throat to blast me in the face. He drew me close, his words barely a whisper. “I’m going to throw you. Get ready to roll when you land. Then run.”
My heart leapt into my mouth, pulse stalling only to kick into a canter. He was back. Serath was?—
He swung back his arm, with me dangling from it, and I let go of him in time to go sailing through the air. I landed in a roll that jarred my bones before coming up and sprinting for the building.
“Now!” Curi bellowed.
The blue shimmer parted to let me past, and I dove through the busted window and straight into Curi’s arms.
He gathered me to his chest for a moment, but I twisted back to the window. “Serath is out there! He’s in control.” He was in battle now. One against six. “He saved me, and we’re taking him back with us. How long till the port opens?”
“It should be here already,” Adaline said.
“It’s not coming,” Shar groaned. “Someone fucked us over. The fact that the graynites found this place…”
Fuck! “Then we get Serath in here, and we hold out until we can recharge and fight.” I looked from Adaline to Levi. “Can you hold the shield?”
“We can,” Levi said. “But we can’t open it again. Letting you in was a one-shot deal.”
Wait, that meant that letting me back out wasn’t an option either. It meant Serath was on his own.
“No!” I rushed for the window, but Curi snagged me around the waist and hugged me to his chest. “Let me go! I have to help. I need to help.” Tears blurred my vision.
“Dammit. Cameron, stop and think. If we drop the shield, we all die,” Curi bit out. “I don’t know how he managed to stay tethered to his body when they turned him, but it must have taken everything he had to surface and save you. Don’t let it be for nothing.”
His words were logic. They were sense. But the clawing desperation inside me to protect my mate wouldn’t be denied. It seared up my throat, spilling from my lips in a roar of pain as Serath took a blow that knocked him to his knees.
He leapt up and countered an attack, using his body as a battering ram to break free of his attackers, but the general managed to get a hit on his skull. Serath swayed and went down.
He stayed down.
“No!”
The graynites flew at the building and smashed into the wards.
Adaline cried out against the assault. “Hold it, Levi. We must hold it.”
The world was thunder and roars, ground trembling beneath my feet, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was out there on the dusty ground. Serath pulled himself up slowly, his huge frame heaving with each breath. He let out a bellow and launched himself into the air toward us.
The graynites, distracted by Serath, left the shields alone and zoomed back toward him to take him down again.
“He’s buying us time,” Curi said. “Fuck, he’s buying us time, but he doesn’t know there’s no port.”
“We need to recharge,” Sharniza said. “We need to fight!”
But even as she said it, the mood dipped because we all knew that there wasn’t enough time. I was tapped out, my body aching, limbs shaking with exhaustion.
Derek was gone.
There was no port.
There was no hope.
We were going to die here.
“What’s that?” Sharniza rushed forward and pointed up at the sky.
There were more shapes in the sky. Large, bulky shapes with wings. “No…Not more. Please.”
But as they got closer, there was no doubt that they were indeed more graynites. With that many bodies testing the wards, there was no way Levi and his mother would be able to keep them up.
In short, we were fucked.
Sharniza slipped her hand into mine and squeezed. “I love you, Cameron.”
I squeezed back. “I love you too.”
Out on the battlefield, Serath continued to fight.
To go down and get back up, over and over, against all odds.
My beautiful mate kept the graynites’ attention on him with bellowed taunts every time they lost interest, every time they thought he was down.
And as the fresh wave descended from the sky, I knew that if I was going to die today, then there was only one place I wanted to be.
“Drop the shields.”
“What?” Levi said.
I turned on him, eyes blazing, voice deepening with the ire of my beast. My goyle was back. Awake. “We’re dead anyway, and I won’t let him die alone.” I flicked my wrist and released my talons. “Drop them now!”
Sharniza squeezed my hand. “I can feel my goyle. We do this. We fight with what we have. Until the end.”
“Till the end,” Curi said, voice deepening.
We weren’t fully recovered, but enough to put up a fight.
“No!” Adaline said.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Levi said. “If I’m going to die today, then I want to do it fighting alongside my team.”
He dropped the shield, and with a unified roar, we rushed at the windows, shattering the unbroken ones and feeling nothing as we burst out into the night.
Serath spun toward me, sensing me, but the rest of the grounded graynites broke their attack to look up at the sky.
“Evacuate!” the general ordered.
They took to the air, flying away from the incoming graynite influx.
I kept running toward Serath, ignoring the confusion, ignoring everything because he was on his knees, his huge body swaying with the effort of trying to remain upright. I caught him before he could fall, clutching him to my chest and staggering beneath his weight.
“Serath, oh god. Serath.”
“Cameron…” His eyes slipped closed, and I buckled beneath his full weight.
“I’ve got you!” Curi appeared beside me, helping me to hold Serath up.
“They’re running,” Levi said, confused.
“What are those?” Curi pointed at the green balloons hurtling toward us.
No, not balloons, orbs. Why were they?—
“Take cover!” Shar threw herself over us as the sound of shattering glass filled the night.
The world turned green.
The air bitter.
And then nothing.