Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
LASH
The damn woman was running…again.
Fates above, I’d never known anyone so skittish. All I’d done was say her name, and she’d bolted into the Wilds like a frightened rabbit.
I should have known this would happen. I’d spotted the panic in her eyes as soon as I’d heard the hammer of that ridiculous gun click into place. I’d recognized the fear in her trembling voice. And I knew from experience that, when in danger, escape was her first instinct.
How the hell had she managed to get her hands on the weapon anyway? And where had she been hiding it this whole time?
I couldn’t waste any time wondering about that now. Not when I had a decision to make.
Felicity was running in one direction, and Nelissa the other. I couldn’t stop both of them. I had to choose one.
But really, there was no choice.
Even though I knew if I didn’t stop Nelissa, she would rally the other alphas the moment she returned to camp, something deep inside wouldn’t allow me to leave Felicity alone in the Wilds.
I tried to convince myself that it was because I knew firsthand the damage she could do. Give the woman thirty seconds, and she would trip over a felled log, tumble down the hillside, and snap her neck. If I didn’t go after her, I’d find her mangled at the bottom of a cliff.
Just the thought was enough to send me racing after her.
Fortunately, she hadn’t made it far.
Hobbled by one dragging foot (answering the question of where she’d hidden that damned gun), she did her best to weave through the trees, but hunger, exhaustion, and injury had mixed together to make her slower than the night before. If I’d had the time, I could have caught up to her by walking.
Unfortunately, time topped the list of luxuries we didn’t have.
With every passing second, Nelissa was drawing closer to the camp. That meant we had maybe a minute—two tops—before dozens of my former brothers stormed into the woods, determined to hunt us down.
That’s why I couldn’t slow down as I closed in on Felicity. Staying at full speed, I simply wrapped my arm around her waist and scooped her up mid-stride.
Her hand was still wrapped tight around that ridiculous gun. Before she could rearrange my face the way she had Nelissa’s, I wrenched it from her grasp. Then, ignoring her surprised cry, I tossed her over my shoulder and kept going, sprinting faster than I thought possible.
It wasn’t easy. Retreat wasn’t in my nature. Escape wasn’t something I’d ever considered. Even while leaving my old pack to join Nelissa’s, I had strode out of the village at midday with my head held high, practically daring anyone to confront me.
No one had.
And if I were alone, that’s how I would have taken on Nelissa’s men. One versus ten? Twenty? Thirty? Who the fuck cared about odds? I’d take them all if I had to. Or I’d go down fighting, dragging as many of the bastards down to hell with me as I could.
But I wasn’t alone.
Adding Felicity to the equation changed everything. I’d no longer just be tearing into dozens of men. I’d be fighting them and trying to protect her at the same time, and that was a very different task.
I could rip into enemies all day long. I was damn good at it. I’d been dealing in death my whole life…but saving a life? Protecting someone from harm? That was something I didn’t have any experience with.
It wasn’t even an urge I’d thought existed inside me until I watched Silvan lunging at Felicity. Then the instinct had roared to life with the sudden destructive fury of a lightning strike. Blazing hot and brilliant, the need to destroy him had blinded me.
I didn’t think about the consequences. I didn’t think about Nelissa, or the future, or the danger. I didn’t think about anything at all.
I simply felt.
Felt blood boiling rage at Silvan for daring to touch Felicity. Hatred at Nelissa for demanding he do so. Anger at myself for allowing the situation to get this far.
And that’s when I knew just how fucked I actually was.
Dreaming about a kirre was bad enough.
The sight of her bare skin. The feel of it beneath my hands. The taste of her kiss lingering on my lips. The unbearable pleasure of our bodies coming together. Every moment had been the most magnificent blasphemy a ferus and kirre could commit.
But fortunately, it was only a dream. Just visions in our heads. For a brief moment, I’d been able to convince myself that’s all it would ever be. That, if we were careful, none of those heated sensations would ever spill into reality.
But not even ten minutes later, I couldn’t stop myself from plunging my claws over and over again into another alpha in the hope of saving her.
Now there was no denying it. There was no fighting it. The Fates had made their judgment and bound me to a kirre.
And now every instinct demanded I get her to safety.
Which meant we needed to leave the valley floor.
Traveling on flat ground might be faster, but it would also make us easier to follow. There was too much brush down here, too many ways to leave behind echoes of our presence—broken branches, footprints in soft soil, traces of our scent lingering in the still air.
If we wanted to lose a whole pack of alphas, we needed to get to higher ground. Up where the plant life thinned. Where the ground was rockier. Where the wind blew the air clean.
“Hold on,” I shouted to Felicity as I jumped up on the first boulder.
The sound of her yelp was muffled as the force of the landing pressed her face against my back. “Let me down, goddamn it.”
Fates, not this again.
“I can’t,” I snapped, making the leap to the next rocky outcrop about fifteen feet away. This time, Felicity was wise enough to wrap her arms around my waist to steady herself beforehand.
“Don’t be a—oof—“ The air whipped from her lungs as I landed a longer jump. “What the hell are you doing?”
My jaw tensed, my back teeth grinding together.
“Hush,” I told her. “I need to concentrate.”
The rounded slope of the boulders was becoming steeper. Soon, one slip would send us pinging like pebbles off the unforgiving granite.
“Concentrate on what?” she demanded. She tried to wrench her body around in my arms, causing me to tighten my grip.
“Stop wriggling, or you’ll fall,” I warned her. “In a second, I’m going to need both my hands, so you’ll need to hold on.”
“If you think I’m going to—“ Her words, her breath, her struggling—all of it cut off in the same heartbeat. She must have twisted her head around far enough to see the near-vertical bluff I was moving toward. “No! Lash, don’t be an idiot. You can’t scale that cliff.”
As if she had any idea what I was truly capable of.
“No, you can’t,” I corrected her as I curled my fingers around to the first jagged hold. “Now shut up and hold on.”
Fear and anger radiated out of her in equal measure as I started to ascend the sheer rock face.
With every move, I felt the pressure of her body clinging to mine.
The desperate grip of her arms around my hips.
The tension in her belly growing every time my foot searched for a new hold.
The wash of her warm breath against my back as we gained elevation.
“You’re going to kill us,” she cried when we were only a few dozen feet above the ground.
“Ssshh!” I hissed. It wouldn’t matter how far we ran or how high we climbed if she kept shrieking like that. The other alphas would find us in a heartbeat.
Her slender limbs tightened their grip around me. Pressed this close against me, I could feel her heartbeat hammering against my back, pounding faster and harder with every foot we rose. Even her breath started to shake as the dueling emotions warred inside her.
It wasn’t until I heard the steady stream of quick whispered pleas that I knew which emotion won out. “Please don’t let us fall. Please don’t let us fall.”
Us?
Not me. Not her alone.
Us.
That was interesting.
“Who are you begging, your god or me?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Whichever one of you is willing to save my ass.”
So me, then.
“I’ll get us to the top in one piece,” I tried to assure her—yet another action that wasn’t usually in my nature. “Trust me.”
The sound that burst from her lips was too cynical to be considered a laugh. She made it sound like I’d asked her to do the impossible. As if I told her to sprout wings and fly to the top of the cliff.
But impossible or not, it wasn’t as if she had another choice. Nearing the halfway point up the cliffside, she had to trust me. And she must have realized it, too.
For the rest of the climb, Felicity kept her mouth closed and her grip tight, clinging to me with hands and arms and legs.
That’s when I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. Because now it wasn’t the sound of Felicity’s voice that was distracting me. It was every damn inch of her body.