Page 55 of My Guardian Gryphon

I leapt across the room, ducking one of Rose’s wings before it took out the wall behind me. Xerxes was shifting now, too. So much light filled the room, it was blinding. I couldn’t see, but I could smell Gretchen. Her blood. Her sweat. Her tears.

Her heart was beating slower than it should, and her breathing was shallow. I dodged another wing, this time Xerxes’s. Rolling over the table, I wrapped an arm around Gretchen’s body in the process. My forward momentum carried us both off the table and out from under a stomping foot. The ceiling crumbled above me, and I let my beast come out again. My eagle talons closed carefully around Gretchen, and my lion-clawed hind legs shoved me up the wall, through the falling concrete and steel and other shattering materials. The ceiling above me disintegrated, showing spots of clear blue sky. I pumped my wings, trying to ignore the snarls and the smell of blood behind and below me.

I rose farther and farther until something caught my wing and sent me hurtling toward the floor. Pumping harder, I avoided what would’ve been a fatal impact for Gretchen and screamed through the burning pain. Rage propelled my Gryphon’s cry through the wall of the building, disintegrating it in front of me. I dove through, but not before something took a slice out of my left flank.

The roaring and bellowing and cries of pain continued behind me. I pushed harder and lifted us into the sky again, reaching for the clouds. A bullet struck my side. Then another hit my already injured wing. Pain seared through every nerve. A cry of pain from the small body clutched ever so carefully in my talons tore another piece from my heart. She’d been hit. The scent of her blood burned in my nostrils.

There was nowhere to hide. Speed was our only salvation, and my Gryphon’s utter refusal to give up. I wouldn’t stop. I pushed for the clouds and struggled to keep a straight path toward Sanctuary.

A painful scream echoed behind me, the unmistakable sound of Death calling another to its door.

Then nothing.

Silence.

No more gunfire.

No more crashing buildings.

I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t stop.

I had to get Gretchen back to the castle, back to the Protectors. Their blood would save her.

She couldn’t die.

She couldn’t die.

She couldn’t die.

Chapter 21

ALEK

“Erick! Help me get them inside,” Bailey’s voice ran high, urgency spilling from it like a waterfall. “I can’t get him to let go of Gretchen.”

A whoosh of air brushed along my skin. I was vaguely aware of grass beneath me and the sounds of people yelling instructions from all sides.

“Alek let us help her. You must let her go.” Erick’s deep voice rumbled into my consciousness.

Let her go? “No. She’s been hurt. I’ll drop her.” My words gurgled in my throat like I was choking. The bitter metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I could smell it on me, around me. I could smell Gretchen’s, too.

“You’re on the ground. You made it back.” Bailey’s voice was soft and encouraging and pleading. “Please, let us help her. She’s been shot, Alek, and so have you.”

Shot? It was starting to come back now, the fight, seeing Eli die. Watching Rose… What had I seen? Had she made it out of there? I couldn’t remember. Blackness swallowed me again.

I opened my eyes and groaned. Pain burned like fire in my side, and I struggled to breath. Gretchen’s heart beat slowly against my chest. So weak, her life was slipping away as she lay in my arms. No. I couldn’t lose her. Not after everything that’d happened. Not much time had passed, maybe a minute.

“Let me have her. Please, Alek,” Bailey asked again. Her small hands tugged at my arm with the strength of ten men, but I still didn’t relax my grip.

“Xerxes hurt her.” My voice still wasn’t right. It gurgled and rasped, the words barely discernible. Was I dying? My heart still beat in my chest, but all my other senses were so foggy. My vision blurred in and out.

“I know. Let go.” Bailey touched my arm again, determination mixed with desperation. “I can help her.”

Finally, my brain was able to get through to my tightly clenched muscles. I relaxed my grip and released my precious cargo into Bailey’s waiting arms. Erick’s mate was so small, but as a vampire, she rivaled even the strength my Gryphon allowed me. She hadn’t used it for fear of hurting Gretchen, or perhaps in fear of startling me into another shift.

“I’m sorry.” My voice was foggy, and my mind kept flashing back and forth from the present to the fight with Xerxes, the fight where Eli had died. Rose had been there, too. She’d shifted and fought Xerxes by herself. “Rose. Where is Rose?”

Erick placed his wrist over my mouth. “Drink before I dig these bullets out.”

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