Page 229 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Garrik suffered a strangled sound, but she couldn’t let it draw the beast’s attention.

Sliding to her knees, Alora slung three stones at its face, angering it more as one of them stabbed its eye.

She had to move. Because it was moving—right for her down that hill.

The ground rattled with every stomp. Dirt and grass and creeping things inside the ground sprayed the air around its paws.

Alora steadied her breath. Counted every one as it closed the distance. Waiting for her movement. Unmoving. Silent. And she may have felt blood draining from her hand. Gripping a sharpened stone too tightly.

But the moment the beast neared enough that she smelled the rotten flesh stuck between its teeth, she threw it …

And dove as it did, too.

She kept her attention on Garrik—on that dagger—and rolled to her hands and knees.

Making her escape up the hillside while the bear rolled to the bottom. Lungs and muscles burning, Alora slammed into her mate, covering Garrik’s body with hers, soaking his blood into her leathers and skin.

“I’ve got you, mighty prince. I’ll get you out of this.Hold on,” she sobbed and pulled away to remove the knife, but she stopped when she scanned his face. Those … vacant eyes staring into the sunlight, piercing the Stars Eternal beyond. “G-Garrik?” It came out broken, unsteady as her voice cracked. “Garrik?”

It was then her heart felt it. The lack of it.

His unusual heartbeat… Silent. Empty.

Lifeless against her own.

She tried beating his chest. His mate mark.

Beating and beating and beating as the collar on her neck began burning and burning and?—

That wasn’t her screaming. It didn’t sound like her. Some desperate, helpless,powerlessthing that cracked a hole in the realm. In her soul.

Only itwasher. Her screams. Over and over, wailing his name as if it would call to wherever his soul roamed—the Middleworld or the Stars Eternal—and draw him back.

Because he couldn’t be dead.Garrik couldn’t be dead.

They had only just vowed to spend their life together. He deserved more than this. More than to die like this. He was supposed tolive.

Alora pounded his chest so violently bones cracked, feeling her life flicker away.

My soul cannot exist without yours.It couldn’t. Her hands grasped Garrik’s face, his cold cheeks. “I cannot exist in any world without you,” Alora warned through the relentless tears staining her cheeks, as if her death would return him.

Something was pulling her back, from that starsdamned collar, from the call within it. Tearing her away by a single inch.

The ground shook as terribly as her knees. She didn’t care to know why.

Then, Silas, above the roar in her head, above the screaming of her heart and the pounding on the ground, commanded with a venom-coated tongue, “Move!”

She couldn’t—couldn’tleave Garrik there.Nothingmattered. Not her life. Not anymore. Not without him?—

That collar burned molten red. The pain of his unbeating heart burned worse.

Silas screamed from somewhere on the walkways, “Turn around!” But she didn’t, and he screamed again, twisting that sapphire ring. “Gather your fucking wits.Fightitand turn around!”

Fight it?To what end? She would die anyway. What was the point?

A spear sliced her thigh. Then her death mark. Another nearly missed her neck. And she wanted it. Wanted to meet Garrik in death as she sobbed through the excruciating pain. At that loss of having not felt him since the day before, not knowing it was their last time holding each other. To look into the perfection of his eyes. To hear his unusual, perfect heartbeat.

“Curse the fucking blood,snap out of it and move,” Silas demanded.

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