Page 228 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

“Faster,” Alora coaxed herself. “You must swim faster.”

She did. Until she reached the bank and crawled her way out, refusing to surrender to the pain. But she couldn’t remain there. Couldn’t rest. Once her boots were on, Alora sprinted, undecidedof the direction. She only knew she had to run because those females, prime and uninjured, ravenous with a taste for her blood, were swimming faster than she had.

Alora hurled past trees and branches, which whipped her leathers and slashed at any exposed skin. But she didn’t stop running.

Not until Garrik screamed.

Alora froze.

She couldn’t shake the sound of it. The guttural, raging scream. A thing of nightmares—what she had only ever heard from his nightmares.

Between one step and the next, Garrik released another. Bouncing off trees, not the walls below the balcony. A painful roar, past a breaking point, one only heard through unfathomable torture.

“Garrik!” she screamed, forgetting the anguish of her body as she whirled around. Twisting, turning, searching the trees. “Garrik!”

His answering wail almost dropped her to her knees.

Where? Where is he?She couldn’t remember the direction she came. Alora lunged forward when five figures moved. That was backward, toward the tower. Two more to her left. Another to her right.

So, she whirled. Rotating toward the high-rise balcony peeking through the canopy.

Over and over, he screamed. Each time, breaking her more.

She began crying in earnest. That courageous part of herself shattered into a thousand pieces. The only thing thatcouldbreak her was crying out, being whipped, his body broken for all she could imagine by the sounds of his screams.

It tookher a heartbeat to register what she was seeing.

Garrik’s eyes were wide, staring forward.

Shackled to a tree atop a hill, basking in sunlight as the crowd’s rapturous excitement roared.

But she barely heard it. Her very bones cringed. The air in her lungs turned to ash. Something cold—something like death—sliced through her.

Because Garrik … he … he …

She broke into a run. And she thought she might have screamed. Not from the pain of her ankle or shoulder or rib. But for him—for his pain. The blood gushing from his wounds and the skin flayed beneath the shackles.

Through the tall grass, Alora raced straight for a monster Made of black shiny armor. The scales that should’ve been fur. Toward claws and teeth and spikes on its back made of iron with a tail resembling a great cat in a bear’s monumental form.

Over its shoulder, it narrowed its glowing ruby eyes at her.

Alora had nothing but the sharpened stones in her pocket. What could that do to the beast?

But she had to try. For Garrik. For the blood gushing from his wounds. From the bite marks that split his skin open and the claws that shredded from his shoulder to thigh.

Silvery metal and a glimmer of crimson drew her attention.

The dagger.The one in his shoulder.

She held that predator’s gaze, mouth crackling dry the closer she moved. And when that horrid thing lifted another claw, aimed for Garrik’s neck, she shoved every bit of panic and love and pain into her arm and launched a stone at its skull.

At best, she could anger it. Turn it away. Outrun it in the forest and return to her mate.

The stone did nothing more than bounce off the bear’s armor.

Hopeless.The stones werehopeless.

Alora was twenty feet away when it reared on its hind legs, swished its feline tail, and released a roar that rattled the glass dome, waving over every stone and metal seat in the stadium, which knocked faeries on their asses.

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