Page 108 of Beneath the Starlight and Storms

We’ve already lost so much time together. I wasn’t willing to lose anymore.

Hook goes to move back when I reach out and grab him, stopping him. “You’re not leaving. I won’t let you.”

“Tink. I need to—”

“I don’t ever want to go back to Neverland again.” It was never going to be the same even if Peter wasn’t there. He tainted it with cruel memories I never wanted to re-live.

“You don’t have to. I’ll take great pleasure in doing this myself.” His expression hardens as his eyes narrow and grow calculating.

“You promised to stay by my side,” I remind him as my throat tightens and a cold tremor runs through my body.

Hook lifts my hand and kisses the tips of my fingers as his eyes become distant. “It won’t take me long. A couple of days max.”

“No. You arenotgoing to Neverland,” I insist.

His eyes light up with wild, dark storms. “Peter needs to pay for what he did. When I find him, I’m going to cut out his—”

Hook gasps as a bloom of deep red quickly spreads down his white shirt, my heart stuttering to a stop, my blood turning ice cold as I spot the arrow now sticking out of his shoulder.

CHAPTER29

“Hook!”I catch him as he falls into me, grunting in pain.

“We need to move,” he grunts, reaching up to his left shoulder, his hand trembling as he touches the arrow embedded into it.

“But—”

Hook yanks me to the side of him as another arrow slams into the tree behind us.

“Now, Tink.” Hook rasps.

I wrap his good arm around me and start moving further into the forest. With no direction in mind, I look for a place that will give us enough cover to assess how bad his injury is.

But as soon as we move into the forest, a thick dark smoke seeps in around us obscuring our path.

“What the—”

Another arrow slams into the tree to our right. I gasp and try to quicken our pace. But Hook is struggling to keep up as it is.

The smoke thickens, clawing at my throat and burning my lungs. I cough, inhaling more and more as we move through it. It seems endless, with no way out.

Hook curses, urging me to pick up our pace. “Try to hold your breath as much as possible,” he coughs.

“What is it?” I try not to choke as I breathe in more before holding my breath.

“Some form of magical gas. It has a paralyzing agent in it.” Hook sways into me as we move forward.

I didn’t feel like any part of me was going numb. The smoke was making my throat raw from coughing, but other than that I felt fine.

But one look at Hook told me something wasn’t right.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Hook grows paler, his breaths becoming shaking and uneven. “Just keep moving. It’s starting to thin out ahead.”

Keeping the corner of my eye on Hook, we move deeper into the forest and through the black smoke. I try to taper my worry every time I see him wince and lock his jaw in pain. But my panic only grows, my worries twisting into tight knots in my stomach.

We finally come out of the thick smog when my feet hit something uneven. For a minute I think we have to be near the edge of the island with the rocky ground. But there’s nothing but thick trees around us so it had to be somewhere in the middle.

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