Page 48 of The Wolf's Prince
“No. Eri took him—”
“That way,” Fusa said. “I saw them running into the trees.”
Soren took off without thinking. His heart raced with dread. His instincts screaming at him to move fast.
Behind him, he heard others follow just as Nikolai’s panicked voice filled the air.
Soren reached the edge and looked below. It was as though everything happened in slow motion.
Eri had Nikolai by the arm and with as much callousness as an eagle throwing a goat from a mountainside, she tossed him.
For a moment Nikolai looked up at him with wide eyes. Soren did not think, he simply acted.
His feet pushed off the ledge with as much sureness as they walked on solid ground.
And just like that, he was falling, watching Nikolai drop beneath him, terror written across his face.
Instinctively Soren angled himself to drop faster and by some miracle,justas Nikolai’s back touched the tops of the trees, Soren’s arms went around him.
He swiveled as they crashed through the branches, taking the brunt of the damage as branches slowed their fall until finally, they hit solid ground.
Despite being slowed by the trees above, the hard impact winded Soren and Nikolai’s weight on top of him didn’t help.
For a moment, he lay there, stunned until air began to seep back into his lungs.
He gasped, his body jerking from the shock pulsing through his body. His hands went around Nikolai’s back.
He was breathing hard but was otherwise still.
“Nikolai,” Soren gasped. “Are you okay?”
There was a moment of stillness. Then Nikolai shook his head. Then nodded.
“Ugh. I don’t know,” he finally muttered. “What just happened?”
Soren blinked up at the sky above them. The ledge they had fallen from was obscured from view by the trees, but he knew it had been a long fall. If not for the branches slowing them…
“Thatbastard, threw you!” he spat as the reality of the situation hit him.
Eri had tried tokillNikolai. She had almost succeeded.
Suddenly, Andrey’s panicked voice carried down toward them accompanied by the sound of struggle. Shouting and fighting.
“Nikolai!” Andrey shouted. Then louder. “Nik!”
“I’m okay,” he said weakly and then, struggled to sit up.
They both hissed in pain at the movement. Soren’s entire body felt stiff and judging by the way Nikolai moved, he was much the same. He turned his face up and tried again.
“We’re okay!” he shouted, then suddenly turned to look at Soren with wide eyes.
To Soren’s dismay, there was a bloody scratch across Nikolai’s cheek.
“You jumped after me,” he said in awe, the reality only just sinking in.
Soren shrugged and reached forward, gently brushing the blood from Nikolai’s face.
“I didn’t think. I just jumped. And I would do that every time.”
