Page 50 of Ensnared
He clumsily puts an arm around my shoulders. “Fine,” he slurs.
“Fuck!”
His weight on me intensifies, until I take a shuffle-step back, catch my foot on something, and stumble. We go down in a tangle of limbs, and I break our fall with my right arm outstretched. Something snaps, and incredible pain shoots up my body.
I cry out, and a flurry of birds flap into the sky from the nearby tree, scaring the shit out of me. Aiden rolls off me and tries to get up.
“Skye,” he mumbles. “What’s going on?”
I sit up, cradling my injured hand. “Nothing,” I say on impulse, then try to move my fingers. “Aah! Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He crawls closer on his hands and knees and tries to take my hand. “Let me…”
“No.” I scoot back, wary of more pain. “I think it’s broken.”
“Shit.” He sits right next to me and rubs his face with his palms. “I just need a moment.”
I wipe my tears on my sleeve and peer at Aiden through the dark. “Why didn’t you tell me I was taking too much?” I demand. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
His face is just a blur in the dark, so I can’t read his expression. He’s silent for so long, I worry he might have fallen asleep.
“It was amazing,” he mutters at last. “The most incredible sensation to feel you there. Inside. With me.”
I hiccup on a sob. “You idiot.”
He groans and puts his forehead on my shoulder. “Sorry.”
I yelp again as he jostles me, and he moves away with more mumbled apologies. I know what he’s going through, though. The exhaustion, the weakness. I was in the same spot after our last training session. Only there’s no way I can carry him out of these woods. I couldn’t do it even with two uninjured hands, but now? He might as well weigh a ton for all the difference it makes.
“You have to get Jack,” he says. “Do you think you can make it back to my phone?”
I nod, even though I don’t know if he can see me. “I can do that,” I tell him. But I’m not sure. What if I lose my way in the dark? “Where’s the string?”
He has me fashion a sling from my scarf first. It’s painful as hell, but at least my left hand is now free. I try to take my hat off and hand it to him—I don’t want him to freeze to death while he waits for Jack and me to return—but he refuses with such decisiveness, I don’t offer a second time. I guess he’s more resilient than me.
“Can’t you shift into a dragon?” I ask anyway.
I remember how warm his scales were, how he seemed to have exuded heat.
“No,” he replies. “Not enough power left.”
I curse again, then carefully make my way to the dark shape he indicated. A branch brushes over my shoulder, and I yelp in terror. Then I’m at the spruce where Aiden had tied his piece of red string. I can’t tell the color in the dark, but it’s a lifeline between my fingers.
“I’m going now,” I call out to him. “We’ll be back soon.”
“Be careful.” His voice is hoarse, tired. “Don’t drop the string.”
So begins my journey through the dark.
There might have been a time when I felt comfortable here in Alaska. I thought that this wasn’t so bad after all.I don’t know why everyone has their panties in a twist over a land this beautiful.With the right gear, I could survive here easily.
Now, however, all those hidden fears and worries come out to play. I might as well be underground, the night’s so thick and dark around me. Wet leaves squelch underfoot, and twigs break with alarming snaps, startling me. I grip the string tightly, following it from tree to tree, and finally understand Aiden’s wisdom in taking this precaution. If he hadn’t, we might have died from exposure just a mile from the village, because I couldn’t make this trip on my own.
The pain in my wrist is now a constant, dull throb, and every step jostles it more. My vision is blurry from the tears, though I guess it wouldn’t make a lick of difference even if I wasn’t sobbing the entire way back. All sorts of dire warnings flash through my mind, about bears and wolves and other beasts. I hadn’t even taken my bear spray with me because Aiden had said we weren’t going past the fence. I’d thought he would remain with me, a large predator to scare off any threat.
I stumble over roots and rocks that seem to spring up from nowhere. I don’t remember the walk being so rough—or so long—but I tell myself it’s my mind playing tricks on me. I’d been focused on Aiden and his intriguing presence, so I hadn’t really been paying attention to where we were going.
The birch tree materializes from the darkness like a ghost, its pale trunk scaring me so badly, I scream. Then I fall to my knees, almost hysterical, and paw through the leaves for Aiden’s flashlight and phone.
