Page 41 of Hunted By Wolves and Shadow
Brutal denial gave me a burst of energy, and I bounded to one side. Fenrir countered.
Who would seek me out first? Robin? Fox? Lynx? Would Amber go to the enclave when I didn't show up? Would they find a way to break the curse after my failure, or would that hope diewith me too? I could accept death for the murder I’d been forced to commit and for my failure at breaking the curse, but I couldn't accept condemning the others to an unending purgatory.
Fenrir leaped, his jaw snapping at my front leg. I barely jumped back in time.
I might deserve this death, but the others didn't.
They were innocent.
Even Emi. Why was I just seeing that now, at the end? She wasn't her blood. She was so much more.
And Fenrir. Before Aglonbriar had claimed him, he’d been someone else. A brother, a son, maybe someone’s friend or lover. This cursed life had twisted and rotted him from the inside, never letting him get over the death of his brother, pulling him deeper with every beckoning white tendril. No matter if the curse ended right now, he was likely beyond saving, too lost to the grief and violence and the sheer pressures of survival.
It was too late to escape my guilt, but every nerve and fiber of my body fought to find a different ending. If it was too late for me and so many before me, I refused to let it be too late for the ones left to save. For the ones yet to be cursed.
But how could I hope to defeat a beast like this when the shadows snarling back at me were a part of me too? We were both monsters.
With a deafening growl, the fenriswulf lunged. I reared up to meet him, teeth bared, desperate and wild in the face of defeat. I would kill again, or fail again. There was nothing else left. Either one would spell my end, it was only a matter of time and inevitability.
Pain seared my neck with another slash of deadly claws. I twisted and snapped my teeth, closing on flesh and bone. It wouldn’t be enough.
The fenriswulf roared. It blazed in my ear, and I felt the agony of more than his physical pain behind it. He crashed into me, taking me to the ground with a bone-crunching slam.
My head went fuzzy. My thoughts detached. The trees blurred and lights dimmed.
If only I had one more chance to make it right. I’d been stupid. We all lived with this madness. Fenrir had been one of us, and now he was only more of the monster that lived inside each of us. I should have let them all fight with me. This was our fight—all of us—not just mine. If only I'd done things differently.
There was a justice to dying alone when hot breath hit my throat a split second before teeth tore into me. That powerful jaw clamped down like a bolt of white-hot lightning. Pain wracked me. I thrashed to free myself, feeling the flesh tear from my neck and shoulder with a flaming-hot agony. It blanked out my vision like the Mist had claimed my eyes.
Faces flashed by. My friends, my brothers, my sisters…Robin, Bear, Lynx, Fox, Hawk, more, and more, and more. The ones we’d lost. Leo, Fenrir, too many others. And Emi. Always Emi. Her face lingered.
I seized it. Held it in my mind. Reached for one last breath. One last drop of fight…
Chapter 19
Emi
My first sensation was tingling. It started at my fingertips and toes, spread to my limbs, reminding me of their painful existence, then gathered in my core. There, the odd sensation settled to a dim fizzy warmth.
Gradually, light trickled below my eyelids as they began to flutter, and distant sounds registered, too muffled for me to make sense of. Where was I?
My whole body ached and my head throbbed like I’d spent an entire day hefting heavy flour sacks while working out advanced mathematics. Low groaning sounded terribly close and it was an embarrassing several heartbeats later that I realized the sound was coming from me, and several more before I could figure out how to stop. My fingers brushed the fibres of a rug. Why was I on the floor? My surroundings came slowly into focus as it started to come back to me.
“You're awake.” The voice was male and husky.
The tone reminded me of another, bringing an image of mercurial eyes beneath wild, cinnamon hair. I searched for itssource and found brown eyes looking down on me. Not the same, but familiar.
I sat bolt upright, remembering all at once. “Locke! You're alive.”
“Thanks to you,” he said with a small smile.
“Me? No. I wanted to save you, but I...I don't know what happened.”
“Thought you weren't magic, eh?”
“What?”
“You healed me.” He lifted the hem of his shirt, and where there had been a gaping bloody wound the last I saw, there was only a raised knot of pink scar tissue. It looked several moons old.
