Page 126 of Hunted By Fae
We found that out when Ramona went all stupid trigger happy on them. I haven’t properly mourned her yet, I’m still so fucking angry at her for it. She would still be here if she hadn’t shot at them.
Famous last words.
I exhale a muffled, loaded breath, then tuck the butt of the rifle to my shoulder.
I aim around the stilts… but it’s no good.
I’m too low to the ground to shoot the ice. My aim isn’t reliable from this angle.
I’m not a fucking marksman. Everything I know I learned in the blackout.
I roll my weight onto my side, then clammer into a crouch. The chill prickles at my cheeks as I slowly rise from the shield of the boat and aim the rifle over the edge.
But they aren’t standing still anymore.
One silhouette moves in a slow, steady circle on the ice—and after a lengthy exhale of cold, misty breath, I realise he’s circling her.
One hand cupping the underside of the rifle, I tap my finger on the CB button.
One, two.
Wait.
I narrow my eyes on the distance as though it’ll help me see better. It doesn’t, not at all.
Bee doesn’t reveal anything. Her silhouette, her mere outline, doesn’t give away if she heard me or not.
But the dark warrior…
Oh, he heard it.
He stops in his tracks.
Washed in torchlight, his head is cocked to the side, still facing Bee, and I wonder if he’s looking at her or the radio clasped to her belt.
Whatever made him stop circling her, it came at the exact moment I sent the code through the static.
I loosen a steadying breath, then readjust my aim. One stray bullet, one panicked shot, one drifted aim, and I might hit Bee.
Worse, I might hit the ice beneath her, and then she’s gone. No saving her once the water gets her.
I shift the aim of the barrel to the dark one’s boots—at theheels.
My finger slips around the trigger, a ghost of a touch, gloved but cold to the bone.
I swallow, thick.
A ball is lodged in my throat, bobbing with my heartbeats, like my heart has shrunk to the size of a fruit pit, then got itself stuck in there.
The panic is cold.
I fight it with deep, shuddering breaths I try to steady. But if I get this wrong… even if my aim is faithful, if I get this wrong, and the dark male doesn’t get swept away by the waters beneath…
I shudder with the risk.
Emily does, too.
I hear her rapid breaths muffled against her gloved palm. I can almost taste the salt of her tears in the air between us.
