Page 64 of The Last Sanctuary
“Haven is my home. I released the animals, but they’re still here, wandering around in confusion inside the refuge or the nearby woods. They’re not free yet. They’re not safe. I can’t leave them, and this place, in the hands of the Headhunters. Not until I give the animals a better chance to get away.”
And not while Luna and Shadow were still here, too. She didn’t say that part out loud. He wouldn’t understand.
“No, you don’t get it?—”
“I get it,” she said. “There are some things I can live with, and some things I can’t. My whole life, I thought I couldn’t wait to get away from this place. It turns out, my heart is here. It was here all along. My dad, he dedicated his whole life to the Haven, to these animals. I—I can’t just leave them defenseless. I have to at least give them a chance.”
She didn’t say that she was probably infected and likely to die anyway. It wasn’t any of his business. Besides, she didn’t want to voice it into existence. Not yet.
Raven waited for him to say that they were just animals. That they didn’t matter. That they weren’t as valuable as her human life. But he didn’t.
Instead, he handed her his flashlight. “Hide out in the woods for the night, at least. Find a safe place if you can. There’s nowhere for you to hide here. I’ll do what I can to help you from this side. If—If I can do something to help, I will.”
For the first time in what felt like months, warmth filled her chest. She had a flashlight in her pack, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
She accepted the flashlight. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“Good luck,” Damien said. “You’ll need it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Raven headed for the woods.
She ran as fast as she dared in the dark, too afraid to use the flashlight Damien had given her. Her legs pumped. Her pack thumped against her spine. Her pulse was a roar in her ears. Tears burned her vision. She blinked them away fiercely.
Reaching the back of the park, she sprinted between the bear and hybrid paddocks. One of the peacocks veered into her path. She nearly tripped over the damn bird but managed to keep her footing. Finally, she reached the wide double gates, still propped open with the rocks she’d placed earlier.
The forest loomed, rising before her like an immense black wall—bleak, foreboding, bristling with unknown terrors.
She hesitated for an instant, glancing back over her shoulder. She peered through the fog. The faintest shine of moonlight pierced the haziness. It would be morning in a few short hours. This was the longest night of her life.
Come on, Shadow. Come on, Luna.And Vlad, Suki, Kodiak, all the others. She couldn’t wait for them. She had to trust that they could find their way out.
She turned and sprinted into the woods. She’d played in this forest her entire childhood. She knew it well, though not so much at night. She’d once had a favorite fort she’d built herself, and it was there that she headed now.
Burrs and brambles clung to her clothing. Thorns snagged her hands. The underbrush was thick and dense. The woods smelled of crushed pine needles and damp, dank earth. The skeletons of the trees stretched long bony fingers to scrape the sky.
The darkness closed around her like a fist.
She kept her eyes open wide, wary of every flicker of movement, every sigh of the leaves, every pulsing shadow in the underbrush. A second of inattention might determine the difference between living and dying. A single wrong move—tripping on a tree root or stepping wrong on a felled branch—would alert predators to her presence.
She moved as swiftly but quietly as she could. Shadows spilled all around her like ink.
In the dark, she lost her way a few times and had to backtrack. The deer path was incredibly difficult to follow, though she’d explored these woods a thousand times.
Sweat beaded her forehead and dripped between her shoulder blades. Every footfall seemed to announce her presence to the night, to all the creatures that called this wild forest their home—and possibly to some that did not.
Raven searched the darkness for shifting shadows, for the gleam of predatory eyes. She strained for the sound of padded paws slinking through the forest. Or worse, human footsteps pursuing her.
Thirty minutes later, she finally stumbled upon the familiar ring of stones surrounding her childhood firepit. A few yards behind it stood the lean-to fort she’d built herself seven years ago. Several of the branches had fallen, though most still stood,creating the small shelter in the crook of a boulder and a giant spreading oak.
The moss roof she’d worked so hard on had crumbled long ago, but it didn’t matter. This place was comforting and familiar. She needed that.
Her legs shaky from exhaustion, she sank onto one of the log seats that surrounded the firepit. Above her, hints of starlight glimmered between the black tangles of branches.
She looked down at her trembling hands. Blood stained her fingers. Blood from a dead man. A dead man who’d tried to kill her.
Strangely, she felt no guilt. Like every wild creature, she’d instinctively protected herself. The drive for self-preservation was innate.
