Page 93 of Fated to Monsters

"Bo," I mutter without even having laid my sights on him.

He drags me to my feet. “What are you doing down there, Birdie?”

I turn toward him, my body already feeling lighter and less under her authority. “Just hanging out.”

He steadies my shoulders and studies my exterior. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” This forces a smile out of me. “What are you doing here?”

Chaos continues to erupt around us but for a second it feels like it’s only the two of us standing here.

“Sorry to disappoint. Just couldn’t let you have all the fun.” His dark stare doesn’t leave mine. “I came the second your nose started bleeding.”

“That was hours ago.”

"Seconds ago, in Arthlia." He releases and shoves me behind him, grabbing the knife that soars through the air toward us. Bo sends it back in the direction it came, landing straight into the chest of a hunter. He skims his attention over the dwindling crowd. "You guys are getting your asses kicked."

My lip quivers despite everything I’m doing to hold myself from falling apart.

Bo returns to face me, his hand coming up to rest against my non-injured cheek. “Hey, if we go down, we go down together.”

“I’m glad you came,” I tell him, because this might be my last chance to tell him the truth.

“I don’t know how much longer Sydney and Tremont can hold us. Five is too many.”

“Five? Who else came?” I do the math in my head.

Me. Dash. Wes. Bo. Who’s the fifth?

“Everest.” He points off in the distance.

Bo slams his elbow into a hunter that runs by, stopping him completely in his tracks and using the knife the man was holding against him to jab it into his throat.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have assumed Everest would return to Prania, especially when that meant leaving Jade behind. Those two have been inseparable since Rockbridge, and if I was a betting woman, I would have wagered all the cheese in the world that he’d never part from her.

“He came to help me find you. Insisted I didn’t come alone.” Bo wipes the blade he just killed a man with on his leg, only to drive it into another hunter that approaches. He repeats the same motion. “Angels, there sure are a lot of them.”

“They’re mind controlled, Bo. They don’t know what they’re doing.” I exhale. “I was able to break the compulsion on one of them.”

“Why can’t you do it to the rest of them?” He motions toward the throng of people around us.

“I killed him.” I keep Wes in my line of sight while talking with Bo. Despite the restraints suppressing Wes’s hound side from rising to the surface, he does not lack in the combat department. He’s killed a minimum of three hunters since I started watching him. Defending himself enough to lessen the worry that overtook me seeing him fall to one of Parla’s magical defenses.

“Probably easier that way.” Bo glances down at me. “Is that why your nose started bleeding?”

“No, it happened as soon as I got here.” What’s the point in lying when the chance of our survival is decreasing with each demon slaughtered?

“Where’s Dash?” Bo latches onto me and spins me out of the way of an attack.

“Hiding.”

“Good.”

“Directly behind you,” I say while picking up the knife I lost when Parla grabbed a hold of me with her magic.

“You, too.”

Bo and I turn, both of us seamlessly moving in unison and forcefully implanting our knives into the people who attempted to threaten us.

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