Page 109 of Fake Fae-Ancée

When I looked up, the gun slid spinning across the floor, right at Yegor's feet.

In reality, everything happened very quickly. But to me, the world melted into slow motion under the deafening thumping of my own heartbeat.

Yegor picked up the gun. His eyes zeroed in on me. I could not move. The dress still weighed a damn ton. My legs were failing.

Yegor's face contorted into a smirk. He pointed the gun at me.

Unlocked the safety.

Baba's words came back to me: he would do anything to prevent the prophecy from coming true.

The queen would not survive.

Yegor pulled the trigger.

The thunder of several shots boomed through the chapel.

Yuri

Bear roaredto the surface in a storm of fur and teeth and claws. My suit shredded into a thousand pieces as I shifted and pushed off the floor, and dove into the most important jump of my entire life.

I stretched myself long.

Bear was big and Bear was slow. But this time Bear was just fast enough.

I threw myself between Kai and the bullet just in time.

Kai

Yuri crashed onto the stones,already shifting back.

A massive wound in his chest screamed scarlet red at me.

The chaos around us faded. Gunshots crackling around us, splintering stone from the bodyguard's gunfire, Nox roaring with fury, rushing at Yegor and his guards to protect his bride...

…everything faded into the background.

The light in Yuri's eyes went out.

And with the same cold despair that had tightened my throat when I couldn't sign the papers, I saw my strong, unwavering, boastful, dorky, sweet, stupid Yuri slipping away.

Leaving me behind.

I grabbed his hand.

Willed my way into his disintegrating mind.

Something snapped and pulled me under.

* * *

Coldness struck me.

I immediately remembered where I was. No one forgets the place where they almost died. One was never really gone. A part of oneself always remained here.

In the in-between world.

Yuri had found me here, long ago, when he had been a young Bear, alone in the woods, his mind drifting between the worlds in order to become a man.

---