Page 46 of Claimed By Monsters

“Only,” Fox mutters, frowning at me. “We’ll barely have time to get them to the portal before the sun rises.”

“There’s time,” Scar assures him.

“Well, I’ll take the one that’s closest,” Fox says.

“You and Snake will take Maria’s body to The Abyss,” Scar says, looking from Fox to me. “She’s in two pieces and they aren’t that far away.”

Fox mutters something inaudible under his breath before he looks at me. “Okay, come on, let’s get moving.”

“We will meet you at the side of the nursery when you are done and have washed up in the river,” Scar calls out, making sure we know we are not to go straight to Lita.

“Yes, Sir!” Fox calls back.

He looks at me as I lead him back to where Scar killed Maria.

“Can you believe this?” he asks.

I nod, and then tell him I am ready to be done with this task, too.

He sighs. “Lita’s probably sleeping by now, anyway.”

He may be right, but that does not sound so bad.

If our mate is sleeping, we can rest beside her.

All I care about is being near her.

And we will be near her again soon.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Fox

Theclean-upistheroughest part of the night. I mean, besides freaking out over a fake version of Lita crying out for my help. I may have nightmares about that for some time. It hurt my heart to hear my mate in so much pain. No part of me was able to take a step back and think about anything logically when that was happening.

I shudder as I move through the long grass slowly, looking for Maria’s severed head.

Apparently, Scar literally had to bite her head off when illusions of me and Scratch showed up and tried to stop him from killing her. Snake swears the fake version of me was not quite as handsome.

He also swore that the head could not have gone very far.

Yet, I’ve been picking through the grass where he said it rolled for at least five minutes and so far there has been no sign of it.

It’s too dark to see if there’s a bloody trail or not.

All the blades of grass look black.

“You’re sure it went this way?” I call back to Snake.

He nods as he lifts the headless body over his shoulder. I didn’t turn him down when he offered to carry that part. It seemed disgustingly messy, but he will be able to clean the blood off his scales much easier than I will be able to get it out of my fur.

Now, I’m starting to regret my choice to carry the smaller body part.

“It may be lost forever,” I tell him, lowering my voice as he moves closer to where I am.

His head bobs around a bit, and then he points to a section of grass that is a few footsteps further into the woods. I move toward it and her skin becomes visible like a spot of light in the darkness.

I identify her hair and pick the head up gingerly, using it like a handle.

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