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So much had happened.

There was too much to consider.

She couldn’t believe she had made it out of there alive.

I killed Wren.

And, in doing so, she had just ensured she would be hunted as a traitor for the rest of her life. Imprisonment was for those who abandoned the guild, but killing the Head Elder? Death awaited her, and her features were easily distinguishable.

She looked behind her, no longer able to see the fortress – or any other remnants of the life she’d just left. Although she had a few friendships, they weren’t particularly deep. It was hard to be attached to people who could easily die the next time they went out for a mission.

“Please,” Emerie pleaded, pulling on the rope around the Duskwalker’s neck. She needed to rest, to figure out what her next plan was. “Please stop. I need a–”

Ingram halted so abruptly that Emerie squealed and kicked her legs as she was tossed forward. A scream burst from her at the pain in her side when she landed, while sticks jabbed into her body when she slid.

Her waning adrenaline restrengthened as she crawled to her knees.

Even more so when the Duskwalker pounced. She only had a split second to roll to the side before she was impaled by his claws or crushed to death.

“Wait,” Emerie huffed out. She put her hand up to ward him off as he turned his raven skull and red orbs to her. “Wait. I don’t understand. I saved you.”

The way his next snarl rumbled from him, like a quiet, unnerving storm, had her hackles rising. It was beastly, terrifying, and the arrow sticking out of his jugular gave her just enough insight to understand that the lights may be on, but no one was home.

“Ingram?” she asked, hoping his name might break through to him.

It didn’t. His orbs were dark crimson, his spikes were raised, and even his scales looked lethal as they flared. The base of his tail was straight, the rest of it kinked.

She knew enough about predators to know when one was about to attack.

He’s angry, afraid, and in pain.He’d managed to get himself out, but not without being harmed. Had he forgotten she was on his back as he bolted? Was she really that light in comparison to his strength?Right now, I am dressed like the people who hurt him.

Fuck.

Emerie eyed her bag caught around the spikes of his back, as well as the harness she’d put around him. Twigs snapped under her thinly soled boots as she stepped to the left. When he roared and jumped that way, she sprung to the right and ducked behind a tree.

She didn’t stay there.

Pulling her whip from her weapons belt, Emerie ran for her life. She wasn’t fast, not compared to a Duskwalker, but she used the density of the forest to shield herself.

Will this nightmare ever end?!She mentally squealed as he dived out from a bush she had been inside of not even seconds before.

For almost six days, Emerie hadn’t known a moment of peace! She was exhausted on so many levels that she worried her soul would give up and leave her living body just to escape this torment.

This is the worst week of my life.Okay, that wasn’t entirely true, but it was on the tippy top of shit weeks.

Thank goodness she hadn’t removed his beak binding, otherwise she was sure he would have nipped her when he got too close. She had to lurch her body into an arch by going to her toes to avoid being pecked, before purposefully falling to her back and somersaulting to get away.

I just need to get behind him.That wasn’t going to be an easy feat, not when she constantly had to move.

“Ugh!” she screeched. “Fuck this!”

Emerie ducked between two trees he couldn’t fit through, came back around, and sprinted for him. There was no surprise for him, like he was so focused on killing her that he didn’t care.

Right as he jumped to catch her in both clawed hands, Emerie flung her whip forward around a branch. She went over the top of him, let the handle of her whip go, and landed on his back to ride him reverse cowgirl.

Within the span of a breath, she unlatched the hook between his shoulder blades that was connected to the harness she’d placed on him. She’d secured it to him for just this kind of situation.

Luck favours the prepared.