Page 35 of Bound to the Griffin (Hillcrest Hollow Shifters #3)
Gwendolyn
The pull was back. It tugged at me from the tree line, subtle at first, then sharper, gnawing at the edge of my thoughts until it was almost unbearable.
As if something were beckoning me into the woods, promising I’d never come back out.
It was exactly like in my dreams, exactly like that time I’d sleepwalked in my socks out here.
Jackson had been right, this was no time to be heroic.
I turned on my heel, forcing my legs toward the diner like he’d told me, even as every instinct screamed that I was already too exposed.
Part of me felt like I was betraying the guy I loved by leaving him behind in that house, where darkness tried to get its hooks into you through your dreams.
My boots crunched in the brittle crust of snow, my legs heavy as I waded through the deepest parts.
The storm had stripped the world down to white and silence.
Then I froze. A figure stood at the corner, just as I rounded the side of the house.
Familiar, unwelcome. He was a little stooped with age, bundled up tight against the weather, and his hooked nose was red from the cold.
He was unmistakable, even though we’d only met once—to sign the deed to the B it didn’t appear to have a mouth it could use for that.
It didn’t need to; its voice slid into my skull, jagged and cold.
You’ll do. My body lurched toward it, my feet scraping through snow.
It wasn’t just Halver and the stranger dragging me now; my own body was betraying me, making me lurch toward that horror with painful, staggering steps.
“You will feed me. Restore me. Sustain me. And through you… I will eat the griffin too.” The voice said all of that with such evil satisfaction that it made me want to vomit, made me want to run and hide so badly, and yet, I was trapped.
“No!” I shoved back, thrashing against Halver’s iron grip, against the burglar’s shoving hands.
My limbs were going numb, sluggish, as if the cold had burrowed under my skin, the way the wet snow was melting against my jeans.
My heart thudded slow, heavy. I forced the words through my teeth.
“You can’t have him. You can’t have me.”
The creature’s head jerked, a faceless roar tearing through my mind.
The sound made my knees buckle, but it broke something, too.
It gave me a crack of air, a moment of willpower.
That brief respite let me draw in a deep breath, expanding my lungs, reminding me of life and brightness and good things as the oxygen tingled through my veins.
“I said no!” I shouted. My own voice echoed in the shadowed woods, frail against that darkness, but it was mine. With more strength, I demanded, “Leave me alone!” It might have been my imagination, but it felt like my body was my own again.
The thing recoiled, rage shaking its frame like a tree in a storm, and then the storm came.
The sky tore open with a shriek of wings.
Jackson descended in a blaze of golden feathers, griffin-eyes burning, talons outstretched.
The ground shook as something massive and gleaming burst through the trees—a dragon, its scales catching what little light there was and scattering it like molten gold, shredding the dark with every stride.
Halver went down in a heap. The burglar crumpled, Luther, a blur of motion faster than thought, slammed him aside before scooping me up into his arms. Snow flew around us as wolves howled, a chorus that rippled through the woods; the clash of beasts echoed somewhere beyond sight.