Page 127 of Hunted By Fae

The dark male moves.

His silhouette, tall, looming, powerful, it moves for the smaller silhouette, the slighter frame with wide hips—

I don’t think.

I just act.

My lungs swell with the inhale, and I release it with an explosive shout, “Ruuunn!”

The dark fae whips his face to me—but I’m already firing at his boots.

The bullets strike the ice, over and over and over.

There’s nothing triumphant about it.

The blast of gunfire bolts my muscles to my bones, grits my teeth in a bared snarl, and I just squeeze the trigger.

Ice and water and snow erupt all around the dark male’s boots. If he throws a snarling glare at me, a look of lethal promises, I don’t see it, not before the ice gives out beneath him—

And he’s gone.

All that’s left on the ice is a bobbing silhouette and her torchlight bouncing with her.

I lower the rifle.

Bee races in the direction of the path.

“Torch,” I breathe the word, then turn on Emily in the darkness. “She can’t see us, aim the fucking torch!”

She does.

The moment I bark the order at her, the fumble of a shotgun and a heavy torch starts to clatter in the darkness. Then the light blasts at me.

I cringe against it, blinded in white, my vision seared. I cringe, still, even when the torchlight is swept away from me, and Emily is calling Bee to the boat.

I turn my face to my shoulder and press my squeezed eyes to the warmth of my snow-jacket, and I wait it out, the blindness that starts to trickle away like dying stars.

Bee sees it and alters her direction.

By the time I’m peeling my face away from the shoulder of my parka, the punishing sound of her bootsteps hitting the snowy earth is drawing closer.

She doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow down.

Her shout is a cry. “Run!”

And in a blink, she’s grabbing me by the arm, and Emily’s hand snatches a fistful of my parka, and we’re barrelling into the woods.

My boots slip over the frosty foliage.

The rifle clatters as I swing the strap over my shoulder.

I don’t fight the rush.

If Bee decides it’s still not safe, even with the dark fae underwater, buried beneath ice, then yeah, I’m running.

I have no interest in hanging around for the wrath of a soaking wet, inconvenienced dark warrior.

TWENTY-SEVEN