Page 132 of Hunted By Fae

I take the moment and, with a step closer to her, speak as soft as the lights bound around my wrist. “That didn’t kill him. We need to put as much distance between us and that lake as we can.”

Emily’s voice comes, croaked, “Who is he?”

I throw her a side-look, swift. “A stray.”

Tesni draws in another breath from the inhaler to flood her lungs.

Emily challenges me, “No, she said he recognised you.” Her finger points at Tess, sagged against the wall. “He’s more than a stray. He wastalkingto you.”

Fair point.

The dark fae don’t make a lot small talk before they slaughter us. Makes sense that she noticed, that it stood out to her.

“Now isn’t the time to dig into it,” I tell her, and it’s the truth. I turn my cheek to Emily’s suspicious, narrowed eyes. “We need to get far away from here—and we’ll worry about finding another unit to track later.”

The look Tesni lifts to me is warped in faint red light. I see it etched all over her. The fatigue in her lashes hanging low over sharp blue eyes, the downturn of her mouth as she tucks the inhaler into her pocket.

I read her like a book I have read a hundred times before.

She doesn’t think she has it in her.

Not just thenow, the present mission of pushing onwards and escaping the dark warrior she sank into icy waters, but the whole journey—moving and moving and moving, until we locate another unit, keep our distance, track from afar, and follow them for more months to come.

And it might be months.

Might be less.

But the whole thing, even to me, is starting to feel like a lifetime of chasing our own shadows.

I seethatin her.

“Can you walk?” I ask.

The corners of her mouth pin to her cheeks. She drops her gaze to the narrow street, a foot-lane between city roads.

Her jacket crinkles against the wall. “I have to,” she says—and it pangs my chest.

Tesni needs rest.

A lot of it.

The plague harmed her too much; it deteriorated the strength of her lungs and weakened her in a world where only the strong survive.

I’ve never pushed her to her limits, then beyond. Not once has she done too much before I have stopped for her to have her rest.

This can’t be one of those times.

I don’t know what happens when she’s pushed beyond that point—if the lungs inside of her will collapse, if her heart will fail, if her life will give out beneath the weight of it all.

It’s not a risk I want to take, but I don’t see any other way out of this.

Dare is fae.

More than that, he is hybrid.

Born of both light and dark—and he’s one of those rarer hybrids threaded from the best of each.

Dare is survival, he is predator, he is danger sheathed in muscle, marble skin, and pure skill.