Page 28

“Just the pack.” He’s breathing hard, the knife held low in a shaking hand. “Don’t make this worse.”

“Get out of my way.”

“I can’t.” He shifts as I do, keeping the gap closed. “He’ll break me if I go back empty-handed. You don’t know what he’s like.”

“Then let me pass and tell him I got away.”

He shakes his head. “He watched you come down here. There’s nowhere you’re going that isn’t through me.”

The big man crashes through the brush behind me.

“Quit talking to him!” he roars. “Put the little princess in the mud where he belongs!”

My back hits the rock. “I can’t give you the pack. If I lose it, I lose everything. Someone I love will die if I don’t make it out of here.” My voice breaks. “Please. Move.”

He lunges. All his weight is behind the knife, and there’s no time to think. I catch his arm and twist it away as I shove, but he’s already driving into me.

His foot slips. He stumbles past my shoulder, and the back of his head slams into the streambed rock.

The sound is wet and flat, and Light, I feel it in my own teeth.

He crumples onto the stones and doesn’t move. Blood slips into the stream beneath him, the current pulling it away while rain falls into his open eyes.

“Get up.” I’m already on my knees beside him, shaking his shoulder. “Come on. Get up.”

Nothing.

“What the fuck did you do?”

I look up. The big man stands farther up the streambed, staring at the body.

“I didn’t mean to. He just... I...” My hands won’t stop shaking.

His face twists. “I’m going to fucking kill you for that, princess.”

No, I can’t die here either. Onyx is waiting for me.

So I run.

I run harder than I ever have, crashing through branches and slipping on wet ground as my pack pounds against my back. My lungs burn. My legs hurt. The bag feels heavier with every step, but I don’t stop.

Breathe, JaJa.

I’m trying, brother.

I keep going until I can’t hear anyone behind me. Only then do I slow to a walk, lacing my hands over my head and drawing air into my lungs before letting it out again.

I killed a man.

The words don’t fit.

I killed him.

I see his face as the knife stopped shaking. I hear him saying, He’ll break me if I go back empty-handed. I see him falling. The sound. The blood.

Light...

He wasn’t trying to kill me. He was trying to survive.