Page 80 of Ava: Part One

She started to run again, away from the thing she had slashed. The roots or snakes caught her constantly, and they tried to wrap themselves around her every time she slowed down.

Something stabbed at her head. Pain greater than her burning skin and bleeding side combined shot through her. Screaming as she doubled over, the knives dropped from her trembling hands as she applied pressure to her temples. Her insides felt like they were shrinking as the stabbing pain continued. This was worse than after Claire had attacked her in the village. Her eyes were closed, but somehow she could see everything as if the darkness had invaded her mind.

Violet eyes filled with such raging fury, watching her from every tree trunk. The branches reaching out to her like fingers. The snakes thicker than her thighs, slithering towards her. And creatures so big she couldn’t tell them apart from the tree trunks, slowly shuffling towards her.

Was it real? Were her eyes open, or was this her imagination? She couldn’t tell anymore.

She screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth. She was trapped in her head as the pain intensified and brought her to her knees. Sharp pain slashed across her body as if something had taken her knives and was using them against her, getting every part of her body slice by slice.

A low, long growl sounded somewhere in her head.

Was it in her head?

Her eyes shot open just as the glowing red eyes approached, just as huge as the creatures she had seen blending with thetree trunks, and it launched itself at something that she couldn’t see. There were pained howls and whines, but the snarling and sounds of a vicious attack continued. Despite the pain, she pushed herself to her feet, but everything went dark again. She couldn’t see Ezekiel anymore.

Instead of the red eyes, it was another pair she could see—another wolf. Giant claws ripping through two people. Their screams. The crunching sounds. The blood. She knew she was in the forest, but her nightmare came alive right in front of her eyes. It felt so real as it repeated itself over and over again.

The screams. The crunching sounds. The blood. Then the picture changed, and instead of the wolf, she was the one ripping them apart.

The pressure increased in her head as the fire continued to burn around her and the thick, sickly molasses stuck to her skin.

But that didn’t stop the nightmare.

Ezekiel’s growls and snarls matched with the wolf in her head. The paws ripping the people in her living nightmare changed to her fingers, then back to wolf claws again. Over and over until she couldn’t tell who the monster was.

The fighting stopped. The screams in her head stopped. There was silence in the pitch darkness. And then a pair of arms picked her up and started running at dizzying speed. She knew it was Ezekiel because his cologne wrapped itself around her, cocooning her in false security.

And then her head exploded, and she faded into the darkness.

Chapter 57

Zeke didn’t stop running until he was in the house. He was breathless and lost his footing many times but kept his hold on Ava. Derek and Myles had shifted to keep up with him because he was a lot faster than them, even in his human form, but he had no idea how he had managed that with the silver still burning through him. He knew some of it was Ava’s pain through this cursed bond, adding to pain that had already been crippling before he had forced the shift and gone into the forest.

Ava looked lifeless in his arms. His heart constricted in his chest when he looked at her pale face and the cuts and bruises all over it, but he concentrated on her heartbeat to calm himself down. She was alive. In pain but alive.

Drake and Myles shifted back, and Myles made to take Ava from him, but he growled in warning. Shadow wanted her close. And so did he. Fuck.

She could have died. Another minute, and even he would never have been able to find her in there. The forest had claimed countless lives since the Academy was built, and it grew stronger with each passing year. Ava shouldn't have survived this, not when she was so human and frail. She shouldn’t have been able to get so far into the forest. He’d had to struggle and fight his way to get to her, and if it weren’t for Shadow, they would both have died in there.

He staggered to the stairs, still listening to her heartbeat, unable to concentrate on anything else.

“Let us help you,” Derek said gently. “She needs to go to the infirmary.”

“You both do,” Myles said.

“No!”

The first thing those doctors would do was hand them over to the Council for breaching the boundary into the forest. It was the worst infraction anyone could commit at the academy, and the punishment would be severe.

“You’ll be okay. You’re an Alpha, they won’t—”

“I said no.”

He staggered up the stairs. All the unnatural strength Shadow had used to save Ava had taken everything out of him. His limbs had already been numb, but now he felt like he was dragging a tonne of metal behind him. The hallway to his room seemed longer than usual as he struggled to the end of it. His body was already shutting down, but only Shadow’s stubbornness keptthem going. Shadow would take care of his mate, no matter what.

He breathed a sigh of relief once he was in his room and then dragged his feet to his bed.

He gently placed Ava down on it and then staggered back when he looked at her body and saw the full damage. She was cut everywhere on her body. Bruises, cuts, and blisters like first-degree burns covered too much of her skin, and when he reached over and gently lifted her T-shirt, he saw the same under it. And there was blood everywhere, still seeping out of her wounds and out of a nasty gash on her side.

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