Page 71 of Hellish Witch

My stomach churned at the thought of what I was about to do.

Cookie was nowhere in sight, but I swore I could feel her, like a bright blip of energy, way up in a nearby tree. No doubt surveying her domain like the queen she thought she was.

Alpha’s signature was a little murkier, but there was a rippling disturbance only a few metres beyond the small clearing Killian and I had bedded down in. His trace seemed to circle us in a slow patrol.

My plan was crazy.

I knew it.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t my best option. The only way I knew to keep everyone I cared about safe.

With a steadying breath, silent as a shadow-walker, I rose from my nest of blankets.

Pulling my knife free, I winced at the light scrape of metal. When the incubus didn’t stir, I leaned over his sleeping form.

I hovered there, knife poised in my shaking hand for a single second.

There was no undoing this.

His words from this morning hit me all over again.

I have to.

I struck.

Stormy eyes flashed open as my blade descended, but it was too late. The tip sliced through the meat of his forearm, opening a thin line through the chains inking his skin.

Confusion furrowed his brows a second before betrayal flooded silver-flecked eyes.

He tried to sit up but barely rose an inch.

My special poison was fast-acting. Already racing through his bloodstream, paralysing his nervous system in a numbing wave.

“Why?” he rasped through clenched fangs.

Moisture wavered my vision. I sheathed the blade at my hip and notched my chin. “I won’t let your loyalty to Rex get you killed.”

A growl rumbled his chest, but the sound was faint. Only a few more seconds and unconsciousness would drag him under.

Alpha padded from the shadows, moonlight bathing him as he entered the clearing. His head cocked as his hell-fire gaze jumped from me to Killian.

“Keep him safe,” I pleaded but I could already sense the denial from the hellhound before he even made a sound. “Please, Alpha. He needs you more than I do. The Bloodwood is no place for the unconscious. He’s free meat otherwise.”

The hellhound snapped his fangs at the air, but I knew he’d do what was necessary. Zoella and Rex would be devastated if Killian died. I’d left the familiar with no choice. I wasn’t the one defenceless and unable to protect myself in a place filled with hungry predators.

I was just the witch who’d left him like that.

My heart ached as I took one last look into Killian’s eyes, sparking with silver like the flash of lightning. Anyone else would have been unconscious minutes ago.

“Goodbye, Killian,” I whispered.

I gently pulled his wing back over him to keep him warm, resisting the urge to give his soft feathers one final caress.

I might never see him again.

Before I lost my nerve, I turned my back on the demon I’d cared more about than I should and hurried away from the clearing, plunging into the darkness of the forest proper.

Any stupid fantasies I’d had about us lay in ashes. We were never going to be together. Never going to become mates. Never have a family together.

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