Page 135 of Blood So Brutal

I didn’t hesitate. My eyes landed on Wolf, and then I was moving, desperate to get to him.

“Wolf.” I fell to his side. “Wolf, are you okay?”

He sat on his heels, gripping the dagger in his torso with both hands as he pulled, blood pouring through his fingers.

“Hells,” I mumbled. “You’re losing too much blood. You won’t heal in time.”

I surveyed the war around us. The fighting continued, but too much of it pushed into the kingdom, and Wolf knew it.

“You have to finish this,” he mumbled. “It has to be you.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I ordered. “I’m not doing anything without you. Can you stand?”

He nodded, only to grunt in pain when he tried to lift himself from his knees. My stomach sank. Not only was Wolf fading quickly, but Asmodeus started to move.

“It has to be you,” he said again.

“What?” I looked at him frantically, searching for meaning behind his words. “What has to be me? I can’t do this alone, Wolf!”

“You have to kill him. Kill him and stop this.”

“We already tried to kill him.” Screams rang out in the distance. Goddess help us, we were losing this damned war. “It didn’t work.”

“That’s because it wasn’t you. It has to be you, Huntress. You are the blood queen. You are the one with the magic that can end him.”

“I’m not strong enough,” I replied quickly. “My magic is no match for his, Wolf.”

He swallowed, eyes nearly fluttering closed. “That’s why you’ll take all of mine too.”

“No.” I was shaking my head before he even finished the words. “No, I won’t do that. You won’t survive it.”

“None of us will survive if he’s still alive. This war will end in blood, Huntress. You still have a kingdom counting on you.”

How the fuck did we get here again? How did we get to this point again, with Wolf sacrificing himself for me? I was sick of it, sick of having to choose, of having to do the right thing.

I didn’t want to do the right thing if Wolf wasn’t here. I didn’t want the kingdom if he wasn’t part of it.

Damn it all.

“I see that look in your eyes,” he said, smiling softly.

“What look?”

“The look you make when you’re about to do something incredibly stupid. But I won’t let you do it, Huntyr. I won’t let you try to save me.”

He fell forward slightly and threw his arms around me. I was too distracted to notice the way his hand fumbled at my belt, pulling my bloodied dagger out of its sheath.

He was already bleeding, but he sliced his palm deeply before I could stop him, before I even realized what was happening.

“What are you?—”

He gripped my arm and sliced my palm before placing our two hands together.

Asmodeus struggled to sit up a few feet away. He drew our attention with a grunt of pain, then anger.

“It’s yours now,” Wolf said. “It’s all yours.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but Wolf clasped on. I didn’t feel his magic, didn't feel any part of him anymore. He was fading too fast, slipping out of my grasp, just a few seconds away from?—

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