Page 118 of Lifebound

One moment we were running hand in hand, and the next he stopped, gripped my forearm with his other hand, and he pulled me aside. I had no clue what the fuck was happening, and I had no strength to even try to stop it when he spun me around twice, then threwme.

Hethrewme in the air like I weighed nothing, almost pulling my arm off my torso completely in the process. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t scream. There was no voice in me, and even my heart didn’t beat as I watched him raise those glowing hands at me. As I watched those shadows shoot out of him and come to wrap me into a spinning tornado as my body flew higher and higher, then began to fall.

I was falling and I couldn’t see where. The bird was with me, but the shadows were too thick, and I couldn’t see what was below me, where I was falling to. Where Rune was.

The fucker threw me. Hethrewme away from those incubi—and how in the fuck washegoing to get away now?

He was fast, that’s how. I had been holding him back, that’s why.

God, please, let him be fast…

All thoughts left me when I fell against the first branch, which meant trees were under me. The shadows disappeared and I slammed onto another branch with the back of my head, which turned me to the side a second before I hit the ground. The pain that shot from my right leg made me scream before I opened my eyes. The bird was there, flying in circles over my head, and my leg felt like it was burning for real.

Rune.

Rune was not there with me.

I pushed myself up on my elbows, and the pain in my leg doubled. I gritted my teeth to hold back another scream and I blinked my eyes, tried to see what the hell had happened.

I did.

Rune had thrown me all the way to the trees that had grayish leaves on them and bark that was almost completely black. I’d fallen just behind the first row—and I was going to kick his ass for this as soon as he found me. I was going to give him a piece of my mind the moment I saw him, but…

The bird faded as it flew near my head. My heart stood still, and I looked up, focused ahead.

Rune was surrounded by horses and a shitload of succubi and incubi, and they were allfightinghim.

Red hot pain shot up my leg when I moved, but I didn’t care. Standing up was out of the question, but I was going to drag myself on my elbows all the way to him. I was going to fucking murder him for throwing me away, knowing those creatures would get to him—but first, I was going to help him murder them. In whichever way I could.

That’s what I told myself as I continued to drag my body forward, eyes on Rune so that I saw the way he moved, so incredibly fast. I saw the way he ducked and leaned back and jumped to try to avoid the hits coming at him from possibly more than ten incubi who had formed a circle around him. More waiting on the sides, watching.

My heart all but exploded when he hit the ground on one knee. I didn’t see how or who hit him because I was trying to get to him faster, but Rune was on one knee and some of the incubi were already moving away to reveal whom I thought was Rogue holding him by the hair.

Something glistened under the weak moonlight in his other hand—a knife as big as the one Helid had tried to fight those monkey monsters with.

I about lost my mind.

The thought of those people killing Rune was completely unfathomable to me. My fingers dug into the ground and the heat that came over me erased any trace of that pain that had paralyzed my leg completely.

No.There was no way in any hell that these people were going to kill Rune right now, regardless of who he was or what he’d done in that basement. I would die first, and I wouldn’t hesitate.

The next moment, heat shot from my chest and toward my arms, gathered in the palms of my hands. They began to glow a warm yellow light and right now I couldn’t care less who saw or if this was even real—I was going to dosomethingto stop this. Rune was not going to die while I lay there and did nothing. Fuck that.

So, I closed my eyes and prepared to release whatever had built up inside me, even if it killed me, too.

Then I heard the footsteps coming from behind me.

Everything came to a halt. My eyes opened and I realized my hands were dipped all the way into the slightly wet soil, and I was still lying on my stomach, and Rune was still there on his knee…

And darkness so much thicker than Rune’s shadows was spreading all around me like waves moving out of the forest and toward the incubi.

Tendrils of darkness shot forward and covered the ground as if they were living things, and the incubi saw. They stopped just like I had, froze completely, as the person responsible stepped right to my side.

Slowly, I raised my head to find a woman dressed in black with her hands forward, glowing white.

“You fucking leeches,” she said, her voice light as a feather.

She continued ahead, out of the forest like she couldn’t even see me lying there.

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