Page 92 of The Stone Survival
His diamond eyes glowed bright in the night, gleaming with unshed tears. “It will be all right. Everything will be all right.”
I pushed up on my toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, then stepped away from him, slipping the ring onto my finger and biting back a gasp as its power rippled over my skin. My beast roared and surged up to the surface with a violence I’d never known. I arched as pain tightened my limbs, and in the next moment, I was rising higher and higher until I was looking down on Derek.
He stared up at me in awe. “My Cameron…You are magnificent.”
I held out my arm, stone gray but shimmering with a ruby essence. My hands were clawed, my feet huge, taloned monstrosities that could crush a human. Pressure bloomed on either side of my spine, and tears burned my eyes as Ifeltmy new wings stretch and catch the air.
I was free. Whole for the first and last time. But there was no time to savor it.
“I love you, Derek…Tell them all…Tell them I love them.” I turned away, and he grabbed my hand.
“No, Cameron. I am your shield, and we do this together.”
The rift cracked and expanded. I wanted to take him with me. To not be alone in this, but I’d be damned if I did that to Shar.
“Not this time, Derek. Go live. Live for us both.” I palm-punched his chest, sending him flying, then launched myself toward the rift.
Someone hollered my name, but I ignored it.
There could be no doubt. No second-guessing. No fear.
I closed my eyes and hurtled toward the rift.
CHAPTER 44
UBRON
Wake up, Serath. Wake up, damn you!
I can’t get to her.
I won’t get to her.
He won’t see. He won’t get to see.
I push deep into the gray place inside me, grab hold of his consciousness, and drag him up and out.
SERATH
I surface mid-flight and hurtle toward the ground before catching myself and rising. Where am I? What’s happening? What is that…Oh no. The rift. There’s something flying into it.
Ubron answers in my head. Cameron…She’s going to die…
“NO!” I push myself, wings beating harder and faster than ever before as I eat away at the distance between us.
But I won’t make it.
I won’t fucking make it.
“Cameron! No!”
CAMERON
The gray rushed to greet me, and the power emanating from the ring tightened its grip on my body, squeezing and seeping into me in waves of heat that intensified with each beat of my heart. The energy coalesced at my solar plexus, filling me and blocking out everything else. It kept pumping as if sensing how much would be required to implode the rift. So much power. Much more than my body would be able to withstand.
It would hurt.
It would kill me.
