Taekook and the ECLIPSE

42 | Toward The Forest

I'd burned through all my adrenaline.

My body had nothing left. I sagged, and Taehyung caught me before I could hit the rocks. He sprang to his feet, me in his arms.

"Yeonjun!" Taehyung shouted.

Yeonjun was crouched, still tensed in agony, looking as if he meant to launch himself into the forest.

"No!" Taehyung ordered. "You go straight home. Now. As fast as you can!"

Yeonjun whimpered, shaking his great head from side to side.

"Yeonjun. Trust me."

The huge wolf stared into Taehyung's agonized eyes for one long second, and then he straightened up and flew into the trees, disappearing like a ghost.

Taehyung cradled me tightly against his chest, and then we were also hurtling through the shadowy forest, taking a different path than the wolf.

"Taehyung." I fought to force the words through my constricted throat. "What happened, Taehyung? What happened to Jackson? Where are we going? What's happening?"

"We have to go back to the clearing," he told me in a low voice. "We knew there was a good probability of this happening. Earlier this morning, Jimin saw it and passed it through Jackson to Yeonjun. The Volturi decided it was time to intercede."

The Volturi.

Too much. My mind refused to make sense of the words, pretended it couldn't understand.

The trees jolted past us. He was running downhill so fast that it felt as if we were plummeting, falling out of control.

"Don't panic. They aren't coming for us. It's just the normal contingent of the guard that usually cleans up this kind of mess. Nothing momentous, they're merely doing their job. Of course, they seem to have timed their arrival very carefully. Which leads me to believe that no one in Italy would mourn if these newborns had reduced the size of the Cullen family." The words came through his teeth, hard and bleak.

"I'll know for sure what they were thinking when they get to the clearing."

"Is that why we're going back?" I whispered. Could I handle this? Images of flowing black robes crept into my unwilling mind, and I flinched away from them. I was close to a breaking point.

"It's part of the reason. Mostly, it will be safer for us to present a united front at this point. They have no reason to harass us, but . . . Jane's with them. If she thought we were alone somewhere away from the others, it might tempt her. Like Jennie, Jane will probably guess that I'm with you. Demetri, of course, is with her. He could find me, if Jane asked him to."

I didn't want to think that name. I didn't want to see that blindingly exquisite, childlike face in my head. A strange sound came out of my throat.

"Shh, Kook, shh. It's all going to be fine. Jimin can see that."