This is the end of the line, folks. The next part will be the usual fun facts + closing credit :-)
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IT WASN'T courage, not really. Not even bravery.
It felt like instinct; something you had to do. Something that was just right. As soon as I dusted the bullets off and the gun stowed carefully on top of an archway inside my house plucked out of its hideaway, I shouldered it and we went out on. Running through the cold squeezed my lungs, but I couldn't even feel it.
Fear crawled in my heart and decided to stay. And that fear brought so much of those kept emotions. An almost robotic instinct.
Please be safe, was a futile thought.
As we charged past the border of sector seven, the map of the forest floor etched on my mind where I know a clearing is coming - showing a false sense of security by placing two steep traps just outside its center that, by a figured weight, will open up and release a fume enough to knock an entire horse, and releasing spiked chains targeting one limb to ensure incapacity before a hunter can be alerted.
I'm coming, I promise.
Please be safe until I get there.
You have to be.
"The clearing is coming," Elise murmured and went roundabout and instead of straight on, slowing down to edge it.
As soon as we were close enough, I could smell it. It was like an assault to the senses. The fume that secretes is so vapid in odour that it wafts for a few minutes, unable to blend with the air for a while.
I stuffed my mouth and nose with my coat as soon as I saw the spray of black clothes hunters. All of them in full gear I hardly see around the diner, reminding me of the time Orion and I were in his car, faking a relationship for his life, and him acting like a sleaze.
The grip on my gun tightened as soon as I smelled blood.
We inched as close as possible through the frame of snow coated trees and frozen plants. I raised my head to look through the hunters hoping to spot a glimpse of Orion on the snow, being tied, one foot bloody gnawed by bolts through flesh, heart pounding all the while.
I didn't hear or see anything, drowned in panic, until a hand slipped over my mouth and around my stomach, tightened, and I was thrown back with hardly a thud back to the ground, only to land on soft torso and boney legs.
Elise yelped, I grabbed my gun around and a voice, warm and breathless, hissed in my ear, "Brielle Amon, what were you thinking?"
I stopped struggling. Orion raised his head from my side, warm, red-cheek and alive.
