The dogs were faster than we were.
We ran anyway.
The forest was a blur of dark shapes and grasping branches. The ground was broken, root-snarled, and wet from the earlier rain. My boots slipped on the mud, my injured shoulder screaming with every jarring step. Branches tore at skin and clothes, leaving thin red lines across my arms and face. Every step sent a fresh spike of pain through the bond as Darius's wound tore wider, the jagged edges of the knife wound pulling apart with each movement.
He had stopped trying to pretend he could take his own weight. Lina and I carried him between us, his boots dragging, his head lolling. His blood marked a clear trail for anything with a nose, dark drops that seemed to glow in the pale moonlight.
Behind us the baying rose and fell, closer each t
