Queen Nevaeh’s bloody maw, already clamped around the back of Ari’s neck readying to bite down, paused at Adrian’s shrilling demand for her to stop. When he shoved at his mother’s massive beast to get off of her, she carefully pulled her teeth out of the tortured flesh of his kamará and slid to the side.
Even though he wanted to scoop her against him, Adrian didn’t know if he should touch her, with how shredded her tissue was, with how the blood geysered from her body. But he laid beside her, holding her hand, feeling that sinking dread he experienced not even twenty minutes ago chasing the adrenalin in his blood all over again.
With his cheek pressing into the dirt just inches from her beautiful face, he smiled through a sheen of tears. Everything about this woman, like her expressions–
