reserves of my strength to reach the top.
Hundreds of thick roots blocked the way, so I summoned the knife and
began to hack.
Silent, unearthly screams echoed through my mind. The roots recoiled
and slowly began to wither as I sliced through their flesh and souls.
I buried my sudden guilt for the screaming roots and envisioned each as a
blood-red snake. Teeth gritted against the pain and exhaustion, I hacked my
way through with abandon, even as I felt the roots wrapping around my feet.
We have to get to Jax.
He was pulling me to him somehow, like I was tethered to him by an
invisible thread wrapped around my chest.
It was just the delirium of exhaustion, of course, but it gave me strength
and dragged me onward all the same.
47
Jaxson
“GIVE HER TO ME!” I roared as I ripped through root and stem.
My battered, blood-slick hands could no longer grip, so I wrapped a long
root around my forearm and pulled. My muscles strained as I braced against
the rock wall, and then the thick root tore free as tendril after tendril ripped.
I’d broken a passage through the roots where Savannah had disappeared,
but the barricade of living roots kept shifting and growing back. We battled
for every inch, each of us trying to tear the other apart—but I would be
victorious.
The mate bond pulled me downward like an anchor falling toward the
ocean floor. She was so close. Weak, but alive. And she needed my help. I
could feel it with every bone in my body.
A tremor shook the cavern. It wasn’t the first, and I silently prayed to the
gods that it wasn’t the last. The tremors were growing closer together, and the
weak rock was unstable. I didn’t care. I had to reach her. Not because she
was my mate, but because she was my responsibility—she’d trusted me, and