Why did they look at me like that? Why haven’t any of them said a word to me?
But I don’t know what they’ve been through on their end getting this far into the escape. And we do need to get out of here as quickly as possible.
I bend against Zian’s massive frame, making myself as easy a burden as possible.
“I have—” I start to say, but my offer of weapons is cut off by Andreas’s crow of victory.
“We’re out of here!”
All three of them dash from the room without another word. The last of my four, the one I’d just started to worry about, gapes at us from where he’s been waiting in the hall.
“What—?” Dominic says, and Jacob interrupts him with a swipe of his hand through the air. He points toward the door.
Nothing else is spoken. The four men barrel out into the night with me in tow.
I’d insist on being put down, but I can’t say for sure that I can run faster than Zian, especially when I haven’t trained at long distances in the last four years. My guys seem to have a definite plan already, and making a fuss could throw the whole thing off.
But as we hurtle across the field and through the gate, Jacob hurling both of the guardians there into trees with a shove of his invisible power, my stomach knots.
Yells careen through the night. The guys charge off the road into the shelter of the forest.
Zian’s arm stays tight around me, his grip almost hard enough to bruise. His scent has flooded my lungs, but it can’t wash away my uneasiness.
Bobbing with his strides, I stare down at the expanse of his back in the navy tee he’s wearing and try again. “Zee?”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t give the slightest indication he’s even heard me.
I don’t understand.
I didn’t know what to expect from our reunion, but it wasn’t this. And all my instincts are quivering with the growing certainty that there’s something I’m missing.
Five
Riva
Twigs and dead leaves crackle under the guys’ thumping feet. I can’t see much except the darkened ground flying by below.
When I try to lift my head, I jostle even more awkwardly against Zian’s shoulder, but I catch a glimpse of flashlights streaking through the trees behind us. The guardians are giving chase, shouting to each other as they follow us.
The guys have taken a smart approach by diving into the forest. We’ve all trained for moving swiftly over uneven terrain, them probably much more recently than me. The guardians can’t outpace us with vehicles amid the trees, and the trunks shelter us from bullets unless our pursuers manage to get closer.
But where are we going from here?
I was so focused on getting the guysoutof the facility, with frantic adrenaline driving me from the arena all the way here, that I haven’t taken much time to consider what we’d do after I accomplished my initial goal. All I know is I want to get us away from our captors, someplace they’ll never find us again.
Which means we’re going to need to put more distance between them and us than we can accomplish on foot.
Zian hurtles steadily onward, his breaths brisk but even with the rise and fall of his chest against my thighs. He’ll be pacing himself, though—restraining his strength so he doesn’t outrun the other three guys.
I can only make out fragments of their forms in the darkness, but at least one of the others is panting now.
I bite my lip against the urge to demand to know what they’re planning next. The quieter we are, the more chance the guardians will lose track of us during the limited night we have left.
There’s muttered communication between two of the others, and Zian veers with them to the right without adding any comment of his own. He leaps straight over a log like its nothing more than a twig.
I concentrate on balancing my weight against him for as long as I can bear to shut off my thoughts. But eventually, I can’t help raising my head for another glance behind us.
What I see makes my pulse stutter. The faintest of glows is hazing the sky beyond the treetops, making the branches stand out in silhouette against what’s now not black but a dark blue.