The Cursed Kingdom by Invi Wright

Author:Invi Wright [Wright, Invi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

ABBY

I HOLD MY breath. The silence from the ground stretches, and the unknown has my heart practically beating out of my chest.

What the fuck is happening down there? I stare at the ground, waiting for a naked shifter to climb up and drag me down. He’ll probably throw me straight to the ground, breaking my leg and fracturing my skull. Then his friends will lunge, ripping me apart limb by limb.

I hope they do it quickly.

“Abby?”

I sag.

“Climb down,” Kie orders, his voice low. “We need to get moving before more shifters show up.”

More? That haunting thought gets me moving, and I pray I don’t lose my grip as I begin scrambling down. If I have to choose between Kie and the other shifters, I’ll choose Kie. He doesn’t intend to tear and rip me apart into a million little pieces. He only intends to gift me to Zaha—not that that’s much of an improvement.

“Hurry up,” Kie says after a few seconds. He sounds frustrated.

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

I’m not trying to fall.

I wince, scraping my forearm against the bark of the branch I’m climbing down. It pales in comparison to my other injuries, and I take only a brief second to recover before continuing my descent.

My gloved hands touch something wet as I reach the bottom branch, something wet that most definitely wasn’t there on my way up. I bet it’s blood, and I swallow past the lump in my throat as I ignore it and continue moving.

Kie grabs my waist, helping soften the transition between the last branch and the ground.

I’m so fucking glad it’s dark out.

There are several large, animal-shaped lumps on the ground. Unmoving lumps. Being surrounded by so many dead bodies would have very likely thrown me into a panicked spiral several days ago, but now I feel only mild disgust.

I’m keeping it together. Only a few tears have been shed, but I think most people would cry when they’re being held down and stripped. I was so sure Kie and Mason were going to rape me, and I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not what they had in mind.

For all I know, the shifters’ arrival is the only thing that stopped them.

The back of my neck is covered in a cold sweat, and I shove my hair out of my face as I look for Mason. The woods surrounding Kie and me are suspiciously still, empty even of the tiny critters and bugs that typically linger around.

It’s unnerving.

“Where is he?” I ask. I hope the answer is dead. “Your shifter?”

Kie takes his and Mason’s bags from me, throwing one over his shoulder before ripping open the other. The two are identical, so I’m not sure whose is whose—not that it matters. Kie carries them both most of the time, anyway.

“Mason’s hurt,” Kie explains, over-enunciating Mason’s full first name. I press my lips together, and Kie clears his throat before continuing. “He’s left to spread his scent and throw other shifters off our trail.

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