Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Where the hell were we? Arizona? Utah? Did it matter? We were in the middle of nowhere, and from the way the skies were looking and the air was smelling, it was going to start pouring soon.
I didn’t give a fuck. We were leaving, alive, and I had all my toes. I hugged him even tighter.
He was fast, but not as fast as I’d seen The Primordial or even The Centurion move; they weren’t even blurs when they tried. It was like they could teleport. Was he not going full speed because of me? My head started hurting almost instantly from the bouncing, feeling so bruised, and I decided that was probably it.
I didn’t make a single sound as those long legs led us away. I didn’t dare open my mouth and distract him. What I did do was look behind us a few times to make sure no one was coming.
The coast seemed clear.
Thunder crackled again in the distance, contradicting that thought.
Please, please, please, I begged in my head, squeezing my eyes closed. Let us get somewhere safe and far away from these fuckers.
Sometime later, too many hours later, with my thighs weak from clenching around his hips, my arms exhausted from pretty much choking him out, my brain and sinuses on fire, and soaked to the fucking bone, my superhuman transportation finally started to slow down.
The hands that had been clutching my legs for so long widened and moved, letting me slide down his back. My thighs shook as I got my legs under me, and it took me way too long to stand up straight. He wandered off, hands going to his waist.
Maybe someone wasn’t feeling as great as he’d thought.
Then again, I had no clue how far we’d traveled. Even if I’d been healthy, my limit would have been five miles. With adrenaline pumping through me, I might have been able to do a little more. Who was I to talk shit?
I waddled toward one of the same kinds of thousands of trees he’d run by after we’d finished crossing through the craggy landscape, and I clung to the trunk, trying to steady my breathing like I had actually done something. Oh, I felt like shit. Breathing through my nose was a nope; breathing through my mouth was a nope. My lungs were struggling. My ribs hurt.
More than once, I’d wanted to cry and tell him to leave me.
But neither one of us had said a word in the hours we’d traveled. Not a single complaint had been made, and I intended to keep it that way. I wasn’t the one who had run like our lives had depended on it… because they had. At least mine had.
At first, I think we were both too focused on getting away from the building as fast as we could. My nausea had gotten worse with each uneven, bumpy step, and eventually he’d slowed down a little. Still going faster than I could ever run but not at the speed he might have gone if I’d been feeling better. Or if he’d been feeling better.
And then the rain had started.
Huge, cold drops had hit us with a vengeance, and at some point, I’d had to close my eyes. For one second, my heart started to beat faster, a knot just beginning to form in my throat at the water hitting my face, but I squashed it down. The fear, I mean. The panic. It was only rain. And maybe it was the feel of his body pressed up against mine, that helped remind me I wasn’t alone. That I wasn’t back in that damn room. Just maybe, the smell of the rain grounded my thoughts too.
Fortunately, he could see just fine because he went through it effortlessly, or at least he made it seem that way. Lightning had streaked across the sky, and the thunder had been so profound it made me flinch. But on the few occasions I’d cracked my eyes open, I’d seen that there wasn’t anywhere safe for us to stop. Not with the possibility of flash floods in these super dry areas.
So we’d kept going. And going. Through the rain stopping. Through some hail. Through it starting over again and vice versa. Until now.
“There’s water here,” Alex spoke up, straightening and casting a long look around the damp wooded field. Orange-and-tan-colored mud was splashed all the way up to nearly his waist, the sweatpants clinging to his thighs like a second skin. Even the hoodie, with me having been a human shield, was totally wet. His hair was plastered to that perfectly shaped head.
I didn’t want to know what I looked like. I was just as wet, if not more, than he was. There were scratches all over my arms from the branches we’d gone through. The skin on my legs stung too from the same. My sleep pants were heavy with water, and I had to retie them to keep them from slipping off my hips.