“Jaxon!” I scream, grabbing Xavier and taking to the air as the thing turns and takes a swing at us as well.
I manage to dodge it, but the ceiling isn’t high enough for me to get out of its reach, so on its second swing, it catches Xavier and me, and we go flying toward the opposite wall.
We hit hard, so hard that my teeth rattle and my brain feels like it’s going to explode right out of my stone skull. I’m a little dazed, a little out of it, but Hudson is in my head, screaming at me to get up. Screaming at me to move, move, move.
I do, one second before a giant fist comes down, right where I had just been lying.
“Xavier!” I scream, but he’s already up and in wolf form, jumping straight over the monster’s shoulder and landing next to Jaxon, who has also gotten back to his feet.
The beast roars and charges straight at them. As it does, I notice for the first time that the chains aren’t its weapons. They’re shackles, keeping it tied to the wall.
“Run!” I yell to Jaxon. “If we get out of the cave, maybe it can’t reach you.”
But this is Jaxon Vega we’re talking about, and there’s no way he’s leaving his mate behind with this monster, something that I’m both grateful for and infuriated by at this moment when I need him to save himself.
Instead of lashing out and trying to blast the monster back like he did the first time, though, Jaxon focuses his power straight into the ground. A giant earthquake hits the cave, causing rocks and bones to fall from the walls and the very floor beneath our feet to buckle even as it rises up.
The creature screams, low and loud and agonizing to hear, and as it reaches out and picks Jaxon up, I’m sure that this is it. I’m sure that this is where it crushes Jaxon into dust right in front of me.
But it doesn’t crush Jaxon. Instead it throws him straight at the cave entrance, so hard that Jaxon flies right out of the cave and keeps going until I can’t see him anymore.
“Go, Grace!” Hudson screams at me. “Get out now, while it’s distracted.”
But I can’t get out, because the thing distracting the beast is Xavier, and he’s heading straight for him.
“Hey!” I yell as loud as I can. “Over here! Come get me over here!”
The beast ignores me, laser focused on Xavier, who has hopped onto one of the rock formations in the wall, waiting—I think—for his chance to leap past the beast.
But he doesn’t have my vantage point, can’t see what I can, which is that there’s not enough room for him to clear it. Anywhere he goes, the monster will get him—if not the second he leaps, then the second right after.
Can’t die, can’t die, can’t die. The gargoyle in my head starts to chant and, right this second, it kind of makes me want to scream. Because my head is a pretty fucking crowded place as it is, with Hudson screaming at me to run, my own thoughts going wild, Jaxon shoving energy down the mating bond toward me, and now my goddamn gargoyle telling me that I can’t die.
Which, no shit. I’m not planning on dying today.
But I can’t just leave Xavier to fight it alone. So I do the only thing I can do—I get back in the air and fly straight at the Unkillable Beast’s head. If I can distract it even a little, maybe Xavier will have a chance to get away.
Get away, get away, get away! My gargoyle chants its new mantra even as I dive-bomb the monster’s head. At first, it ignores me, still so focused on Xavier that it barely acknowledges I exist. But when I get close enough to kick it in one of its bloodred eyes, it turns on me with a roar that echoes off the walls and shakes me down to my toes.
“Run, Xavier! Get out of here, now!” I yell as the beast faces me. Our whole plan was to lure the beast out of the cave, and if Xavier will leave, I think I can fly past it and hopefully its chains are long enough it can follow us outside to where Macy is waiting to put it to sleep.
I fly away as fast as I can, determined to stay out of its reach long enough for Xavier to have a fighting chance. But I’ve barely made it halfway across the cave before the beast grabs me in its massive rock fist and sends me spinning toward the wall Xavier was just standing on. I bounce off and land in a heap on the ground.
Xavier at least managed to get down in the ensuing chaos, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he switched back to his human form and landed on the wall where the chains are embedded.
As the beast reaches for me a second time, Xavier grabs on to the chain that binds its arm and pulls with every ounce of werewolf strength he has.