I scream as I’m lifted not just off the ground but into theair.
The whoosh of wind around us grows deafening as I’m pressed against his massive chest. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. The sound surrounds us completely.
My scream gets lost in the wind as the world drops away, and my stomach does backflips.
Holy shit!
We’re flying.
He actually has wings!
I force my eyes open for the first time to see wings stretched impossibly wide—huge, dark, feathered wings that blot out the stars above us.
I panic, but there’s nothing to grab except him. He’s the only thing between me and a very long fall, his enormous hands cradling my much smaller body against his chest. A chest that feels surprisingly human—warm and solid.
At least until it starts toglow.
The light begins where I imagine his heart would be, right where my cheek is pressed against his heated skin. I pull back and crane my neck to look up at his face?—
Which is absolutely a mistake. Because his face is genuinely terrifying.
It’s like someone merged a human with a lion and added wicked black horns curving out from his temples.
I scream directly into his monstrous features.
He looks down at me and opens his mouth, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth mere inches from my face.
Then heroars—a sound so deep and primal it seems to make his chest blaze even brighter.
We’d been climbing higher, but he suddenly pulls his wings back and sends us into a stomach-dropping dive.
My scream cuts off—not because I don’t want to keep screaming (trust me, I really fucking want to keep screaming), but because the freefall is so intense that nothing will come out of my throat.
Meanwhile, his chest burns brighter and brighter until I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the blazing light.
Even through closed lids, I can see the radiance.
It’s so bright it’s burning my retinas.
And then heat spreads through my own chest.Oh god, he’s actually burning me.
So this is what happened to all those missing hikers.
The mountain monster took them on a scenic flight and slow-roasted them mid-air. Will he gnaw my bones after I’m thoroughly cooked? I probably don’t look like much of a meal, but judging by the fire racing through my bones and flooding my lungs?—
I force my mouth open and finally find my voice again.
I howl out my fury at being burned alive from the inside.
He’s a liar and a fraud, and I’m an idiot for walking straight into the lion’s den when everyone—from Drew to the mountain guide—tried to warn me away. Thanks to my stubborn conviction that I could find a solution when doctor after doctortold me it was hopeless, that there was nothing to do but manage symptoms?—
“Stop screeching,” comes the monster’s roar in my ear. “It is finished. You are healed.”
I pause mid-death-scream to process his words.
I’m sure it’s some kind of trick, considering we’re still hurtling through the sky. He hasn’t stopped flying—if anything, we’re moving faster.
But the blinding white light from his chest is fading. And when I focus on how my own chest feels... the searing heat that felt like it was cauterizing my insides has completely vanished.
