Page 221 of Breathe Like Hell

I broke my promise.

It was the only thought in my scattered brain. I’d told Dakota her death belonged to me, and now it didn’t. It belonged to metal and pavement.

It was so devastatingly human.

Micah didn’t hesitate to lean forward and press his mouth to hers. It only took me a second to register what he was doing, but by that point it was too late.

“Micah!” I shouted, grabbing his arm, trying to pull him off her, adrenaline making me shake. It should be me.

He exhaled into her mouth, her eyelids instantly beginning to twitch.

I knelt on the opposite side of her body, holding her head as life began to come back to her. But in the same breath, life was leaving Micah. He slumped down next to her on his side on the pavement, her blood staining his sleeve, his hair.

Dakota was waking up quickly, already screaming in agony, the back of her shirt splitting to reveal the skin on her back tearing open. Bones and bloody white feathers shoved out of her muscles, growing and expanding out of her. She was sobbing, shrieking, her face as pale as a sheet, her body shaking and sweating, goosebumps racing over her skin.

Micah was motionless on the ground, and my heart was at my feet.

Dakota started grabbing at her throat, clawing with her nails, sounding like she was choking. She couldn’t get a full breath in, her eyes going wide and terrified. She was suffocating.

“Why can’t I breathe?” she gasped, a choked breath breaking on her lips.

“You haven’t chosen to fall. You have to go to Heaven first.”

She was shaking her head frantically.

“We have to go, baby,” I said, my eyes flicking fearfully towards Micah. He wasn’t breathing.

Her response was lost to the noise of agony shredding up her throat.

I grabbed her under the armpits, hoisting her up onto her shaky legs, then I took off, pushing upwards with my own wings while she hung in my grasp.

“Wait!” Dakota said, forcing her voice louder.

“We can’t wait.”

She wasn’t fallen. She couldn’t breathe in such low levels of neon, not until she made the choice herself to fall to Earth. She had to go to Heaven now or else she’d die.

“Wait!” she wailed, as I pushed us higher. “Micah!” Her voice shattered, her throat choked with sobs. “Where is he? Is he coming?”

She was screaming, gasping for breath, trying to make me look at her now.

I didn’t answer her.

I fucking couldn’t.

“Micah!” She couldn’t get a full breath in.

I was trying not to panic so I could keep Dakota from suffocating, trying to continue our desperate ascent, trying to keep myself from spiraling into the gaping chasm threatening to swallow me whole. The most absolute darkness in the universe. The nature which I no longer had any defense against.

My heart thrashed wildly in my ribcage.

Dakota’s wings were sticky and wet with blood, her feathers clumped together, more still growing from her white wings. I flew higher and higher, watching her choke as she tried to breathe, sucking in huge gulps of thin air.

“Mason!” she screamed hoarsely. “Is he okay?”

I clenched my jaw, holding her tighter, pushing with my wings through the clouds.

“You have to go to Heaven right now. Okay?” I said, fingers digging into her skin. “And I can’t take you there. Do you understand me?”