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My back arches off the ground.

“STOP!”

He immediately freezes.

His eyes drop to the thing in his hand.

The root is still attached to me.

Not wrapped around me. Not caught in my clothes.

Attached.

A slick white cord runs from the kernel in Ezra’s fist, through the torn fabric of my shirt, and disappears into my body.

It pulses again.

Something beneath my skin pulses with it.

Oh God.

It looks like a fucking umbilical cord.

“Get it out.” My voice barely works.

Ezra grabs the root closer to my body.

“Get it the fuck out of me!”

“I’m trying.”

He pulls.

Pain detonates through my stomach.

I shriek and claw at the dirt as the root stretches impossibly long, refusing to break. It thins beneath Ezra’s hands until I can see something dark moving through the translucent center.

Blood.

My blood.

The fucking thing is drinking from me.

“Rhett!”

Rhett is already moving.

He drops beside Ezra and grabs the cord with both hands.

Malakai reaches us a second later.

His eyes go black the instant he touches it. “It’s rooted inside her.”

Panic punches through me.

“What does that mean?”

Nobody answers.