Chapter 291. Avery?

Aurora’s POV

The forest should’ve been silent, the kind of eerie silence that makes your skin crawl—but it wasn’t. It was suddenly alive with the guttural snarls of the creature standing only feet away from them. My blood ran cold. My chest tightened. I didn’t even realize I had stopped breathing.

The thing towered over them, skeletal limbs, back arched, mouth stretched unnaturally wide to reveal jagged, dripping teeth. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in someone’s fist. I screamed their names—I don’t even remember whose name I screamed first, but it seemed like they couldn’t hear me at all—so I ran.

I ran with everything in me, my feet crunching over dry leaves and brittle twigs, not caring if the sound alerted that shadowy…beast. I had to get to them. I had to protect them. I didn’t care what it was, or how impossible it looked—I had to stop it.

But then—

I felt it. A force. Like a hammer slamming into my back.

My body was airborn