“Twenty seconds.”
Arse, he wasn’t going to make it.
Plucking the key from the hook someone had drilled into the tree, Daryl glanced down to the ground below. The key was light, barely weighing anything in his palm. If he dropped it from here, there were an awful lot of branches to get through. What if they lost it? What if it got stuck? And he couldn’t jump straight down from there, too many branches in his way.
“Fifteen seconds. Come on Daryl, get back down here.”
“There’s no time.”
The idea slotted into place like a missing puzzle piece. There was only one option left. Shoving the key in his back pocket, Daryl dropped to the branch below—the one supporting Jason’s cage.
Seeing what he was about to do, Jason jumped to his feet, making the cage rock from side to side. “Daryl, no!”
“Ten seconds. What the fuck are you doing?” Jenn shouted up at him.
Daryl ignored them both.
Instinct gripped him hard, pushing him forward, his only thought was getting to Jason and getting him out of that fucking cage. The urge to protect whooshed through him, tinging his vision with a red haze, and he barely registered Jason’s, “Oh fuck,” as he leapt onto the top of the cage.
Pain, like the stab of a hundred tiny needles, burst in the soles of his feet where the metal spikes pierced his boots, and the cage violently swung back and forth.
“Eight . . . seven . . .”
Easing his feet free, he gripped the bar at the edge of the cage roof, hissing as the barbed wire sank into his palm, and swung himself down.
Blood dripped from his feet and the hand gripping cage. It ran down his wrist in rivulets, the wound trying to heal around the intrusion and failing.
“Six . . . five . . .”
Bracing against the pain, jaw clenched, he whipped the cage key out of his front pocket and thrust it into the lock.
“Four . . .”
The click almost made him cry in relief, but he still had to get Jason out of there.
“Three . . .”
Yanking the door open, he grabbed Jason’s hand.
“Two . . .”
“Grab on.” He tugged Jason towards him, and Jason wrapped his arms around him, his feet leaving the cage floor as Jenn shouted, “One . . .”
Daryl closed his eyes and let his head rest against Jason’s, greedily breathing in his scent and soaking it up as though it could heal him. The relief at finally having Jason in his arms better than any drug. Adrenaline coursed through his body still, but with the terror of the moment over, his feet began to throb, each beat of his heart sending a jolt of pain shooting up his calves. His hand was agony, the tips of the wire peeking through the back where they’d gone straight through.
Far from being overjoyed not to be going home, Jason looked distraught.
Devastated.
He cupped Daryl’s jaw, thumb stroking along his cheekbone. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
he asked, voice barely a whisper.
“Rescued you.” The niggle at the back of his mind got louder, dread creeping up his spine with each second Jason looked at him like that.
“Why did you feel the urge to rescue me so badly?”
“Because you’re—” His heart stopped, breath whooshing out of his lungs as realisation hit.
