I pressed harder on his wound so he could feel that instead. He squeezed his eyes shut and kissed the top of my head.
“What happened?”
I jerked to the side and ignored all the guilt—I could feel like a shitty person later—and watched Jessandra ride up, a stack of pigs thrown over her mount’s rump. She landed next to the bloody portrait and followed it to us.
“Did you jump on its back again?”
He looked over his shoulder. “We killed it, didn’t we?”
The goblins pulled their spears from the creature and thrust them in the air with a cheer.
Jessandra shook her head and pulled ropes from her beast. Tossing one end of each rope to the goblins, she stretched the other ends to the back of our beast. “Go back to the castle. We will take care of this.”
“And if another comes?” Astaroth asked.
I wanted to be far away from here. Completely traumatized and overstimulated, I was done with tonight’s hunt.
She held his gaze. Anger simmered below the surface. I wondered if I’d ever discover what that was truly about. “I will take care of it as I always do.”
