But this time, I land forward, my momentum carrying us so that Lily almost hits her head on the metal wall.
I’ve cradled her, protecting her, and absorbed the damage, but the entire structure teeters dangerously.
“I should have anchored it to the floor,” she says, her words wobbling. “They know it’s dangerous not to have them secured.”
She shakes her head.
“Eight left.”
“We can’t do this,” she says. “I don’t want you getting hurt. We’re ahead of the zombies. I think they’re still at the first?—”
Her voice breaks off.
The zombies are still at the first wall, but they’re creating a chain of their bodies, making a bridge of sorts to cross from one to the next.
“This isn’t going to work,” Lily says. “We have to try to outrun them, and you’re just going to hurt your wing worse.”
She swallows whatever fear that she’s felt, her gaze clear, and she nods once. “Put me down.”
“No. I have a faster way,” I tell her. “We’ll jump to the floor and run. You understand if I tell you not to look back—don’t look back.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Lily says. “And I will not agree to it.”
She has that stubborn set to her jaw that I’ve come to adore so much. Hooking my fingers underneath her chin, I tilt her head up, planting a claiming kiss on her mouth.
She opens for me so sweetly, so perfectly, and I regret all the time we wasted before this moment when we could have been together like this.
Finally, I pull apart, pull her into my arms tight as can be even though she squirms, trying to get away, pounding her little fists on my chest, and I jump.
My wing flares out. The other broken beyond even being able to extend it, flapping uselessly on my side.
But we make it down. It’s not far. Not for a Draegon, not for a military Draegon, and least of all for me—the best of them all.
Lily looks up at me with a mixture of surprise, gratitude, and most of all, rage. It burns in her eyes, and I know that will keep her safe more than anything.
I press another quick kiss against her perfect mouth, and she pushes my face away with a snarl of pure distress.
“Good,” I tell her. “Keep that anger.”
She’ll need it soon, and it will keep her safe more than anything else. More than I can.
“Run,” she growls at me.
And with that, she takes off, her bare feet pounding against the ground. I run too, as fast as I can, but at some point during our free fall when we landed, I hurt my ankle. But still, I can keep pace with a small human female. A quick look behind me tells me that our opponents have not yet caught on to our new strategy.
Lily slips, staggering and almost falling to the floor. I catch her around the waist, ignoring her cries of disagreement as she tries to get me to put her back down.
“I know you’re hurt,” she says. “You’re gonna make it worse.”
“You almost fell,” I tell her.
The pain in my wing is severe, traveling down my spine now to my hip, where it seems to fester, burning. I can already tell the motion is making it worse, my own heartbeat likely speeding up whatever poison was in the worm saliva.
I’m not nearly as fast as I should be, not nearly as fast as I’d like to be, and by the time I toss Lily onto the dais, the creatures she calls zombies are lurching toward us steadily, spittle foaming from their gaping maws.
“Are zombies common on your planet?” I ask, heaving myself onto the platform.
“No, they’re completely fictional,” she says. “But to be clear, aliens were supposed to be fictional, too. We all thought they were until the Roth showed up.”
