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“You wouldn’t be in any danger, I promise. Not with Wade helping me. You’d just sit there and—”
“Slow down,” I hush him. “I don’t understand.”
“The creature you saw, the draeg, needs to be put down. I’ve worked too long to see it all come apart now.”
“What have you been doing here?” Wade cuts in sternly, grabbing Yori by the shoulder and pulling him away from me.
“I started tracking and hunting the predators here to try and make this place safe. I thought, maybe if I can change the balance of things, people won’t have to fear the marshes. They’d have somewhere safe to go other than the tyranny of Sanctuary. I’ve been preying on them for years, the beasts that ravage the grasslands, but I’ve only made things worst.
“See, the greatest monsters, like the draeg who lives in this hole, shared my prey, so when their food started to disappear, they needed something else to feed on. Now they venture further into the grasslands than ever before. Oh, I’ve created quite the mess, but you can help me make things right.”
“We don’t have time for it, Yori,” Wade interrupts. “There is something else at work that is much more important.”
“Not from where I stand. If you want the shelter of my home, then you will help me. That is the price of admission.”
Wade sighs deeply.
“We don’t need your shelter. We need you to accompany us south.”
“Then the cost is all the same,” Yori replies pointedly. “Just this draeg that has vexed me for far too long, that’s all I ask. Once the beast is dead, you can have my services for however long you require them.”
Wade looks at me but doesn’t say anything, and I think I know why. Whatever Yori has planned, it seems that I will be the one in the greatest of danger, not Wade, so he isn’t going to say yes on my behalf.
At first I am scared by the thought, but I can’t let myself be. I can’t let myself revert back to who I was before I came to the plains, a girl who might have had the courage to do some things, but not enough to do something like what is being asked of me now. No, I need her to die. I need to be willing to stand up to fear and doubt again and again until the good I’m supposed to accomplish is finished. I need to be brave enough to give Yori the answer he seeks, and so I do.
“Let the hunt begin.”
