Page 290 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

We hit the slope together and the world becomes a violent rolling blur of dirt, rock, branches, and flailing limbs. I manage to get my arms around her and curl my body over hers as we tumble, taking the worst of it on my shoulders and back, the ground hammering me with each rotation.

A rock clips my hip. A branch tears through my jacket and lights up my ribs. The slope is steeper than I thought and we're picking up speed.

Then the ground disappears entirely.

There's a moment of weightlessness—Ivy cries out in my ear—and then we plunge into freezing darkness, split apart by the force of the impact.

The current isn't strong, but it's fast enough to shove us sideways, and my boots scrabble against slick river rocks as I fight to get my feet under me, my hand somehow still locked around her wrist.

My head breaks the surface.

"IVY!" I snarl, dragging her up by the arm.

She surfaces beside me, gasping, her hair plastered to her face. The water is only waist-deep but the current is insistent, pulling at our clothes, ripping my jacket free from my shoulders. Her teeth are already chattering.

I grab her under the arms and haul her toward the bank, my boots sliding on the rocks, then the mud and gravel of the bank. My boots slip as I drag us both up it on my hands and knees, pulling her onto the grass before collapsing beside her on my back.

We lie there, soaked and gasping, sputtering water and staring at the starry sky through the trees.

Every inch of my body that hit rock or branch or river bottom is making itself violently known, and the chilly air is turning the river water soaking my clothes into a second skin of ice.

Ivy coughs beside me, spitting water.

"Val?"

"What."

"Do you still have your mask?"

I blink at the canopy above us. Water drips off a branch and lands directly in my left eye, which is still burning from the pepper spray she unloaded into my face.

Twice.

My hand drops to my waistband where I shoved the mask when she blinded me. The wolf mask is still wedged against my hip.

"Somehow," I say hoarsely.

"Good. I like it."

I stare at her in utter bewilderment, and she lifts her head off the grass to stare back at me. Her drenched thermal shirt is stuck to her body, every curve on display, and her coat is gone entirely. Lost to the river, I assume.

And she starts to laugh. Hard.

"You—" She gasps for air. "You look like a—a drowned⁠—"

She can't finish. She's laughing too hard.

I stare at her.

Then I look down at myself.

My turtleneck is torn, hanging off one shoulder. My jacket is, of course, gone. My pants are tattered at both bloodied knees and there's a smear of mud and blood from my hip to my ribs. My nearly white hair is plastered all over my face.

I must look fucking stupid.

And now I'm laughing too, harsh barks, still sputtering water.

This is the most undignified moment of my entire life, and I have been arrested in several countries, and none of them were pleasant experiences.