we got halfway, and I stopped with Samson to pull water from my backpack and take a long swig. Walsh didn’t look nearly as out of breath as Samson and I, and I wondered what kind of exercise regimen Sawyer’s guards were on. Because clearly I needed it.
“Fuck this. Good enough,” Samson groaned, and walked over to the edge, starting to snap pictures.
I frowned. “Not going to the top?”
He shook his head. “Too much work for a photo.”
I swallowed my scoff and nodded. Photography was my life. Most of the time it was taking a photo in a moment, but others it was waiting hours for a bird to show up and drink from the bowl of water you set out, or to hike a mountain and get that shot that’s in your head. Photography was freezing your memories so other people could view them forever, and that’s what I was determined to do today.
I took off up the mountain with fierce determination. I wasn’t going to back down because something was hard—what kind of person did that? No one I could ever respect or be with. I glared at Chris’ drone as it flew down from the top, already having taken its amazing photos and now done. An annoyed growl ripped from my throat and I picked up the pace even faster.
“You’re pissed about something,” Walsh commented, barely winded at my side.
I gave him a long side-look. “Yeah, it just seems like everyone in Werewolf City is used to having things handed to them on a silver platter.”
A slow smirk pulled at his lips. “And you’re not?”
“No,” I growled, and pushed harder into the hike. It hit me then, I was so mad. Mad at Werewolf City, mad at Curt Hudson and his stupid bylaws, mad at the system. Why did my mother and father get kicked out? Why did I have to grow up without a pack, in a school of misfits who shit on me every day, when these Wolf City kids were being spoon-fed every drop of luxury. I guess I was glad it happened that way, it made me who I was. I wasn’t the girl who took the easy shot.
Before I realized it, I’d reached the peak of the mountain. It was craggy and pointy, with a path only about twelve inches wide. If you slipped forward, you would fall down the front of the waterfall, and if you slipped backward you would fall down the back of the mountain.
Note to self: Don’t do either.
I peered to my right, down the backside of the mountain, and noticed those little red boundary flags and a blur of motion as something moved in the thick tree line down there.
A Paladin?
My heart hammered in my chest as I stared at the spot, but I didn’t see any more movement and started to think I was making it up. Picking up my camera, I took a picture of the boundary flags, reminding myself to ask Sage more about it. I stepped about five paces along the path until I was directly up to the waterfall, hovering right over it. Part of the mountain was flat, bringing water from a river somewhere, but the part I stood on, that I’d just climbed up, steeply cut off the back like it had been shorn off in an earthquake or something.
Nature was crazy.
Pulling my camera up to my eye, I stepped forward and looked down over the waterfall.
“Be careful,” Walsh warned.
I pulled the camera back and looked at him, twenty feet away back at the path that led down the mountain. “Come here, you gotta see this. It’s amazing.”
He shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like heights.”
I chuckled. “Okay.”
Looking back down through my lens, I couldn’t help but feel a thrill run through me at the sheer size of the height I was standing at. Water flowed unrestricted down the mountain, slower at first, until it crashed into a mass of white rapids and turbulence.
I hung my head directly forward and snapped the picture. And that’s when I felt my balance go wonky. The ground was wet, so when I went to take that half a step forward to get the shot, my foot gave way.
Oh hell no.
I felt myself fall forward, toward the waterfall a little, and panicked, throwing my weight backward to counter the move.
Bad idea.
“Demi!” Walsh screamed as I overshot the path and began to fall completely backward. My ass hit the