It was the first touch since the whole almost-tearing-his-clothes-from-his-body incident, and it felt right to be in contact again. It wasn’t natural for us to hold back.

We were flying along now. Braxton was a speed demon when he hauled ass. His bulk cut through the greenery, making the journey far more comfortable for me. On the other hand, he was covered in many nasty-looking cuts and bruises. I was thankful he was a fast healer; within an hour most of the damage would be gone.

But that only worked if you stopped getting damaged.

Trees crashed to our right, far closer than before. And as I caught sight of what chased us, it gave me a moment’s pause. Sweet baby ogres. Faerie was now actively trying to kill us. The creatures were as large as a grizzly bear, but with the dexterity of a monkey as they swung through the closely-knit tree line. The worst was the humanoid face peeking out from the masses of thick black fur coating its head.

Braxton and I were at a disadvantage in this terrain, unable to shift to our large animals, and we couldn’t use the trees the way this massive bear-monkey was.

“What do you want to do?” I spoke around my clenched jaw.

Braxton’s grip tightened on my hand. “We’re almost free of this forest. They’re coming in from all sides, but I think we’ll make it out before they reach us.”

All sides … that was freaking great.

I was not stopping, that was for sure. Thank the gods it would be pretty rare for a supernatural to do the whole “trip over a fallen log” cliché of just about every horror and action movie. Even though we were moving at super-speeds, for our senses it was slow enough that we wouldn’t miss anything in our trail. Plus, Braxton was nailing the whole bulldozing-all-obstacles in our path thing.

I still couldn’t see a break in the tree line to indicate we were almost out of this greenery. I was just wondering if Braxton was mistaken, when we suddenly burst free from the jungle.

Weird. Major weirdness.

Normally a forest started to thin before reaching the end, but this had just cut off. The outer tree line was just as dense as the rest of the jungle had been. In front of us I could see a long expanse of thick-grained sand, a dark watermelon color. The briny quality Braxton had been scenting was very strong now, and I could hear the crashing of water in the distance. We were still moving, the warmth of the shifting sand soothing on my ravaged feet. I wished I had time to truly admire the beauty. This world thrummed with magic, the colors unparalleled with anything I’d seen on Earth, serene and beautiful, but it had a sense of being off, and it was hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem was.