“Graeson.” The mental touch slid off his mind like water off a duck’s back. There would be no reasoning with him when he was like this.

Heart a wild thing fluttering in my chest, I spun and grasped the first rung. I made it up three before teeth closed over my ankle. I blessed my leather boot, fisted the wooden slats and kicked out with my other foot. Graeson whined and hit the ground. The precious seconds it took me to establish a new foothold was all he needed. He leapt again, and his teeth pierced my lower calf and ripped. I kicked him off a second time but barely, his fangs shredding meat as he fell.

“Hold on.” Imogen reached down for me. “Take my hand.”

I flung my arm up, and our wrists clasped. My ruined foot found purchase, and I hauled myself up higher. The wolf below me howled with rage. The tension in my chest released a fraction. I’d made it. I was higher than he could reach. I could take my time and—

Steel jaws clamped over my heel and hung on tight. At once Imogen and I supported our weight…and the couple hundred pounds of snarling adult male warg dangling from my foot. Together we held our position. His grip slipping, Graeson began swinging his body and shredding my boot through to my flesh. The taste of blood incited him, and he struggled with renewed vigor. Warm moisture plinked onto my cheeks. The strain was ripping open Imogen’s wounds.

“You have to let me go.” I heaved a sharp breath. “I can’t hold on.”

“Camille.” Her hand clamped down over mine.

“You wanted this, remember?” I let my hand go slack. “Save yourself.”

Her expression twisted, a decision being made. “No.”

A moment of clarity cooled my fevered thoughts. She was too weak. She couldn’t save me. I was too far gone to rescue myself. All she could do was fall with me, and what was the point in both of us dying?

Breaking her grip was easy. I twisted my wrist, and Graeson’s weight did the rest.

The wolf dropped like a stone, and I tumbled after him, landing on my back so hard I lost my breath. Catlike, he landed on his feet and limped a circle around me.

“Camille,” Imogen called.

I didn’t dare respond, not with the wild-eyed beast so close to my head. I lay there in the grass, in the same spot where Graeson had shared his secrets with me, and knew that if he did this, if he killed me, I would be the last to ever be fed those morsels of his soul. The death of an innocent, my death, would break the man who had teetered on the edge of the abyss. The wolf, though, seemed to have no such reservations.