Kylee nodded. “He would have needed to get them strung out, trailing behind him. There were what, maybe ten? Twelve at most?”

Falise shifted, gasped at the hurt it cause the cut in her hip. “Thinking back? I didn’t get a good count. I was kind of busy with my own problems. But yes. Certainly no more than a dozen.”

Kylee—again turning her gaze to the night—wearily shook her head. “He would have charged headlong through the thickest scrub. Once he had them in a line, he would have turned, tried to snap them, one at a time, as they attacked. Even as fast as mobbers are, quetzals can still take them out. It’s only when they get swarmed that the mobbers win.”

Falise lifted her hands, caught her breath at the damage. “He didn’t have to do that, did he? I mean, Flute could have just let the mobbers kill us. He could have stayed hidden.”

Kylee gave a slight shrug. Not enough to open one of the partially clotted wounds. “It’s a lineage thing, Falise. I’d have done the same for him if I’d had the chance. But yes. Once that last fucking mobber decided to give you a final look, figured out that you might be food . . .”

“It bit me!” Falise closed her eyes, reliving the moment. Seeing those three beady black eyes, staring into hers as the thing landed in front of her. She’d been flat in the trail, following Kylee’s orders not to move. Feeling the tendrils of the roots as they started to wind in between the gaps in her clothing.

Heart hammering—terrified like she’d never been—she’d obeyed Kylee’s instructions to the letter. Hadn’t moved a muscle as the mobber came waddling closer on its four wings, knuckle walking as it stared into her eyes. Then it turned, and, as though in afterthought, bit her thumb.

She’d screamed. Jerked her hand back.

After that . . . everything was chaos. The creature charged. Falise grabbed it by the neck. And while it slashed at her, she throttled the colorful little terror. But that drew another. And another.

“I keep reliving that horror.” Falise opened her eyes to study her mangled thumb in the fire’s light.

“Be glad the rest of the flock had moved on,” Kylee told her. “If the whole mob had heard, they’d have left our picked-clean skeletons for the invertebrates. The remains of what used to be us would be flying over the forest in a hundred mobber bellies. And you know where that’s going to end up.”

“Before coming here, I could have imagined a hundred different ways to have met my end. Being spread across a thousand hectares of Donovan’s forest as manure wouldn’t have been one.”