Page 169 of Kill Feed

“You stealing my kills now?” I grimace as Hendrick’s body crumples to the floor, taking the wet gurgle in his throat with him.

“Looked like you were struggling,” Adrian replies with a smirk.

He wipes a streak of blood from his cheek, smearing it rather than removing it, and something darkly appreciative coils in my chest. With his hair disheveled, his breath still uneven and a knife hanging loose in his bloodied hand, he looks less like the stoic photography student I first became obsessed with and more like something Kill Feed itself has carved out of him.

Beautifully ruined and absolutely fucking lethal.

“Are you two done flirting?” Yasmin states as she plants one boot on a fallen hunter, casually resting her weight against him as she points across the room.

I follow her gesture and spot the remaining hunters spilling around the corner. There are fewer now, but still enough to make this inconvenient.

My eyes drop to Adrian’s watch, to the fifteen minutes he has left. Shit, he’s running out of time.

“We have more company,” Yara adds, coiling her whip tighter in her grip, stepping over the body she mutilated.

I gesture toward the stairs, hoping Adrian will take the hint and get the fuck out of here before the rest of the hunters close in.

“But—"

“I’m right behind you,” I assure him.

He hesitates for half a second, then takes off down the stairs without another protest. I watch him disappear toward the safe zone before the remaining hunters flood onto the walkway, weapons raised with bloodlust written all over them.

Yara and Yasmin are at my side almost instantly, falling into position without so much as a glance between them. Their willingness to throw themselves into this mess for my sake still surprises me; loyalty has never been something I’ve taken lightly, and apparently neither have they.

Chapter 46

Adrian

I take the stairs two at a time, racing toward the final safe zone. My lungs burn, but I keep moving; fifteen minutes is more than enough if nothing gets in my way.

But something gets in my fucking way.

I barely make it another landing before something drops from the platform above.

Boots hit the metal directly in front of me, and I’m forced to stop dead in my tracks.

A fist closes around the front of my sweater and slams me backward into a support beam hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs before he rips me sideways and drives me into the railing.

Metal shrieks as the railing gives way.

My stomach drops with it.

He holds me in place, body pitching over the edge, feet barely scraping against the platform. The hunter looms over me, his gas mask fogging up from heavy breathing. Everything about him suggests he’s been dragged through absolute turmoil—with his jacket torn to pieces, a strip of the remaining fabric wrapped around his waist where something sharp has apparently found him before.

“You’re the reason my friends got fucking slaughtered,” he finally speaks through the mask, tightening his grip. “If you want to get to the safe zone that badly, I’ll give you a shortcut.”

I glance down.

Fuck, fuck. The safe zone is directly beneath us.

The fall isn’t high enough to kill me, but it is more than enough to shatter both legs, and probably a few other things on the way down. I calculate the distance automatically, already understanding that there is no useful outcome in letting him drop me.

The hunter shoves.

My hands strain around his forearm with a tight grip that suggests that I will take him the fuck down with me as my feet slip another few inches over the edge.

Then a loud bang fills my ear before a flash of silver cuts across the space and into the hunter’s arm.