Yuki

Yuki’s breath burned and tore at her throat like hot coals, her lungs begging for a deep breath and legs shaking (either from the running or the adrenalin, she couldn’t tell the difference at this point). She stopped to lean against a tree to catch her breath. Damn, she should have focused more on gym in school.

Even hesitating for a minute sent a spike of panic through her, the fear of guards catching up with them. Yuki was telepathic, she listened carefully for the sound of the guards nearby. Silence was a welcome relief. She was different from other telepaths who could read minds, Yuki didn’t read people’s thoughts. She heard them, as clearly as if they were speaking.

It had been hours since Yuki and her sister Melanie had escaped from The Organization, the sun sinking below the tops of the trees turning the woods shades of gold and dusky purple. The summer night air was cool and balmy, gently brushing through the tree leaves overhead.

“I’m going to leave you behind if you don’t start running,” a voice growled at her in irritation.

Mark had doubled back, jogging towards her. Yuki resentfully noticed that he hadn’t even broken a sweat, he looked like he’d just walked out of an Abercrombie photoshoot. Mark moved soundlessly through the woods, nearly gliding over the ground. Which made sense since he had wings and could fly, Yuki thought. 

Yuki and Melanie had escaped with two other prisoners; Viola and Mark. During the escape their group was split up, Mel with Viola, and Yuki with Mark. Which wouldn’t be so bad if Mark wasn’t a smart mouth jerk who was a little too full of himself. 

“Stop slowing me down and keep up,” he said, his blue eyes scanning the woods around them. They couldn’t afford to rest, she knew that, but she also couldn’t run a marathon.

“We have to go back for Melanie,” she crossed her arms, refusing to run any further. Every step carried her in the opposite direction of her sister, taking her further away from the only person that mattered to her.

“They could have been captured again for all we know. We can’t go back,” Mark snapped.

“We’ll I’m not taking another step until I find her,” Yuki ground her teeth. Her only concern was wether or not Melanie was safe.

Mark smirked down at her. Yuki bit back a scream as he grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder.

“Put me down!” she yelled beating her fists against his back and kicking her legs.

“If you’re not going to walk I’m going to carry you, princess!” he roughly hoisted her up, tightly holding on to her legs.

“Let me go now, Mark!” She practically screamed. Without warning he unceremoniously dropped her on the ground. She grunted as she fell flat on the dirt, glaring up at him.

“Are you going to walk now?” He crossed his arms over his chest, smirking down at her. She glared up at him form the dirt, envisioning how great it would be to slap that smug expression off his face. 

“Look,” he huffed and ran a tan hand through his blonde hair. “We need to keep going. I’ll worry about Vi and Mel when we’re safe, but right now we aren’t.”

He sounded momentarily moderately apologetic, which from him was the best apology Yuki could hope to get. Yuki stood from the ground, patting the dirt off of her palms and pants, the entire time maintaining her icy glare at him. Melanie, she knew, wouldn’t have hesitated to rip him a new one, but Yuki wasn’t that kind of person.

“Never do that again,” she snapped, trying to sound as menacing as her sister would. Mark held up his hands in surrender.

Yuki sucked in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. They didn’t have time to be wasting fighting each other, they needed to get out of here and find Melanie as soon as possible.

“Alright, can we, I don’t know, just start over? We need to be helping each other, and tearing each other a part isn’t going to do us a lot of good right now.” Yuki looked him steadily in his eyes, trying to be the bigger person and figure out a plan.

“Yeah, we can tear each other apart later,” he said with the same tilted grin. Yuki rolled her eyes, ignoring him. At this point she was starting to understand that Mark’s constant bantering and flirting was just his way of making normal conversation.

She could barely see through the shadows now that the sun was fully setting, night lowering heavily over the forest.

At the edge of her mind something twitched and shifted, blurring before coming into focus. It started as a whisper and gradually became louder. It was a guard, she could hear his thoughts as clearly as if he were projecting through a megaphone. Shit, Yuki thought, they caught up with us. She grabbed Mark by the wrist pulling him behind a tree.

“Whoa, I thought we just talked about personal space,” he said. “But hey, I’m cool with this too.”

“Shut up and listen,” Yuki whispered to him. Mark’s big mouth snapped shut and his eyes narrowed as he strained to listen. When the realization dawned on him his eyes grew wide. The guard was calling in reinforcements.

“Well let’s get out of here before the backup arrives,” Mark said taking her hand and stepping back, their hands were linked across the space between them. She had a bad feeling about what was going to happen next. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and her stomach wiggled nervously.

“You don’t mean flying do you? Because, you should know I’m terrified of heights,” Yuki squeaked.

Mark was scanning the cloudless night sky. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Do you have a better idea?” he said.

“I could run or something.”

Mark is an avian-human. His wings rustled as they slowly expanded from his back. There were long slits cut into his shirt that allowed his wings to expand freely. The wings were huge and covered in beautiful shades of brown, tawny gold, and tipped with white. She’d seen them one other time during training at The Organization, but she couldn’t help but be amazed by how big and beautiful they were. He looked like an angel come to life.

“I’m not dealing with the literal heat from your sister when you get caught because you wanted to run,” Mark said as he took both of her hands and gripped them tightly. “Hold on tight, don’t let go. I don’t normally fly with cargo.”

Yuki barely suppressed her scream as he kicked off from the ground and with a couple powerful thrusts of his wings were up in the air. Her shoulders painfully protested as gravity tried to pull her back down. Wind pulled her hair from her ponytail making it whip around her face. Within seconds they were high enough that the tops of the trees below them looked miniature.

“Mark! I can’t do this, please put me down!” the words were barely louder than a gasp. Cold tears whipped from the corners of her eyes.

Some small part of her noticed how she had never seen the stars so clearly, so close, as if she could reach out and weave them between her fingers. The sky was a blue black purple blanket dotted with shinning stars. It took her breath away, or maybe that was the thin oxygen from the altitude.

Her grip on Mark’s wrists were slipping. He glanced down at her, his teeth gritted.

“Mark!” She screamed as they were just barely holding hands now. Her fingers ached from the pressure as she tried to hold on. But her sweaty palms slipped from his hands.

She felt weightless as she tumbled down towards the trees below. Her scream stuck in her throat, oh god, she couldn’t even breath as she helplessly fell. Everything was a streaky blur. She squeezed her eyes closed.

Suddenly there was a jarring impact, rattling every bone in her body and felt like it knocked a couple teeth loose. Strong solid arms wrapped around her stopping her fall. Instinctively Yuki wrapped her arms around Mark’s neck, tightly clinging to him.

“Oh god,” she gasped panting for breath. The impact had knocked the wind out of her. Her lungs stuttered to pull in oxygen.

“Hey, I caught you didn’t I? You’re okay, you’re okay.” He murmured gently. A slight tremor in his voice showed that her fall had shaken him too. Yuki couldn’t reply, she trembled and silently held on to him with a death grip as they continued flying and searching for Viola and her sister.