I took a breath deep enough to hurt. My heart was still hammering, my instincts screaming to take her from them and run, but I buried it. I shoved it all down so deep it scraped bone.
“Both of you, shut up.” My voice came out like the crack of a whip.
They froze, eyes snapping to me. I didn’t meet any of their stares. Mine stayed on her.
My flame.
The one thing in this world that meant more to me than my own life. The one person my magiccouldn’t touch.
We needed to move. Fast.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, fingers shaking until they curled around cold metal. My key ring, the one that had herspare key on it. She’d given it to me half-jokingly, half-serious, a lifetime ago. “Here. Just in case of emergency. I trust you and stuff.” I hadn’t laughed then. I definitely wasn’t laughing now.
“I have the key to her place,” I said, voice tight. “Let’s take her there.Fast.”
Alic moved first, scooping her up before the wolf could protest, and bolted. The others followed. I lingered behind, pulling my composure around me like armor and heading for the front desk.
That was when I saw Randy slumped on the floor in a pool of blood.
Fuck. Aniyah will be heartbroken if he’s dead.
I dropped beside him, hand to his chest. My earth-based magic flowed out of me instinctively, a piece of me thatstill workedwhen everything else felt broken. No bullet. Heart still beating. He’d live.
I grabbed a healing rune stone from my back pocket, pressed it to his chest, and pushed power into it. It glowed a faint orange hue, doing what it was meant to do. Within thirty minutes, he’d wake up.
I was still useful. Tosomeone.
A shadow stretched over me, and I whirled around to see Lucus. His eyes locked on the glowing rune stone, then flicked to me. Cold. Calculating. Angry.
“Why didn’t you do that for Aniyah?”
My hand clenched, teeth grinding together. Rage, shame, and helplessness twisted inside me until my body was coiled tight enough to snap.
“Ican’t,” I said tightly, my lips barely able to move.
Getting up, I tried to walk past him, tried to leave before it came spilling out of me, but he grabbed my arm, his steely vampire strength clenched around my bicep hard enough to bruise.
“Why?” he growled.
All that British charm had been stripped away. What remained was the monster underneath, and although he was two seconds from tearing me apart, I wasn’t afraid.
I didn’t answer forhim. I answered because it waskilling menot to.
“She’s my flame,” I said quietly. “My magic won’t work on her.” The words tasted like poisonous defeat.
Lucus exhaled a slow breath as he looked toward the door, then back at me. His grip slackened. His bruising grip fell away, his fangs sliding back into place as if this conversation had drained something from him, too.
“I understand,” he said, his voice infuriatingly composed, and that calm… it gutted me becauseIwasn’t calm. I was drowning, and somehow, his quiet acceptance cut deeper than his earlier accusation.
I stood there, frozen, as the weight of what I’d just said sank in. What it meant. What itcost.
That bond, that sacred, once-in-a-lifetime connection, came with a cruel twist. My magic, the very thing I’d trained and bled to master, the same thing that brought me to her, refused to treat her. Refused to recognize her as a separate entity from myself. Just like I couldn't hurt myself with my magic, I couldn’t affect her either. She was the only one in the world immune to me.
The silence between us stretched until the dam inside me cracked open. Every failure. Every second too late. Every scream I hadn’t been there to hear. It all flooded me.
She needed me, and I hadnothingto give.
Looking down at my hands, they were shaking now, useless tremors that betrayed the storm I was barely keeping beneath the surface.
