I pull the trigger. Once. Twice. Again.
Ivan jerks. Red blooms across his chest. His face looks surprised in a stupid way. He drops the gun and follows it down, hitting the concrete hard. He doesn’t get up.
The warehouse quiets. There’s a ringing in my head as the last shots die out. Then I hear Cassandra scream my name, and everything else becomes background to that one note.
My legs give out and I drop the gun without meaning to. I fall to my knees. My hand goes to my side, feeling a warm wetness spreading there. Blood floods my coat and runs hot into my beltline. The pain pulses in waves. My breath is shallow and sharp, like my ribs have shrunk.
“Damien!” She’s already moving, a blur on the stairs, shoes hitting metal, hands on the rail. Suddenly, she’s on her knees in front of me. Her hands are everywhere—face, chest, wound—trying to do ten things at once. Her eyes are wild. Tears cut tracks through the grime on her face.
“I’m here,” I say, or try to. The words scrape raw. “I’m here.”
“I thought—” Her voice breaks. She pulls at my coat and presses down hard on the wound. “Stay with me. Stay.”
I take her wrist and pull her closer because I need to say this while I still can. “I thought I lost you,” I tell her. Each word hurts, but I say them anyway. “I thought you were gone and there was nothing left. I can’t—” The breath catches and snarls. “I can’t do that again. Not again. I swear to you, Cassandra. This ends. This war ends.”
She puts her forehead to mine and sobs. “Don’t you dare leave me,” she says. The order is shaky, yet perfect. “Do you hear me? Don’t you dare. I need you. I love you.”
There are a thousand things I could say. I choose the only one that matters. “I love you,” I tell her. “I love you.”
Alex is there, gray and broken open, eyes crashing between Ivan’s body and mine. For a heartbeat, he is simply a man who just lost a brother. Then his training takes over. He is on his knees at my side, ripping cloth, wadding it, driving both palmsagainst the hole in me with a pressure that makes my vision turn black at the edges.
“Hold him,” he says to Cassandra, voice sanded down. To me he says, “Stay awake. Do not close your eyes.”
“I’m not—” I start, but the room shifts on its axis. I clamp my jaw and fight the darkness that threatens.
“Orlov, doors!” Alex shouts over his shoulder. “Perimeter tight. Nobody in, nobody out. Call the alpha ambulance, now. Private channel.”
“On it,” Orlov calls from somewhere to my left, already speaking into a ghost phone, giving a grid no one else knows.
Cassandra’s hands are steady despite her shaking body. She places them over Alex’s, adding more weight to the pressure. She keeps talking. The words are simple, but they keep the dark from shrouding me.
“Stay with me. Look at me. Breathe. I love you. I love you.”
I look at Ivan because part of me needs proof that he’s still there in a heap of ruin, eyes open to a ceiling he doesn’t see. I think he was destined to die like that. The thought should give me satisfaction. It gives me nothing. There is only Cassandra’s voice and the ache in Alex’s silence.
Alex’s face is slick with sweat, dust, and grief, grief that doesn’t know its own shape yet. He does not look at Ivan again. He keeps his weight on the wound, his focus on me. He counts my breaths under his own.
“Pressure,” he says, and Cassandra nods. They press harder. Pain flares hot enough to paint the whole room white. I bite down on a sound and blow out a long breath.
Sirens, faint but close, fill my ears. The ones we pay for because we don’t want the questions that come with the others. Our men tighten the ring at the doors, rifles up, eyes alert.
Cassandra leans in so close I feel the tremble of her breath.
“Stay awake,” she whispers. “Stay with me. I need you. I love you, Damien. I love you.”
I keep my eyes on hers. I keep my mind where her voice is. The edges of the room fuzz and darken, but the center is bright enough to hold. I count with Alex. I breathe when Cassandra does. I make a silent promise, and I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything. The blood keeps coming, slower now under the firm weight of their hands.
Medics file in and drop next to us with their equipment. “We’ve got him.” Alex won’t move until he has to. Cassandra won’t let go until they pry her fingers loose.
I watch her mouth form the words one more time.
I breathe them in.
I am not letting go.
CHAPTER 45
CASSANDRA
