A thousand unnamed emotions split through my chest.
The slam of the door was the only warning we got. Bronc reached for his gun before he saw who it was.
Doc had burst into the room, taking in the sight with a single sweep of his eyes. “Goddamn,” he muttered, and then he was kneeling beside us, checking my vitals with one hand while the other rummaged through his medical bag. He was all focus, no panic, even in the blur of motion. “You’re lucky she survived,” he told Bronc. “You’re healing?” Pointing to the gashes on his chest.
Bronc nodded, eyes still on me. “I’m alive thanks toher. She…” he nodded to Harrison’s body, then he asked, “What do we need to do?”
“Get her cleaned up, stop the bleeding, and get her the hell out of here.” Doc picked me up and took me to the bathroom. Then he worked in silence as he turned on the shower and helped me in. When I was clean, he helped me dry, then took care of my wounds. He pressed gauze to my side and wrapped a bandage around me like a belt. Bronc came in to help and had to catch me twice when I flinched from the pain.
Everything felt frayed, like a loose wire ready to snap. Harrison was dead. I was alive. This was supposed to be a victory, but all I could feel was the crushing absence where my mate should be Even a mate I hated..
I looked at Bronc with sorrow-filled eyes. My shame was overwhelming me.
“Would it be okay if Doc carried me?” I asked, looking down at my hands.
Bronc lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “Juliet. Listen to me. I love you. Nothing that has happened could ever change that. You will always be my beautiful Little Wolf, who blew into my life one day and turned it upside down. And I never want to live in a world where it’s right-side up again. I never want to live in a world where you’re not in it.” He kissed me lightly on my nose. “Do you have anything that is decent that you can put on?”
I started sobbing again. “No, he didn’t allow it.”
“Don’t cry, sweetie. Hold on.” He got on his comms and asked Menace to bring a shirt and sweatpants out of his bag. In a matter of minutes, I was dressed in his clothes and wrapped in a blanket, drifting off.
“Stay with us, Juliet,” Doc murmured as he carried me. He was in my ear. We were in the stairwell now, Bronc leading the way with long, sure strides. “Just a little further.”
Every word sounded like it was meant to soothe, but there was a heaviness to them that made my heart clench tighter, sharper.
“We almost there?” Doc called from a floor below. I could see the door at the bottom, flames licking out around the edges. My breath hitched. We were out of time.
“Almost,” Bronc answered, voice low, urgent.
It was the first time I’m been outside in two weeks.
I looked back, watching as smoke rose in furious black columns from the building we’d left behind. I saw the outline of Harrison’s empire burning.
Bronc was at our side in a flash, steady hands helping Doc load me into the van parked just beyond the shadows. “Jet’s ready,” he said. He spared a glance at the fire blazing behind us, then turned his attention to the blanket-wrapped mess of me in the backseat. “Let’s go home.”
I could feel Bronc’s eyes on me through the rearview mirror as we sped toward the runway. He was in the moment, all instinct and urgency.
The soft, distant thrum of the private jet’s engine drew closer. Every second between us and the plane was time I had to think about what had just happened. The full weight of it settled over me like a bruise. I shivered against the numbness that followed, pressed my cheek to the cool window as Doc worked silently to secure my bandages.
The hangar loomed ahead. Lights lit the asphalt beneath us as we screeched to a stop, and Doc was at my side again, and then Bronc, half-dragging, half-carrying me as we rushed up the jet’s steps. The pilot shouted a quick, “Hang on tight,” and we were airborne in less than ten minutes, the ground nothing but a distant smear of red and black beneath us.
My mind was an unsteady pulse, full of half-formed thoughts and hollow beats.
How could Bronc want me after this?
The unasked questions tore at me like a hundred unanswered wounds. My wolf was still silent through all of it, and Bronc’ssteady presence was the only thing that kept me from breaking into a thousand unsalvageable pieces.
We’d survived. I’d survived. But at what cost?
Harrison was dead.
The wheels hit gravel with a jolt that shuddered through my bones. Home. Or whatever this place was now. My hands clenched against the armrest as Bronc’s plane taxied across Iron Valor’s private airstrip. Pine trees blurred outside the window like smudged watercolor strokes. Safe ground didn’t feel safe yet.
“Stay with me?” I asked before Bronc could unbuckle his seatbelt. My voice cracked like dry kindling. “In our cabin. Keep everyone else…away.”
He didn’t ask questions, just nodded, his calloused thumb tracing circles on my wrist until my pulse slowed to match his rhythm.
By dusk, whispers of pack life buzzed beyond our cabin walls, distant laughter, engines rumbling toward the lodge, but none of it touched us. The fire crackled as Bronc handed me the tea he’d brewed too strong. I let it scald my tongue, anyway.
