We make it to the other side and out onto a deserted street. There’s blood splashed on the wall and a dead body lying in the trash. Bleakness fills me. Is this the world we’re coming to?
With painstaking slowness, we make it seven blocks and to within just a few blocks of home. I can feel the relief beginning to ease the tension out of my stiff muscles.
“I’m coming, baby,” I whisper.
Lucian jogs beside me, and I suddenly realise I haven’t asked him. Guilt makes for a bitter mouth. I don’t want to ask, but I have to know; I have to.
“What happened to him?” My voice is hushed and quiet, but he hears me as loud as if I shouted.
Lucian stops dead, his head drops, still oozing blood. A tremor runs up his spine. His jaw works, and I can see the answer. He doesn’t need to say it.
Grief and fear rise like a tide inside me, soaking into the fabric of who I am. I remember his face, how he smiled. The songs he would sing at night when he thought he was alone.
I’m going to miss him.
“Luce,” I murmur and reach out, putting my hand on his back.
“He didn’t make it,” the words come out of a broken omega. One who’s lost his bond partner, his pack, his mate. The agony I fear I’ll know only too well.
“We only met two days ago. It wasn’t long enough. I didn’t have enough time.”
I close my eyes, wishing I could undo it all. Change it.
“I’m sorry.” Two of the most useless words I have ever uttered, but there are none that can convey to him how large my grief is.
“You guys are all I have left. I need to make sure you get home,” Lucian whispers. “We just…we just have to try.”
I step closer and hug his stiff body. He doesn’t return my hug, but I don’t expect him to. “If we don’t, you go and get the survivor out and run. Go to the country.”
“You’re going to survive, Mordecai. You’re going to live. Mordecai, you have to, they need you too much. I’m just going to get you there.”
“Okay, Lucian. Okay,” I say through my tears.
With a gesture to follow, he runs across the road and down the street. I follow, glancing at the empty and destroyed shops, the trash on the road. The city is screaming.
We’re crossing the road when the car comes out of nowhere. It’s one of the quieter models, and because of the truck in the middle of the intersection, we don’t even see it.
Not until it’s there.
Not until it slams into him.
I scream, but it does nothing.
Lucian is thrown across two lanes of traffic. The car peels off, hits the median strip and goes up on two wheels before it crashes to the ground on its roof. The driver crawls out and runs away, leaving Lucian lying alone in the middle of the road.
“Lucian!” I run towards him, but even before I get there, I know he’s gone. It’s not a feeling; it’s a knowing, and I wish I were wrong. More than anything, I wish to be wrong.
His head is turned away from me, and he’s lying on his stomach, but there’s no life, no breath. Still, I kneel carefully, rolling him over. I just turn to the side before I vomit, retching helplessly. I don’t want to see it; I want to unsee it. There’s a massive dent in his chest, like something has caved the entire left side in. An impossible wound, a life-stealing injury.
Nothing can revive him.
He’s gone, and I can’t make myself believe it.
I grip my hair, wailing and saying their names over and over. Losing myself in the pain.
I sit back on my heels trying to get my mind around it. Devastated beyond words to see my lifelong friend gone in the blink of an eye. One minute, we’re promising each other, and the next, he’s gone.
I reach out and close Lucian’s eyes.
