Fuck.
He was going to let them have me, wasn’t he?
As I reached this conclusion, anger stirred like hot coals in my chest. My gaze turned lethal, and I hoped he could see the hatred within it.Fine. Let them kill me, you bastard.
He sighed out a testy breath, almost as if this whole situation was a mere nuisance, some unfortunate clerical task that had been dropped into his lap.
The next moments happened in a blur. He moved like a snake, whipping a throwing knife through the air toward the man holding me down.
The other Hunter gasped when Lucas Scott’s blade disappeared into his abdomen and scored a straight line fromleft to right. He fell, crying out, trying to hold his organs inside his body.
On my back, the man’s foot loosened. He choked and sank to his knees, ripping the knife from his throat.
A mistake.
Blood poured in a waterfall down his neck. The light fled his eyes, and he toppled to the side.
I blinked at the carnage all around me, then at Lucas Scott, who wiped the blood from his knife as one would scrape a paintbrush to remove the excess paint—impassive and calm.
A gasp drew my attention to Liliana, still alive. I crawled to her, pain biting into my injured elbow all the way to my shoulder. The weapon in her side was buried deep, right into her liver. If I left it there, the bleed would be slower. I could get her to headquarters…
“You’re going to be okay,” I said to her, my words wobbly. My shaking hand grasped hers. A weak grip squeezed back.
Behind me, Lucas Scott swiped something from the ground. His throwing knife, I saw, as he cleaned that too, then holstered it.
“So—Soph—” Liliana rasped, and even in the dark, her pallor was apparent.
The dark presence behind me prowled closer. He stood only inches away. “Get up,” he said, low and sharp.
I ignored him. My grip on Liliana’s hand tightened while hers diminished.
His razor voice cut through the darkness.“Get up.”
“I’m—I’m not leaving her.” My breath hitched when Liliana’s mouth tilted up at one corner. The air around me grew tense with the anger simmering from the man at my back, but I refused to let go.
Muttering a curse, Lucas Scott bent, and in one swift move, he unsheathed the blade from Liliana’s body. I cried out aprotest, but it was too late. Blood poured from the wound—far too much of it.
“How could—how could you do that?” I took Liliana’s face in my hands. “You’re going to be okay. I’ll get you back?—”
I was jerked upright by my arm, and I hissed at the zing through my elbow. “Stop!”
He spun me to face him. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re a medic. You know a fatal wound when you see one. I just did her a favor.”
He was right. Iknewhe was right, but my conscience hadn’t quite accepted the idea of brutal mercy. After all these years, I still couldn’t bear the thought of euthanasia. Perhaps I clung to hope like a child grips a favored toy—no matter how battered or mutilated, they still sought comfort in its presence.
Liliana would have died regardless of my help, but I was searching for a miracle, like a moron, and that realization infuriated me. “You—you?—”
“Why are you here?” he hissed, dragging me deeper into the alley, deeper into the dark. “Are you not a vitally important resource for the Defiance now? Why do they have you on the streets like a common foot soldier? You’re clearly not experienced in combat.”
Despite everything, heat suffused my cheeks, and the flush of blood only made my face throb harder.Experience and competency don’t always go hand in hand, I wanted to tell him. I’d had enoughexperienceto last me a lifetime. “I’m a field medic,” I said. “We’re assigned on a rotating basis.”
He swore, but then his body went rigid as he shot a cutting look toward the mouth of the alley. Only then did I become aware of the sound.
Footsteps.
The previous flush of blood in my cheeks drained away. “Who is it?” I whispered.
He yanked me, his hand a manacle around my upper arm as I struggled to keep up with his near-silent steps. A metal staircase connected to a second-story doorway, with a rainbow stack of crates beneath it. He manhandled me into the tiny space between the crates and a dumpster, and my back hit the brick wall.
