Based on the explosion we’d seen and felt earlier, someone had planted a bomb on the roof. That roof was now lying in pieces on the floor, while the rest of the building rumbled ominously around us. Great clouds of choking gray dust billowed in the light of my phone’s flashlight.
Next to me, Jez bent over. Her hand gripped my arm for balance as she pulled off her fancy shoes and tossed them away. She hiked the tight skirt of her gown up to her hips, and before I could get words out, she was away, scrabbling around and over fallen chunks of concrete.
She moved with utter fearlessness... with a complete lack of care for the injuries she was sure to get as she grabbed sharp-edged handholds and stepped over broken glass and wood.
I gaped after her for a precious second, unable to comprehend how she was evenfunctioningwith Gage’s pain pouring through the bond. I was only getting it secondhand, and it was very nearly crippling.
Keeping the flashlight beam as steady as I could in one shaking hand, I lunged after her. Groans and sobs from partygoers trapped in the rubble formed a nauseating symphony around me. The occasional human limb coated with sickly gray dust stuck out from random gaps.
Through it all, Jez scrambled ahead of me in an absolutely straight line, climbing over any obstacles that stood in her way as though an invisible elastic band was dragging her forward.
I coughed and choked on dust as I did my best to keep her in sight. My stomach plunged as her small form dropped behind a pile of debris, disappearing from view. But when I reached the spot, it was to find her running across a relatively clear area of the floor.
Stupidly, I paused and looked straight up. Beyond the haze of dust, patches of stars twinkled in the night sky where the roof had once been. The sirens that had been blaring in the distance sounded nearly on top of us.
“Knox!” Jez shouted, jolting me out of the surreal haze of the destroyed building and Gage’s pain.
I ran after her, stumbling over toppled chairs and smaller chunks of debris. My phone’s light wavered wildly before playing over a gray-coated figure crouched beneath the slant of an upended table.
“Get out!” Knox choked, his voice wavering with effort. “It’s not... safe—”
Horror suffused me as my brain made sense of what my eyes were seeing. The half-destroyed table was jammed like a lever beneath one end of a much larger section of fallen concrete; Knox using his own body to keep it from collapsing and crushing the unmoving body trapped beneath it.
No. Not body.Bodies.
I dove in next to Knox, shoving my shoulders against the creaking wood of the broken table to take some of the strain.
“Gage!” Jez shouted, “Tony!Wake up!”
“Can’t,” Knox grunted. “I can’t hold it...”
I jammed my shoulders harder against the underside of the table, my back and thigh muscles screaming as I took more of the weight.
“Jez,” I grated. “Can you pull them out?”
It seemed impossible on the face of it. She was a tiny wisp of a thing, and Gage was a mountain of an alpha—but we were short on options.
She grunted and cried out. More pain flared through the mating bond.
“His leg is trapped!” she said, sounding near tears. “And most of his weight is on Tony! I can’t move them!”
I clenched my jaw and threw my full strength against the table. “Knox, go help her!” I managed past gritted teeth. “I’ll hold this!”
Knox coughed out an acknowledgement and slipped past me. My spine popped and creaked in protest as I took the remaining strain. Christ—how long had Knox been bracing this thing before we got here?
Something behind me shifted, and there were more groans of effort.
“We have to get them out!” Jez’s voice held more than a hint of hysteria. “Come on...come on!”
The pile shifted again, and the pain through the bond grew white-hot. My vision wavered; a haze of red closing in from the edges. Jez’s cries grew into screams.
I couldn’t lose consciousness. Icouldn’tlose consciousness.
I could feel the table I was bracing pressing my body down. My muscles shook. The heels of my shoes squeaked against the dusty tile of the floor. A rasping cry of denial clawed its way up from my throat—
Two bulky bodies shoved themselves in on either side of me.
“Hold on, sir.” The voice sounded alien... flattened by a respirator mask. “Chicago Fire Department. We’ll get your friends out.”
