“AM I GOING TO DIE NEXT?”
For a split second before he turned his head, everything inside Alaric went painfully still. The instinct to lie battled the instinct to promise, both crushed beneath the brutal certainty that whatever came next, he would stop it—or die trying. Then he turned his head to answerher.
He never got the chance.
Light erupted across the windshield, wrong in every possible way. Too high to be headlights. Too wide to belong to a car pulling out. Too fast to be anything that could be avoided.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up. His foot slammed the brake so hard the pedal shuddered beneath it. His hand shot out toward Sera, involuntarily and useless and desperate, even as the world detonated.
The truck hit them broadside.
The sound was not a crash. It was a tearing, rending scream of metal and glass and force, like the road itself had split open beneath them. The impact punched the air from his lungs and snapped his head sideways. Pain flared hot and immediate as the seatbelt bit deep into his shoulder and airbags exploded all aroundthem.
Metal buckled with a high, vicious keening.
Glass shattered, spraying across the interior in a glittering, violent storm. The car spun, tires shrieking as traction vanished. The world fractured into angles and noise and impossible motion. Alaric tasted blood and copper and burned rubber, his teeth clenching on a curse that tore out of him anyway.
“Sera!”
The car slammed again, abrutal second impact that rattled his bones, then skidded violently toward the shoulder. Momentum bled off in a long, grinding scream. Everything went still in the wrong way. The engine coughed once, twice, then died. Smoke curled up from the hood, white-gray and ugly against thedark.
For one brutal second, Alaric didn’t breathe.
His entire world narrowed to the space beside him—and the terrible fear that Serawasn’t moving.
Then she made a sound.
It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t even a cry. It was a broken, shocked gasp, thin and unsteady, ripped from her chest like her body wasn’t sure it remembered how to breathe.
The sound punched straight throughhim.
He was moving before the car fully stopped rocking. He wrenched at his seatbelt, ignoring the burning pain in his shoulder as it released. The driver’s side door protested, bent inward and warped, but he shoved it open with a snarl and was out, boots hitting pavement hard, balance alreadyset.
The truck loomed nearby, angled across the road. Aman jumped down from thecab.
Not injured. Not limping.
Running.
Alaric’s hand was already inside his jacket. The gun slid into his palm smooth and familiar as breath, the mass of it settling against his palm like an old promise. He pivoted, stance widening automatically, shoulders squared, eyes tracking the movement with cold precision.
The man didn’t lookback.
A second car rolled up fast, door already opening before it fully stopped. The driver dove inside. Tires shrieked. Thecar tore away, merging into traffic with horrifying ease, disappearing as cleanly as if this moment had been practiced until it was flawless.
Alaric stood there for half a heartbeat, gun trained on empty space, fury roaring up through his spine, sharp and blinding and useless.
Then Sera made another sound.
Everything else vanished.
He holstered the gun without conscious thought and turned back to thecar.
Nothing mattered except her.
He yanked open the passenger door, heart hammering so hard it hurt. Sera was still strapped in, body rigid, eyes wide and unfocused. Blood trickled from a cut at her hairline, dark against her skin. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths that scraped at something raw insidehim.
“Sera.” He cupped her face carefully, thumbs brushing her cheeks, forcing her to look at him. “Hey. Stay with me. Look at me.”
