“Fuck you,” I rasp, barely able to breathe.
He turns my head toward the flames. “He’s not coming, you know.”
The words hit harder than his grip.
He drags me back, wraps an arm around my throat, cutting off my air.
Smoke stings my eyes. Heat presses in from all sides.
I claw at his arm, panic flaring.
“I won’t let you die here,” he says in my ear. “Not yet.”
My vision starts to blur.
This is how it ends.
Orpheus isn’t coming.
Then the fire dies.
Not slowly. Instantly.
One second, the room is an inferno, the next, it’s silence, steam, and darkness.
The pressure around my throat vanishes.
The gray-haired vampire screams.
I drop to the floor, gasping, lungs screaming for air.
The room shakes, and power floods in like a tidal wave.
I know it before I see him.
Orpheus.
He stands in the doorway, shadows wrapped around him like armor. His eyes glow with something ancient and furious.
Behind him, vampires flood in. Armed. Ready.
Bikers too. Leather, steel, and guns, faces hard and loyal. These are the bikers, the shifters he told me he had an alliance with. We didn’t talk about much intimately, but we talked over the past days, and he told me about them.
The gray-haired vampire backs away, terror etched into his features.
“You,” he spits. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Orpheus doesn’t answer.
He moves.
The fight is brutal. Fast.
Bodies slam into walls. Bones crack. Blood sprays.
Orpheus is everywhere. His power is suffocating, crushing the rebellion beneath it.
I watch through blurred vision as he dismantles them, one by one. His allies have barely anything to do.
