I’ve nearly killed my own mother. I did this.
I did this.
My knees threaten to buckle, and a sob rips out of me, sharp and broken, something tearing loose from inside my ribs.
“I didn’t want—” I choke, shaking my head, backing up another step. “I didn’t want it to be like this… You don’t get to win.”
Maria laughs. It makes my blood run cold. “Sacrifice…” she whispers, lips stained red as her eyes shine with sick devotion. “…is salvation.”
The words slam into me like a punch.
My fingers tighten on the gun again, panic rising fast, my whole body going into shock.
She tries to move—just slightly—her fingers twitching through the leaves as if she’s searching for something.
The second gun.
A knife.
Anything.
I jerk the barrel back toward her, my arm shaking.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t move.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds like a child. A girl who never learned how to be safe.
Maria’s gaze drifts past me suddenly, to something over my shoulder.
Her eyes widen a fraction. Because the forest changes. The air shifts. The sound of footsteps crunches through the brush, an oncoming storm.
I don’t even have to turn to know.
I feel him.
Like the only place I’ve ever been able to breathe.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Drago
I run to her.
The relief of seeing her standing over Maria hits me so hard it almost drops me to my knees.
She is shaking and crying, the gun still in her hand like she doesn’t even realize she’s holding it.
She’s alive. My girl is alive. My brave girl.
When her eyes lock with mine, my entire world cracks open. All the steel I’ve been holding myself together with shatters in one brutal second. I’m across the grass and through the trees before she can blink, my arms going around her, hauling her against my chest like I’m terrified she’ll vanish if I don’t hold on tight enough.
I scoop her into my arms, and I let the tears fall. I don’t even care. I don’t care who sees. I don’t care what it makes me. I only care that she’s here.
“Drago…” she whispers, and it’s broken. Like the name hurts her.
“I’ve got you,” I rasp, pressing my mouth to her hair, her temple, her cheek. Anywhere I can reach. “Fuck. I’ve got you.”
I can’t let go. I don’t ever want to.
Her whole body is trembling, the kind of shake that comes after a trauma so big the mind can’t even process it yet. Her fingers curl in my shirt, trying to anchor herself to me.
