They hit the ground, gear clanking, and split toward the hoses.But Nolan’s eyes weren’t on the water.They scanned the crowd.People jostled behind the barricades, faces pale in the firelight.And then—
“There!”Nolan shouted, pointing.A man in a dark coat stood too still, his hand rising and falling in lazy arcs.Each movement echoed in the flames, bending them like puppets on strings.
Isaac followed his line of sight, eyes narrowing.“Shit.It has to be one of them.One of those Council fuckers.”
Before they could move, a scream cut through the night.“There’s a child inside!”
Every head turned toward the voice.The man in the coat looked up, eyes locking on Nolan’s.A smile split his face, cruel and knowing.He raised his hand, and the flames roared higher, cutting off the entrance in a wall of fire.
“It could be a trap,” Isaac hissed.
“Kid’s still in there,” Nolan snapped.“We don’t have a choice.”
They didn’t hesitate.Together, they plunged into the inferno.
Inside was worse.The heat pressed like a fist, smoke clawing at their lungs, the air so thick it felt like swallowing ash.Their flashlights barely pierced the choking dark, beams swallowed by rolling smoke that curled as if it had intention.The fire moved with purpose, curling around them, cutting off exits as fast as they found them.It wasn’t random.It was hunting them, breathing with them, mocking each step deeper they took.
Every groan of timbers sounded like laughter, every shower of sparks like a taunt.Nolan’s heart pounded.The flames flared for no reason, devouring walls and furniture that shouldn’t have burned so quickly.Materials that should have smoldered instead went up like tinder, consumed in seconds.The bastard outside was twisting the blaze with power, shaping it into a cage.
“This sucks,” Nolan coughed through his mask, voice ragged.“Finally figure out who we are, finally get our mate—and this is how it ends?”
Isaac’s eyes, visible through the visor, were fierce.“Not yet,” he growled.“Not like this.We didn’t survive two centuries to die like rats in a trap.”
They pushed forward, stumbling over fallen plaster and twisted metal.Somewhere deeper in the building, a child cried—a thin, eerie sound carried by the draft.Nolan’s gut clenched.Whether it was real or another trick, they couldn’t risk ignoring it.
They turned down a hallway just as a beam above them groaned.Nolan shoved Isaac forward, instinct driving him, as it crashed down with a thunderous crack.Pain ripped through his side as it pinned him, sparks scattering across his gear, the weight crushing breath from his lungs.
“This was a trap, there is no fucking kid.Go!”Nolan shouted, teeth gritted as fire crawled closer.“Get out, find Saffie, and tell her—”
Isaac spun, eyes blazing.“Fuck off.You think I’m leaving you?”He dropped to his knees, straining against the beam.
“Isaac!”Nolan’s vision blurred.“If you die, too, she loses us both.”
Isaac leaned close, his face mask pressed to Nolan’s, anguished eye locked together, fierce and raw.“You are my brother, you asshole, we came in together, we leave together, that has always been how we work.And don’t forget.We are fuckingwolves, Nolan.We do not give up.”
For a heartbeat, the fire roared louder, mocking them.Then something deeper stirred.Something older, wilder, shared.Nolan felt it in his chest, a pulse that wasn’t his alone.He caught her scent through the smoke, Saffie, sharp and sweet like rain on scorched earth.Her voice ripped through the roar of the fire, not in his ears but in his bones, a scream of fury that seared the darkness.The girls were with them, pouring their power into the bond, refusing to let them fall.
Strength, wild and borrowed, surged through Nolan’s grip.He heaved, muscles straining, and the beam shifted.
Isaac lifted and shoved with him, teeth bared, their combined will—bolstered by the women’s magic—forcing it up just enough for Nolan to scramble free.They staggered together, coughing, blood and ash smeared across their gear, both knowing it hadn’t just been them that lifted the weight—it had been all of them, the circle, their mate.
Isaac’s voice was ragged but resolute.“We fight.We fight for her.For us.Always.”
Nolan’s chest ached with more than smoke.The thought of Saffie—her eyes, her laugh, the way she had looked at them—burned hotter than the flames.
“Then let’s fight our way back to her,” he rasped.
Side by side, they plunged deeper into the blaze, wolves refusing to surrender, determined to claw their way back to the woman who was theirs.The fire groaned and screamed around them, walls trembling, ceiling sagging.Sparks fell like fiery rain.Any second, the whole structure could collapse, burying them in flame and steel.They knew it—and still they pushed forward, teeth bared, every step a vow that if death came, it would find them fighting their way back to Saffie.
