My boots pound against the concrete, the sound swallowed by the shouts behind me. My breath comes fast and burning, tearing at my throat as I run. I cut behind a stack of pallets along the mill wall, the rough wood scraping my palms, then force myself through a narrow gap between the buildings. Brick presses in on both sides, catching my shoulders, my bag snagging on a nail. I wrench it free without stopping. The cold air hits my face hard, stinging my eyes and cheeks. I keep moving until the noise behind me dulls, the voices stretching into distant echoes.
I press myself against a brick wall, my chest heaving, and my hands shaking violently now that there's nothing left to hold together. Blood stains my fingers, my sleeves, and the front of my coat. My scarf is gone, left behind with him, soaked through and useless.
Engines surge again, closer this time, then pull away, tires shrieking as the vehicles move off. The sound thins into the night. I risk a look back through the gap between the buildings.
Men are already on their knees beside him. Their movements are fast and sure, hands going where they need to without hesitation. One issues orders in Russian, the words cutting through the cold. Another presses a cloth to the wound where my scarf had been, holding pressure and keeping his breathing steady.
They lift him with a reverence that surprises me, supporting him as they move toward the vehicles, urgency in every motion. Whoever he is, he matters.
Reverence.
That's the word that lodges in my chest as I watch them surround him, shielding his body as they load him into the back of a dark SUV. Not panic or fear. Reverence. Like losing him would mean losing everything.
The doors slam shut. Engines rev, loud in the sudden quiet, then the vehicles pull away, exhaust hanging in the air as taillights vanish around the corner. The alley empties as quickly as it filled.
The quiet that follows is abrupt.
I lean back against the wall, legs giving way, and slide down until I’m sitting on the cold concrete. My knees draw in without thinking, arms folding around my middle as my breath turns shallow and uneven. Each exhale fogs the air in front of me, brief and visible, then gone.
I look down at my hands and have to blink once before they make sense. They don’t look like mine. Blood coats my palms, dried in some places, sticky in others. My pulse beats hard beneath the skin, proof that I’m still here. Still breathing.
I wipe my hands against my coat out of reflex, then stop. The fabric is already darkened, the mark unmistakable. I let out a short, empty sound that might have been a laugh if there were anything funny about it.
I force myself to my feet and start toward the hospital lights at the end of the path. My legs feel unsteady, but they work. I focuson that. One step, then another. The distance feels longer than it should, the world slightly off balance, as if everything is tilted a few degrees to the left.
By the time I reach my car in the overflow lot, the shaking has eased, replaced by a dull numbness that spreads through my arms and legs. I unlock the door, climb in, and start the engine. It turns over immediately. The sound's normalcy almost undoes me.
I rest my forehead against the steering wheel and close my eyes, and his face surfaces without invitation, the line of his jaw, the intensity of his gaze, as if he needed to memorize my face.
“Get it together,” I murmur, the words automatic and familiar. It’s a phrase I’ve leaned on more times than I can count.
This time, it doesn’t help. Not even close.
2
KIREN
I move in and out of consciousness like I’m being dragged through water that burns my lungs. There is shouting. Engines. The metallic taste of blood pooling at the back of my throat, thick and warm, coating my tongue until I want to gag. My body jerks with every bump in the road, pain ripping through my ribs and abdomen in white-hot waves that leave me blind and shaking. The world tilts and spins, nausea rising in my gut as my head rolls against cold leather upholstery.
Hands grip me, firm and familiar, unmistakably my men. I recognize the cadence of Russian barked low and urgent, the way commands snap through the dark without hesitation. Someone presses down hard against my side, and I feel the pressure before I feel relief. The bleeding slows, but nowhere near enough to matter. My shirt clings to my skin, soaked through and cooling, the fabric sticking to the wound in ways that make my stomach turn.
I try to open my eyes. They flutter uselessly, the lashes catching on themselves, my vision blurring into shadows and streaks of light that hurt to follow. Faces blur in and out. The smell of oiland cold metal fills my lungs, mixing with the copper tang of my own blood until I can’t tell where one scent ends and another begins.
Rage simmers beneath the pain, slow and poisonous. Someone tried to kill me and nearly succeeded. The thought sharpens my focus for half a heartbeat before it dissolves again, pulled under by another wave of agony that steals my breath and leaves me gasping.
Then there is her. Not a face at first, but a voice. Low and firm, carrying an unyielding authority that cuts through the chaos.
“Stay with me.”
The words echo through the dark like a command my body recognizes even as my mind fractures. I cling to that sound, to the authority wrapped in compassion, because it cuts through the chaos in a way nothing else does. Not the roar of engines. Not even the pain that threatens to drag me under completely.
My vision clears for a moment, and the world narrows to a single point of focus. Storm-gray eyes locked onto mine, their intensity unsettling and impossible to ignore.
Her hands are small but sure as they press against my wound, fingers splayed wide to cover as much area as possible. The pressure hurts, sending fresh pain lancing through my torso, but it also keeps me from drifting away completely. There is warmth beneath her palms, wool bunching under her touch, absorbing blood faster than seems possible. A scarf. I register it distantly, the way a man drowning registers the surface of the water far above him.
“Look at me,” she insists, her breath trembling but voice firm.
I want to obey. I want to tell her I’m trying, that every second I keep my gaze on her face is an act of will and defiance against the darkness pulling at the edges of my vision.
