“Thorin?” I stand from where I’m kneeling and rush over to him. He isn’t moving, and it doesn’t look like he’s breathing either. “Thorin.” I touch his shoulder gently and then move to try to check his pulse, but I pull my hand away immediately to study my now wet palm. It’s caked in blood. “Shit, Thor.” My bloody hand trembles. “You better not be fucking dead,” I choke out.
Tears fall from my eyes, joining the ones already drying on my cheeks.
What the hell happened? Did I do this? Did Bane?
“Shit!” someone shouts, drawing my attention to the woods or what’s left of it. “I found her! I found her! Someone get over here!”
A moment later, I hear a scream and a gunshot, and my blood chills when I recognize that scream.
Aurelia.
Finding one of our radios among the carnage, I call the sheriff and tell him to send a medevac before shoving the radio in my back pocket.
“I’ll be back, Thor. Help is coming. Hang on for me, brother.Please.” Grabbing the first gun I see, I pause only long enough to check the clip before running off around the side of the cabin and down the only drivable path.
I’m barely fifty feet when I spot a body lying on the ground, another robed man wearing a mask with his neck twisted at an odd angle. I feel my own burn as I disregard him and keep pushing down the hill.
“Fuck! Hold her down!”
Looking over the side, I spot them below on the precipice where I’ve been waking up every other night for the last three months. With her.
Now Aurelia is the one who needs me, and she’s alone with three others, all of them robed, but only one wearing a mask.
Two of them have her pinned down as she struggles to get free.
Where thefuckis Khalil?
I finally reach the first sharp turn and sprint down the path leading to the precipice. To the cliff that I share with Aurelia. I’ll be damned if I let them hurt her on our spot or anywhere else.
The leader finally removes his mask to say something to her, and my steps slow as everything comes to a screeching halt inside my mind.
That face.
I know that face.
It’s haunted my memories.
“ISAAC!” I roar when I spot my father’s other son.
He turns, spotting me on the path, and smiles like he was expecting me all along. “Ah, Ezekiel. So it’s finally you.”
“Let. Her.Go.”
“Now, why would I do that when I have you right where I want you?” He crooks a finger, and because Aurelia is there too, I go.
I step onto the cliff jutting out from the mountain face and walk right past my brother as if he doesn’t exist. I feel his surprise and then I feel his fury, but none of that matters as I kneel to check on Aurelia.
She’s lying parallel with the edge of the cliff now, her head facing away from the rest of us, and when I turn it with gentle fingers, I see blood pooling from her temple. There are bruises all over her body, and she looks like she’s been through hell.
She’s also unconscious.
It’s a far cry from the last time I saw her less than twenty-four hours ago. She’d been soft and sweet, and high on endorphins.
Rising, I turn to face Isaac. “I’m going to kill you.”
Isaac finally drops the false charming persona and lets his anger show. “Do not forget who your master is.”
“She is,” I say, pointing to the unconscious girl at my feet, and then I let my crooked smile free. “When I let her be. She’s also the reason I’m no longer afraid of you, and you hurt her. That means you die.”
