Boots. Heavy. One pair. One pair coming down. And behind them, a dragging sound.Thud. Thud. Thud.Something being hauled, one step at a time, by the heel.
I’m crying soundlessly, my back to the wall, strangling the hilt of the blade. Malia hasn’t moved from the ottoman.
The legs come down into the low battery light. Dark jeans. A torso I’d know anywhere. A dark T-shirt with blood on the shoulder and blood down the neck.
North.
He’s alive and breathing, and I want to scream out.
But behind him, hauled by one ankle, is Daniel. Face broken. Nose bent, eyes half open. A low groan rolling out of him with every bump of the stairs.
North drops the ankle at the bottom. Daniel thuds the last foot to the floor and stays there, barely conscious.
North’s gaze sweeps the room, then lands on me. “Angel.”
I run straight into North, and he catches me so hard my feet leave the ground. His arms lock around me, crushing and desperate, and I don’t care that it almost hurts, because he’s here, he’s alive, he’s solid under my hands and breathing against my hair. He wrestles the blade from my grip and slides it into his belt. I bury my face against his neck for one shaking second before I’m pulling back enough to stare at him.
There’s blood at his mouth, a cut at his brow, bruising already rising along his jaw.
My throat closes. “Luca. Ace. Where are they?”
“They’re safe,” he says immediately, one hand still braced at the back of my head. “I promise.”
The basement door bangs open again, and boots hit the stairs fast. Luca and Ace come down right behind him, both of them breathing hard, both of them alive, and the sight of them tears something open in me.
Luca has blood on his knuckles and a split lip. Ace’s shirt is half torn open, and there’s a dark bruise blooming high on his cheekbone. They both look wrecked but also so beautiful.
And they’re here with me.
I notice behind us, Malia is standing, crying, watching us, hugging herself.
All three of them are closing around me at once. Luca grabs my face and kisses me hard and fast like he has to prove I’m real. Ace’s arms wrap around me from the side, and he presses his forehead to my temple for one second before kissing me there too, North still holding me in his huge arms.
“Are you hurt?” Ace asks, voice rough. “Tell me right now if you’re hurt so I can patch it up.”
“We need to check you,” Luca says, hands already moving over my arms, my shoulders, my waist, urgent and shaking despite how controlled he’s trying to sound.
I can barely get a breath in. “I’m fine, just really shaken up. But you three are bleeding.”
“We’ve had worse,” Luca mutters with a gorgeous grin.
I shake my head hard and grab both of them tighter. “I thought—” My voice breaks completely. “I thought you were going to get hurt. Or worse.”
“We’re here,” North says quietly.
I hug them harder, all of them, not caring that they’re bruised or sweaty or shaking too, because they’re alive and breathing and surrounding me. I can cry later.
Then a fourth set of footsteps starts down the stairs, and I twist in Ace’s arms.
Aman has come down behind them. Mid-forties in a white tank top. Tanned with tattoos running down both arms and old scar tissue curling up over one collarbone. A crookednose with cropped dark hair. He walks with the specific loose, unhurried roll of a man whose body has been ready for years.
His eyes go straight to Malia, who he approaches. “Sister.”
Malia lifts her gaze, and in that moment, like a woman ten years older than the one who brought fruit to a back room in the gaming store.
“Makoa,” she says.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his arms stiff by his side.
