Terrified of what happens if we reach for her and find nothing.
Chapter 3
Jace
I wake up choking on ash.
My body jerks upright before my brain catches up—survival instinct, the one that’s kept me alive through worse than this. Though honestly, I’m not sure I’veseenworse than this.
The courtyard looks like the end of the world.
Silver ash drifting down like snow. Bodies scattered across scorched earth. The air tastes like ozone and blood and something else—something that burns at the back of my throat and won’t go away.
I’m on my feet before I’ve finished processing any of it. Stopping means dying. Stopping means thinking. Neither of those is happening right now.
Bree.
She’s at the center of everything. I can see the others already converging—Thane and Stellan closest, Theo and Wes and Rhett stumbling toward her from the opposite direction.
But Gray—
Gray is twenty feet to my left, dragging himself across the ground with his arms. One leg bent at an angle that makes my stomach turn. Human form, which means he either can’t shift or won’t, and neither option is good.
He snarls when I drop beside him. Actuallysnarls, lips pulling back from teeth that look too sharp for his current shape.
“Shut up.” I loop his arm over my shoulders and haul him upright. He’s heavy as hell and fighting me the whole way, because of course he is. “If you want to get to her alive, you need me.”
The snarl dies. His weight settles against my side.
We move.
It’s not fast. It’s not pretty. But we make it—staggering across the blast radius until I can lower him next to the others. He collapses at Bree’s side, one hand reaching toward her before he catches himself.
Nobody’s touching her.
I file that away and turn back.
Seth.
He’s crumpled against the sanctuary wall, thirty feet away. Too still. Too pale. The Void energy that was flickering around him during the fight is gone—no black threads, no silver lacing, nothing.
I run.
My knees hit dirt beside him. I press two fingers to his throat, searching—
There.
Faint. Thready. But there.
“You’re not dying on me.” I hook my arms under his and drag. His body is dead weight, heavier than it should be, but I’ve carried worse. “Not after all the shit we went through to find you.”
Seth doesn’t respond. Doesn’t stir. But as I drag him across the battlefield, his body keeps trying to angle toward Bree—a slight pull, an unconscious lean, like something in him knows where she is even when he doesn’t.
I don’t have time to think about what that means.
I bring him to the circle and lower him gently on her left side. Gray is on her right. The others have gathered—Theo, Wes, Rhett, Thane, Stellan. All of them kneeling or crouching or hovering, none of them speaking.
None of them touching her.
