The time for contemplation is over. I force myself to inhale when all I want to do is deflate into sobs. Shoving myself up on shaking legs, I check Mario’s pulse. It’s faint.
“Can someone help him?” I call out.
Almost immediately, another man slides forward and wraps his arms around the guard assigned to me, lowering him to the ground and reaching his hand toward the wound at Mario’s neck. My gaze drifts toward the driver’s seat.
There’s a hole in the back of the driver’s skull, and the bus is drifting across the yellow lines, slowing since the man’s foot has gone limp.
Leaving someone else to help Mario, I slide into the aisle to see what else I can do.
Our best chance is to drive like the fucking wind.
When I reach the driver, an older, paunchy man, I wrap my fingers around the collar of his shirt and yank.
His body starts to lean toward me, but I meet resistance, and he flops back down.
"Seat belt," an unnaturally calm voice says behind me, and I turn to see one of the alphas I met the day I signed up for classes at Eros.
No clue what his name is, but I recall thinking of him as Mole Man due to the distinctive mark on his face.
I nod at him and then lean across the driver, unclipping the seat belt as the other soldier pulls the driver's limp form to one side.
Sliding into the driver's seat and telling myself to ignore the blood splatter, I squint out the side window at the long mirror that warnsObjects may be closer than they appear. The jeep grows larger every second.
My heart jangles like a wind chime in a thunderstorm as I clench my fingers around the wheel.
Then I smash my foot down on the gas pedal and yell, "Everyone, hold on!"
34
COLTER
The campfire crackles,casting dancing shadows across our makeshift shelter. My fingers trace the worn edges of my mask, a habit I've developed since we left.
Three days.
Seventy-two hours without her scent, without her warmth, without Brylee.
Too long.
Eternity.
The emptiness is a physical ache in my chest, a hollow space where her presence should be.
"Anything?" Ridge's voice cuts through the night, acerbic as always.
He's sharpening his combat knife, the rhythmicscrape-grindechoing in the darkness, each stroke a reminder of the violence that keeps us from her.
"Nothing," I growl, the word rumbling in my chest. "The Noths haven’t left their camp in days."
The silence from the front is worse than anything else. It leaves too much room for imagination, for fear to take root and grow like poison.
Kylian paces like a caged animal, his dark eyes glowing in the firelight. "They shouldn't have made us leave her. Shouldn't have forced us here." He kicks a loose rock, sending it skittering into the darkness. "She needs us."
Luka adjusts his glasses and finally looks up from his tactical tablet, its blue light illuminating his sharp features.
"The orders were clear. The eastern front needed all available alphas. Brylee’s safer at the castle than she would be anywhere else." His voice is rational, detached, but I see the tension in his jaw, the way his thumb keeps stroking the edge of the tablet.
"Safer?" I snarl, rising to my full height, the shadows stretching around me. "Without us? Without her pack?" My fists clench at my sides, the leather of my gloves creaking. "Wrong. All wrong."
