Page 59 of Breaking His Exile

He should’ve known Creed wouldn’t wait until morning.

Movement. A shape sliding between pines. Then another. At least three that he could see. Creed had brought back-up.

Rainey checked the pistol he’d given her, then started transferring supplies to the spare pack he kept in the locker. His old one was still sitting where Creed had left it after searching it. He hadn’t even thought to grab it. His only thought was of getting to Rainey.

Ammunition. The first-aid kit. The half-empty canteen. She worked fast, her hands steady.

The woman was a miracle.

Creed’s voice carried through the door. “Cole, send the girl out. Now. She walks to us, nobody touches her. You come out with your hands where I can see them, and this ends without more blood on your floor.”

Rainey went still by the rear wall. Her eyes found Evander’s across the cabin.

He knew better than to trust promises made by men riding with the Sins. Especially Creed fucking Calder. His finger settled against the trigger. He could shoot through the door…

But then he looked at Rainey. They wanted her alive, but if he took that shot, there was no stopping them from peppering the cabin with bullets and taking her dead.

Maybe giving her to them was the best way to keep her alive for now. Then he could contact River, and⁠—

He shut down that idea, too. They wouldn’t leave him alive to contact anyone.

Fuck.

He genuinely had no idea what to do.

Rainey had frozen with the spare pack half-loaded, one hand on a box of ammunition, her eyes fixed on his. Waiting for him to decide.

The pattern again. His judgment. Her life.

Creed’s voice came through the door, softer now, almost reasonable. “Cole. You know how this ends. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”

Evander knew exactly how it ended. If he surrendered, they killed him and took Rainey. If he fought, they killed him and took Rainey. If he sent her out, they kept their word long enough to get her to a vehicle, then killed him anyway. There was no version where Evander Cole walked off this mountain. The only variable was whether Rainey survived it.

He could accept that. Had accepted it years ago, in principle. What stopped his finger on the trigger was the possibility that Rainey wouldn’t accept it. That she’d try something brave and stupid, that she’d fight when cooperation was the only coin that bought her time, that she’d die because she trusted him to have a plan.

He didn’t have a plan. He had a rifle and eight years of wanting to be left alone, and neither of those was worth anything now.

“Evander,” she whispered. “What do we do?”

He opened his mouth to tell her—what? Surrender, run, hide? He didn’t know. He didn’t fucking know⁠—

The window beside his head exploded.

Glass sprayed across his cheek, and the report followed a half-second later, the heavy crack of a high-caliber rifle. He dropped below the sill, blood already tracking down his jaw, and the second shot punched through the wall above the cot where they’d slept minutes ago. Wood splinters rained on the sleeping bag.

“Rear!” Evander shouted, and rolled to the door frame, rifle up. The front window gaped empty, dark, but muzzle flash bloomed from the tree line—two o’clock, low, behind the big fir—and he returned fire without aiming, squeezing three rounds into the dark, the recoil hammering his bruised ribs. Someone out there yelled, a sharp curse cut short.

Rainey dropped the pack and took position at the other window, her body angled to present the smallest target. The next shot that came through the wall passed six inches above her head. She didn’t flinch. Returned fire, two quick shots, the pistol’s lighter crack answering the rifle’s boom.

Tilly pressed against Evander’s leg, hackles raised, a continuous low rumble in her chest.

“Stay,” he told her. She stayed, but the rumble didn’t stop.

The generator sat in its housing by the front corner. He’d meant to move it to higher ground yesterday, before everything. Now a bullet sparked off its metal casing, and he heard the fuel line rupture, a hiss like a snake, and smelled gasoline in the same breath. The next shot hit something electrical. Blue light arced, and the generator made a sound like a man clearing his throat before it died, taking the cabin’s single electric light with it.

Darkness, except for the stove’s orange glow and the muzzle flashes strobing through the windows.

Rainey fired again. “One’s circling! East side, trying for the tree line!”