Page 43 of Howl Lotta Love

Overhead, the ceiling groaned—wood and old plaster complaining under heat it was never built to survive, a sound that raised the hair on Emma’s arms even through the panic already crowding her chest.

“That’s the roof talking.” Jace’s grip tightened at her shoulder, his whole body angled protectively around hers even mid-stride. “We move fast, or we don’t move at all.”

“Third door on the left. There’s a cabinet behind the false wall panel.” She was moving before she finished the sentence, Jace one step behind her, one hand braced against her shoulder to keep her oriented in the smoke. “Gerri had it installed after a break-in scare years ago. Nobody outside the board knows it exists.”

“You know it exists.”

“I read this building’s entire financial history for the fraud case. Buildings talk, if you know how to listen.” She found the panel by feel, fingers scraping along the wall until the seam gave under her palm, and behind it sat the safe exactly where memory promised it would be.

The lock gave on the third try. Inside sat two decades of original land deeds and trust documents Kane’s people believed had already burned.

“Got it.” Emma pulled the files free, clutching them against her chest, and turned to find Jace moving toward her, urgency written across every line of him, eyes locked on the ceiling above her head, gone from bad to immediate in the space of one heartbeat.

“Down—”

The ceiling gave.

Jace hit her at a dead run, taking them both to the floor, his body curling protectively over hers as debris rained down around them—burning timber, plaster, a support beam that would have caught her square across the back if he hadn’t put himself directly between it and her. The impact landed across his shoulders instead, a sound like a fist against solid wood, and he absorbed it without more than a sharp exhale through his teeth, his arms locked around her head and the files both, refusing to let either go.

Dust and embers rained down for three long seconds that refused to end, heat licking close enough to Emma’s exposed skin to sear it, and then, as suddenly as it started, the worst of it settled.

“Jace—”

“I’m fine.” His voice came out rough, strained, entirely unconvincing, blood already welling from a shallow cut along one temple. “Move. Now, while the gap’s clear.”

He hauled her up and half-carried her through the smoke toward the exit, one arm banded around her waist, the files crushed between them, and they broke into open air in a stumbling rush of coughing and adrenaline, collapsing onto the grass a safe distance from the building as it finished its slow collapse behind them.

Milo appeared long enough to check Emma’s pupils with a penlight and, having seen far worse over the years, declared her “annoyingly fine” before rounding on Jace with a much sharper eye. “You. Shoulder. Now.”

“It’s fine.”

“That’s not a diagnosis, that’s a lie you tell people so they stop asking.” Milo peeled back the torn shoulder of Jace’s shirt without waiting for permission, revealing a bruise already blooming dark and ugly across the muscle beneath, and dabbed the cut on his temple with antiseptic that didn’t get so much as a flinch. “For a man who took a support beam, you’re being remarkably casual about it.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not the flex you think it is.” Milo taped a compress over the worst of it, muttering the whole time about stubborn alphas and their complete inability to sit still for even a minute, and left with a final warning glare that promised a longer lecture once the adrenaline wore off.

Jace crouched in front of Emma, ignoring his own shoulder fully, and reached up to brush a line of soot from her cheekbone with a gentleness that didn’t match the exhausted fury still simmering behind his eyes.

“Talk to me,” he said, quiet, and the low, rough edge to his voice told her exactly how much the last hour had cost him too, whether he intended to admit it out loud or not.

“It was worth it.” She coughed, chest still raw from the smoke, and pressed the files tighter against her chest. “Forty-two staff. Three shelters. A children’s clinic. Every one of them depends on what’s in these folders, and I wasn’t going to let Kane erase two decades of proof because a fire made it inconvenient for me to be brave.”

“I know.” His hand cupped her jaw, slow, like he needed the contact as much as she desperately did. “I’ve known since our second week that you were going to run into buildings for people you’d never met. I told myself it was a professional liability. It took me far longer than it was supposed to, admitting it’s the reason I can’t picture my life without you in it anymore.”

Emma went still, the oxygen mask forgotten in her lap. “That’s a significant thing to say to a woman covered in soot.”

“I’ve never been good at picking my moments.” He leaned in and kissed her, slow and soot-streaked, not caring in the least about the ash between them, one hand cradling the back of her head like she was infinitely breakable and infinitely worth protecting anyway.

Gerri arrived a moment later, having apparently recovered enough of herself to reassemble the performance, though her grip trembled faintly when she reached out and pulled Emma into a hug fierce enough to bruise.

“You absolute lunatic.” Gerri held on a beat longer than strictly necessary, then pulled back and immediately busied herself smoothing invisible wrinkles from Emma’s soot-ruined blouse, which fooled absolutely nobody. “Checking for smoke damage. Purely practical.”

“Purely practical,” Emma agreed, letting her have it.

“Also, the arsonists picked the one night in recent memory I wore decent shoes.” Gerri glanced down at the ruined heels with genuine, wounded outrage. “These were Italian. I want that noted in every report written about tonight.”

Jace, watching the two of them from a few feet away, let a certainty settle into place that he didn’t bother naming out loud. Gerri didn’t hug people like that unless they already belonged to her. Emma had walked into this family somewhere between a fake engagement and a burning building, and nobody in it, least of all him, was going to let her walk back out.