"I think I broke a paparazzi's lens hood," Simon said, breathless, wiping rain from his face. He looked exhilaratingly alive, terrifyingly pleased with himself.
I looked at them.
My pack.
They were wet. They were disheveled. They were violent.
And they were beautiful.
"You blocked them," I whispered, the adrenaline crash starting to make my teeth chatter. "You really blocked them."
"Standard procedure," Anders said, though his voice shook slightly as he put the car in gear. He looked back at me, his eyes softening. "We told you, Tessa. We don't watch from the bleachers anymore."
He floored the gas.
The SUV lunched forward, engine roaring. We didn't wait for the photographers to clear a path. Anders drove with theaggression of a tank commander, forcing the sea of bodies to part.
We tore out of the driveway, past the van still blasting my trauma, past the broken drone, and onto the main road.
As we picked up speed, putting distance between us and the fortress, Daniel reached across me and took Simon’s hand. I was in the middle, wrapped in their arms, smelling of rain, mud, and pack.
"Where are we going?" Simon asked, staring out the back window at the shrinking house.
Anders adjusted the mirror, catching my eye.
"We're going to the city," he said. "And then, we're going to war."
I leaned my head on Daniel’s shoulder, closed my eyes, and for the first time in ten years, I didn't feel like running.
I felt like fighting.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Tessa
The hotel suite smelled of lemon polish and recycled air conditioning, a sterile, corporate vacuum that felt like the surface of the moon compared to the chaotic violence of the driveway we had just fled.
Anders kicked the heavy door shut and threw the deadbolt.Click. Thunk.
The sound was a trigger.
The adrenaline that had held my spine straight during the escape, the chemical armor that had allowed me to walk through the gauntlet of cameras without screaming, suddenly evaporated. It didn't fade; it vanished.
I stood in the center of the plush carpet, still wearing my muddy leggings and the oversized hoodie, and I started to vibrate.
It began in my hands, a fine tremor rattling my bones, then spread to my knees, my teeth, my whole being. It wasn't cold. It was the aftershock of survival. My body realized it was safe, and in response, it decided to fall apart.
"Tessa?" Daniel’s voice was a low rumble behind me.
I couldn't answer. My teeth snapped together,clack-clack-clack. I wrapped my arms around my ribs, trying to hold my own pieces together, but I felt broken. Ghostly. The flashing lights were imprinted on my retinas, pulsing white spots that obscured the room.
I’m disappearing,I thought, panic rising like bile.I’m fading back into the internet. I’m just a video clip again.
"She's crashing," Simon said from the entryway, dropping the duffel bags he had managed to salvage from the SUV. The thud was heavy, real. "Look at her hands."
Anders was already there. He stripped off his ruined, wet dress shirt, tossing it onto an armchair, revealing the pale expanse of his chest and the dark ink of a tattoo on his ribs I hadn't noticed before, coordinates? A date? I couldn't focus.
"Get her to the bed," Anders ordered, his voice tight with efficient concern. "We need to elevate her legs. Get the blood back to her head."
