It didn’t.
Lucien was a living inferno.
Golden flames roared across his body as if he’d trapped himself in a blazing hurricane.
The reinforced door glowed a cherry-red even on this side, and the glacier kept melting—groaning and creaking as centuries of ice gave way beneath his onslaught.
“We have to go.” Frank tugged on my arm. “I’ve evacuated everyone else. We have to leave. Before it’s too late.”
Another earth-rumbling crack made us flinch as another chunk of glacier fell into the room meant to contain fire, explosions, and other lab mishaps.
Lucien had burned for two days.
He’d beaten me to Rook as she’d raced to the surface.
He’d caught her as she fell from the sky and erupted in a cloud of snow.
He’d collapsed on the ice the moment she vanished, and it’d taken all my training to lock down my heart-wrenching grief of losing Rook and do my best to protect him...all because that was what she would’ve asked me to do.
I’d carried him back into the lab and begged Frank to save him.
I’d slapped the elderly CEO when he gave in to his sobs thatRook was gone. We didn’t have time to grieve. Not yet. Rook died because she refused to live without Lucien. I’dtoldhim she would never put herself first. I blamed him for her death, and it took strength I didn’t have not to beat him to a pulp for pushing her to die.
The only thing keeping me sane was the knowledge that Rook had been dying anyway. She’d been dying her entire life and no matter what I did as her bodyguard, I would never have been able to change that fact because her parents signed her death warrant the day they created her in a test tube.
But if I could save the man she’d fallen in love with.
If there was a way to bring him back—
Lucien snarled in his sleep as another blast of fire attacked the ice walls.
The lab creaked as the heat became too much.
Steam hissed beneath the door, clouding the corridor.
Whisper paced like a wild thing, claws out, fangs dripping, snarls ringing in my ears. He hadn’t calmed since Lucien had been brought back and began burning.
Nothing woke him.
Before the flames completely engulfed him, we’d tried physical force, adrenaline injections, and even resorted to defibrillation. Whisper had bitten him, licked him, jumped on the table and roared right in his face.
And nothing.
He just kept burning.
He’d kept burning and burning until we’d had to retreat from the room, then close the door, and now...evacuate the entire lab.
Something crashed in the distance, the entire glacier threatening to transform into a flood.
“Dillon!” Frank tugged my arm again. “We have togo!”
“We can’t fucking leave him. Rook would kill me.”
“He’s past the point of help.” Frank sniffed, guilty tears wet in his eyes. “The ascension has him. It’s only a matter of minutes before he burns out. And we can’t be here when that happens.”
I knew he was right.
I’d seen what happened to Rook when she reached the point of death.
