Page 104 of The Florist and Her Alphas

My mouth is dry, my head still throbbing where the chemical fog hasn’t fully lifted, and then I hear shouting. Somewhere beyond the door. A door breaking open somewhere in the main room, wood splintering loud enough that I feel it in my teeth. Glass shatters. A gunshot cracks the air, flat and enormous in the small cabin, and a second gunshot comes right behind it.

“Where’s Liana?!” shouts a voice. I recognize it. It’s Ezra’s voice.

“In here!” I scream, my voice coming out scratchy.

A man screams. It’s Hugo. I know his voice even through the wall, that low, mean rasp gone high and animal. Then footsteps. Running. Heavy, fast, coming toward my door across warped floorboards that groan under the weight.

The door bursts open.

Cole fills the doorway. Blood runs from a cut at his temple down the side of his face.

His chest heaves from how hard he’s breathing. There’s a small knife gripped in his right hand and a handgun shoved into the waistband of his jeans, and his eyes find mine and lock there. A look of relief comes over him when he sees me.

“Thank god you’re alive,” he growls as he crosses the room in three strides. Drops to his knees in front of me on the dusty floor. The knife slides between my wrists and the zip tie, and the plastic falls away, and my arms scream with pins and needles as blood rushes back into my hands.

“You’re here,” I croak out, crying and shaking with relief.

He pulls me into his chest. His arms lock around me, tight, shaking slightly, and his mouth is against my hair.

“I’ve got you,” he says. “You’re safe. I’ll get you out of here, love.”

He kisses the crown of my head once, hard, and then he’s lifting me, one arm under my knees, one behind my back, carrying me out of the room.

We cross the main room of the cabin. Two long streaks of blood smear the floorboards where something heavy has been dragged. Hugo’s body lies face down in the doorway to the kitchen, unmoving, and Cole steps over him without so much as glancing down.

Julian has Bram pinned against the far wall. Blood pours from Bram’s nose, broken and swelling fast. Julian’s face, when he looks up and finds me over Bram’s shoulder, is a face I’ve never seen on him before. No dimple. No grin. Just a man standing at the very edge of his own control, nodding once at me like it’s costing him everything not to bury his knife in the man in front of him.

Cole carries me toward the open front door. Afternoon light spills gold across the threshold.

Silus steps out of the side hallway.

He has a gun raised, leveled dead center at my chest, and time goes thick and slow around me.

He’s smiling.

“Put her down,” he says to Cole. Calm. Pleasant, almost. “Or I put her down myself.”

Cole goes still as stone. He looks at me once, and then he lowers me gently to my feet beside him. He moves his body between me and the barrel of that gun without a single wasted motion.

“I’m not doing this,” Cole says quietly.

“You absolutely are.” Silus’s eyes shift past him. “Come to me, Liana.”

Cole doesn’t move an inch. Silus lifts the gun a fraction higher.

“Walk,” Cole says to me. Very soft. Not looking away from Silus. “Liana. Walk.”

My legs shake as I step around him.

The floorboards creak under my bare feet. My heart is a fist slamming against my ribs, so loud I can hear it over everything else in the room, over my own breath, over the low, terrible quiet that has fallen across the cabin.

I walk toward Silus.

His free hand shoots out and wraps around the back of my neck, hauling me in against his side. The gun barrel presses cold under my jaw.

I don’t breathe.

The crack of a single gunshot splits the room from the direction of the front door.