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The blade came out of me like a lightning bolt.

I have no words for what followed. The pain was a white roar. The paralysis broke in a thousand pieces, and blood came pouring after it, and I heard myself make a sound I had not made since the wolves. My back arched. My eyes flew open. I rolled onto my side, and my hand found his wrist and held it, and I looked up into his face.

He was crying. He was laughing. There was blood on his mouth, and a bruise the color of an eggplant across his cheek, and a smear of my own dark blood across his forehead like a mark. He was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

“There you are,” said Lex.

“ Lex. “

“You son of a bitch. You left. “

“I am sorry.”

“You said wait! “

“I know. I know. I—” I coughed. “You said it.”

“What?”

“You said it. Just now.”

His face changed. “I— I didn’t—”

“You did.”

“I was panicking.”

“Say it again.”

“ Maksim, “ he said, almost sobbing, “there’s a lunatic with a gun —”

He was right. I sat up.

The warehouse was chaos.

Sabine was fighting three men at once. She fights like a cat: low, fast, vicious, entirely unromantic. One lay on the floor with a knife in his shoulder. Another was slumped against the wall, clutching his knee. The third had a length of pipe and was swinging it with more enthusiasm than skill, and she ducked it, spun, and put her heel in his sternum with a sound like a dropped melon.

Beyond them, at the far end of the room, in the light of a hanging lamp, stood Gideon Roake.

He had recovered from Lex’s kick. He stood very straight, one hand pressed to his stomach, the other holding a pistol. It was a short black revolver, old, beautifully kept. The kind of gun a surgeon might inherit from his father. I saw the cylinder. I smelled the bullets.

There were six silver bullets in it, and they had been cast by hand.

“Move away from him, Mr. Pendleton,” said Roake.

“No.”

“I would not like to hurt you.”

“Then don’t.”

“I am not going to ask again.” His voice did not shake. His hand did. “Step away. Now.”

Lex stayed where he was.

He was on his knees beside me, in front of me, spread-armed, a human wall between me and the muzzle of a gun. I felt the shape of his back against my chest. I felt his pulse, wild and strong. I felt, through the ruin of my body, the bond flare up like a match in a dark room, hot and blinding, and I understood suddenly what my grandmother had meant. That the mate is not the one you protect. The mate is the one who will stand in front of you.

“Lex,” I whispered. “Move.”