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“Fuck,” Gina said. “It’s Brax.” She took a step backward. “We don’t have a problem with you. We just want the girl.”
Brax peeled his lips back to show pointed fangs that were each easily the size of my hand. It seemed he didn’t care for her statement.“Mine,”Brax said, though his voice was guttural and so deep, it was hard to decipher.
As soon as he said it, he darted forward.
Something heavy landed on me, and I didn’t know what it was at first. Wade’s voice clued me in. “Just stay still. Brax isn’t in his right mind when he’s like this, so we don’t want to become targets.”
A crash to the side made me twist enough to see the open and vacant eyes of the dryad there. Screams hit my ears, and I wanted so badly to shut it all out.
So much death, so much pain—it all overwhelmed me.
A touch to my head made me jump, but I found it was just Wade stroking his fingers through my hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he whispered, but I wondered if he’d said it to me at all or if it was just a promise to himself.
Before I knew it, everything stopped. A suffocating silence took the place of the violence before. The room was full of only the panting breaths of something large and angry—Brax.
“You should get off her.” Knox’s voice could have made me smile, just knowing he was alive, that we’d all ended up together.
Wade twisted, but I couldn’t see where he was looking. “What if he—”
“He won’t hurt her. You didn’t hear him growl outmine? Trust me, she’s the safest thing in the whole damned world right now, and the fact that you’re still in one piece says he must recognize you on some level as well. Let’s not push our luck any further.”
Wade hesitated for only a moment before getting off me. He didn’t move far, however. No doubt he planned that if anything happened, he could try to take Brax out if he could touch him.
Though when I sat up, when I found Brax crouching over me, I had to admit that I doubted even Wade had a chance.
Brax was terrifying up close, with blood covering him. It even stained his teeth, and I didn’t want to think about what was stuck between them. While Wade had hidden me from having to witness all the carnage, that didn’t mean I didn’t have a pretty good idea of what had happened, especially with the maimed, lifeless bodies around.
“Mine,” he repeated and came closer.
I wanted to pull away, to reject him, but something stopped me.
He’d done this for me. He’d allowed himself to become this because of his worry about me. Even if hiseyes were different, they were still his, and he stared at me as if I were his whole world.
I swallowed down my fear and rose to my feet. Even with him crouching, I hardly came to eye-level with him. It made me realize just how large he’d grown, how intimidating.
I set my hand on his face, ignoring the wetness, the blood that no doubt smeared my palm now. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him thank you, couldn’t reassure him, so I did the only thing I could think of.
I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to his, then closed my eyes. It was a surrender, a submission, a way for him to know what he meant to me even in this form, even covered in blood, even as terrifying as he was.
He huffed softly, his shoulders slumping as if that had worked, as though the tension drifted away.
“I hate to break into this,” Knox said, “Especially because I would like my arms to stay right where they are, but we need to get going before reinforcements get here.”
I turned to find Knox there, a smile on his face. He held his hand out, and I took it. He brushed his lips to mine, just a quick kiss as if he needed it to be sure I was okay, before he nodded behind him. “Ready to go?”
I nodded.
It was time to get the hell out of Larkwood.
* * * *
Warden
I smiled as I stood there, waiting.
Maybe smiling wasn’t appropriate. The bridge between the North Tower and the main building had been destroyed, and while I had no hard numbers, I knew we had lost many guards. In addition, countless shades were dead.
This was a day Larkwood would never forget, one that had changed the very fabric of this place. After never having lost a shade to escape, never having anything of this type happen, it seemed we’d underestimated the problems just one siren could cause.
