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Danika knelt on the asphalt, hands interlocked behind her blood-soaked hair. The two gunshot wounds to her leg had stopped leaking blood, but Bryce knew the bullets remained lodged in her upper thigh. The pain from kneeling had to be unbearable.
“You stupid cunt,” the asp shifter spat at her, opening the chamber of his handgun with brutal precision. Bullets were on the way—as soon as his associate found them, that gun would be loaded.
The agony in Bryce’s injured arm was secondary. All of it was secondary to that gun.
The motorcycle smoldered thirty feet away, the rifle thrown even farther into the arid scrub. Down the road, the semitruck idled, its cargo hold filled with all those petrified animals on their way to gods knew where.
They had failed. Their wild rescue attempt had failed.
Danika’s caramel eyes met the asp shifter’s. The leader of this horrific smuggling ring. The male responsible for this moment, when the shootout that had taken place at a hundred miles an hour had turned on them. Danika had been steering the motorcycle, an arm looped through Bryce’s leg to hold her steady as she’d aimed her rifle. Taken out the asps’ two sedans full of equally hateful males intent on hurting and selling those animals. They’d been nearing the racing semi when the male before them had managed a shot to the motorcycle’s tires.
The motorcycle had flipped, and Danika had reacted with a wolf’s speed. She had wrapped her body around Bryce. And taken the brunt of the impact.
Her shredded skin, the fractured pelvis—all thanks to that.
“Bryce,” Danika whispered, tears running down her face now as the reality of this colossal fuckup set in. “Bryce, I love you. And I’m sorry.”
Bryce shook her head. “I don’t regret it.” The truth.
And then the asp shifter’s associate arrived, bullets in hand. Their clink as they loaded into the gun echoed through Bryce’s bones.
Danika sobbed. “I love you, Bryce.”
The words rippled between them. Cleaved Bryce’s heart wide open.
“I love you,” Danika said again.
Danika had never said those words to her. Not once in four years of college. Not once to anyone, Bryce knew. Not even Sabine.
Especially not Sabine.
Bryce watched the tears roll down Danika’s proud, fierce face. A lock clicked open in Bryce’s heart. Her soul.
“Close your eyes, Danika,” she said softly. Danika just stared at her.
Only for this. Only for Danika would she do this, risk this.
The gravel around Bryce began to shiver. Began to float upward. Danika’s eyes widened. Bryce’s hair drifted as if underwater. In deep space.
The asp shifter finished loading the bullets and pointed the gun at Danika’s face. His colleague smirked from a step behind him.
Bryce held Danika’s stare. Did not look away as she said again, “Danika, close your eyes.” Trembling, Danika obeyed. Squeezed them shut.
The asp shifter clicked off the gun’s safety, not even glancing at Bryce and the debris that floated toward the sky. “Yeah, you’d better close your eyes, you—”
Bryce exploded. White, blinding light ruptured from her, unleashed from that secret place in her heart.
Right into the eyes of the asp shifter. He screamed, clawing at his face. Blazing bright as the sun, Bryce moved.
Pain forgotten, she had his arm in her hands in a heartbeat. Twisted it so he dropped the gun into her waiting palm. Another movement and he was sprawled on the asphalt.
Where she fired that bullet meant for Danika into his heart.
His accomplice was screaming, on his knees and clawing at his eyes. Bryce fired again.
He stopped screaming.
But Bryce did not stop burning. Not as she raced for the semi’s cab—for the final asp now trying to start its engine. Danika trembled on the ground, hands over her head, eyes squeezed shut against the brightness.
