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ONE
Helene
“Again.” Hunter grunted behind me.
I shoved off the ground, wincing at the stab of pain in my side. It’d been days since we escaped Coulter’s mansion of hell and I was still recovering. I looked over at Thomas, at his black eye and the way he still favored his leg. We were all recovering. But that made no difference here…not when there was a war to finish and those we loved to protect.
Again.
My thighs tensed, driving my boots into the rocky ground as I lunged forward. Thomas was a heartbeat behind, but it didn’t take him long to surge ahead. His strong shoulders tensed, hands fisted, pumping through the air as we tore along the side of the mountain house and around to the steep incline.
Hunter called this training.
I called it pure, goddamn torture.
“FASTER!” He bellowed behind us. “LIKE YOUR DAMN LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!”
My damn life, huh? How…about…yours?
My pulse was booming, my breaths a billowing blast from the furnace in my chest. Still, I drove myself upwards, crying out when my foot slipped on the rocky surface, pitching me forward.
But Thomas was there, grasping my arm before I plunged off the rock face to my death. He held me steady until I gave a nod, meeting his gaze. A tremor raced with the connection. For a single heartbeat, the world seemed to stop. His lips parted. That hard rush of breath caught before he glanced at the fall behind me.
Then the magic was shattered, leaving Thomas to lunge, digging his sneakers into the slick surface and driving his muscular body upwards.
And I followed.
My heart was racing, trapped between fear and lust—living with these men. Both were sure to kill me.
He slowed at the incline, and it wasn’t the first time. I looked upwards, to where Riven waited, his bare chest heaving, sweat glistening on his skin. But those dark eyes were all for me, gripping me in that ravenous stare.
I drove myself upwards, digging my toes into the shale surface and pushed forward. They were what I ran for…what I bled for…what I sacrificed everything for.
Thomas matched my strides, his thick thighs bulging under his cut-off sweats as we made it a quarter of the way, then pushed to half. I couldn’t do it…I couldn’t?—
Riven lifted his hand, leaving it outstretched in the air toward me.
Fuck.
I pushed harder, unleashing a roar as I raced toward him until he wrapped his arms around me, stopping me cold on the small rise.
“Easy, Trouble.” He murmured, holding me against his chest.
“TIME!” Hunter roared below.
“You…made…it.” Thomas braced his hands on his knees, then looked up at me, that same hunger burning in his eyes.
I had to force myself to look away. My damn knees were shaking hard enough as it was. “Barely.” I gasped and lifted a shaking finger to point down the mountain. “He…he’s going to kill me.”
Riven straightened, his chest heaving. “No, he won’t, Trouble. He loves you.”
I looked back down to the bottom of the mountain, to where the towering outline of one of the biggest men I’d ever seen in my life cast a long shadow across the ground. He loved me. They all did. I glanced around, that fear still trembling inside me. I wasn’t sure why they loved me…or how.
But I was learning.
I licked my lips, wetting my mouth. “Again?”
Thomas shook his head. “Not for me. I’m about to have a damn heart attack.”
