Chapter 26 When Angels Shoot To Kill
WHEN ANGELS SHOOT TO KILL
DANI
They’d found us.
The man who’d just promised me forever vanished; in his place was the killer from the tree lot. His body covered mine, heavy and solid, a wall of heat and muscle between me and the storm. His gun was in his hand like it had always been there.
“Stay behind me,” he said, voice dropping into that deadly register I knew meant men were about to die. “Whatever happens, you stay behind me.”
Like hell.
Glass rained down. Splinters flew. The fire that had listened to our confessions spat sparks, throwing hell-orange light over the chaos.
“The back,” I hissed, grabbing for my own weapon from where we’d stashed it by the couch. “We can get to the trees from the back door.”
You trained me for this. Let me use it.
His gaze locked on mine for half a second in the madness. I saw the war in his eyes—his need to shield me warring with the simple fact that sitting here made us target practice.
He nodded once. “Stay close. Aim center mass. No heroes.”
No heroes. Just survival.
We moved together toward the shattered back door, boots crunching on broken glass and splintered wood. The night air hit my face like a slap—cold, sharp, smelling of pine. That was when I saw it.
Dark stains in the snow, stark against the white. Blood. Still steaming in the cold, a deliberate trail leading away from the cabin.
No body. No attacker. Just blood.
“They’re playing with us,” Konstantin muttered, eyes scanning the dark between the trees. “Testing. Seeing how we react.”
They weren’t coming.
They were here already. Watching.
One of his perimeter traps went off with a crack and a flash—sharp report, shower of snow and splinters, a ragged scream cut off too quickly.
“They hit a tripwire,” he said. “Good.”
A second explosion echoed from deeper in the woods. Then a third, from the opposite side. Systematic. Probing. Learning the shape of our defenses.
“How many?” I whispered, breath fogging in the cold.
“Too many,” he said, jaw tightening as brief muzzle flashes flickered in the darkness like evil fireflies. “But they bleed like anyone else.”
The full assault hit like a wave.
They came out of the trees in coordinated lines—black gear, masks, assault rifles barking controlled bursts. More glass went, what was left of it. The cabin shuddered under the impact; wood splintered, dust rained from the rafters.
Konstantin moved like he’d been built for this.
His gun spoke in hard, economical bursts. One, two, three figures went down in the snow, limbs jerking, heat leaving their bodies in clouds of steam. He stepped, pivoted, used cover like the forest was a training course he’d run a hundred times.
This is what he was made for, I thought. This is who he is when the world stops pretending.
It wasn’t enough.
A bullet caught him in the shoulder—the same side that had barely started to heal. The impact spun him halfway around. He staggered, blood blooming through his shirt in a dark, spreading flower.
“Konstantin!” I grabbed him, fingers slipping on warm red as I dragged him behind a fallen log. “Stay with me, stay with me.”
Not now. Not after everything.
Bullets chewed the log above us, bark exploding into our hair and down our collars. I leaned around the edge, raised my gun, and fired.
Aim center mass. Breathe out. Don’t flinch.
His voice in my head steadied my hands as I squeezed the trigger. One shadow jerked and went down. Another flinched and dove for cover.
“Dani.” His blood-slick hand found my face, dragging my gaze back to his. His teeth were clenched against pain, but his eyes were clear. Commanding. “Whatever happens, you run. You get out. You save yourself and our baby.”
Our baby.
Not a theory. Not a maybe. A life.
“We run together or not at all,” I said, slamming a fresh magazine home with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking. “You don’t get to love me and then die on me, Konstantin.”
Before he could answer, a voice cut through the gunfire.
“Cousin!”
Maksim.
Smug. Drawling. Too pleased with himself by half.
“Come out, come out,” he called. “Let’s finish this family reunion properly.”
Family.
The snake at the center of all this.
I twisted to tell Konstantin, but he was already moving—blood dripping from his arm, gun in his good hand. In the confusion of smoke, muzzle flashes, and shadows, I lost sight of him.
We were supposed to stay together.
The thought had barely formed when an arm clamped around my waist. A hand slammed over my mouth, cutting off my yelp.
I was yanked backward into solid, unwelcome heat. The cologne hit me first. Familiar from the penthouse. From the wine. From the almost-assault he’d tried there.
“Hello, beautiful,” Maksim murmured against my ear. His breath was hot and foul. “Miss me?”
Fight. Use what he taught you.
I drove my elbow back into his ribs. Felt the satisfying grunt. Twisted, going for his wrist the way Konstantin had shown me, and snapped my knee up toward his groin.
He anticipated it this time, shifting just enough that I glanced off his thigh instead. He laughed.
“Still feisty,” he said. “Love that.”
His hand shot up and closed around my throat, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Black dots started to bloom at the edges of my vision as I clawed at his grip.
Can’t breathe. Can’t—
The baby—
Thunder crashed through the trees.
Not sky.
Konstantin.
He hit Maksim like a freight train, ripping me from his grasp and slamming him back into a pine so hard the trunk shook. Snow fell in a soft shower from the branches above.
In the next heartbeat, Konstantin had his cousin pinned with one forearm, gun pressed to Maksim’s temple. Blood ran freely down his own arm, but his hand didn’t tremble.
“You want my seat?” he asked, voice cold enough to freeze marrow. “Take it in hell.”
Do it, I thought. End it.
Maksim laughed, even with a gun to his head.
“Pull that trigger,” he said, “and you’ll never know how deep this goes. How many more want you dead. Want her dead.”
He was stalling.
Buying time.
Maybe for a second wave. Maybe for another shooter.
No more games.
No more chances.
My gun came up on instinct, arm straight, sights lined on the center of his chest. My hands didn’t shake this time.
The shot was loud in my own ears, but it was the silence after that really rang.
Maksim’s grin faltered. He looked down at the dark red spreading across his shirt, then back up at me with something like confused outrage.
“That’s for threatening my family,” I said.
My voice was calm.
Deadly.
He slumped against the tree, breath bubbling red, eyes already glazing. I held my stance, gun still trained on him, until I was sure there was no coming back.
It had been him all along.
The architect of the chaos that had gutted our lives.
A warm hand landed on my shoulder.
When I looked at Konstantin, I saw something new in his eyes. Not just possession. Not just desire. Something like recognition.
“It really was him,” I said.
He nodded once. “With him gone,” he said, voice rough, “the rest will fall back in line.”
Leader gone, wolves scattering.
Around us, the forest went still.
The surviving attackers had already started to melt into the dark the moment Maksim went down, their loyalty evaporating with his last breath. The only sounds left were our breathing and the faint crackle of something burning back near the cabin.
“You’re not just my future,” Konstantin said quietly, eyes still on my face. “You’re my weapon.”
I didn’t hear arrogance in it.
I heard truth.
His weapon. His partner. His equal.
In the distance, a sound began to thread through the trees—thin at first, then growing.
Sirens.
Not many. Maybe one old truck from whatever passed for law this far out. Close enough to be a problem, far enough we had minutes.
“Sheriff’s department,” I said. “By the time they get here, there’ll be nothing left but footprints and brass. Alexei will make sure the report says ‘illegal hunters’ and bad luck.”
“Someone heard the fireworks,” I said.
“Or someone wanted witnesses to the aftermath,” he replied.
He holstered his gun and turned toward the wrecked cabin.
“We run,” he said. “One more time.”
One more time, and then… whatever came after.
I followed, gun still warm in my hand, blood drying on my clothes, his child alive and kicking quietly inside me.
We’d survived the worst they could throw at us.
Whatever came next—cops, council, decisions about thrones and exile and new names—we wouldn’t face it alone.
We’d bought ourselves a future.
With blood on snow and a body against pine.