Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
KIER
The smoke is everywhere now—thick, choking clouds that turn the morning sun into a sickly orange glow. We’re moving through a nightmare landscape of burning trees and falling ash, the heat like an oven against our skin.
“This way!” I shout over the roaring flames. I pull Lithia toward what looks like a gap in the fire line. The silver around our throats makes breathing harder, each inhalation a struggle against metal and smoke.
Behind us, voices cut through the crackling inferno. Human voices, coordinated and closing fast.
“Hurry,” Lithia gasps, stumbling over a fallen log. “They’re driving us toward—”
A pine tree erupts, sparks shooting skyward as it topples across our path in a violent crash, flinging burning branches and flaming nettles. We skid to a halt, trapped between the fallen tree and the advancing flames.
“Fuck,” I breathe, spinning in a circle. The fire has closed around us on three sides, leaving only one narrow corridor—straight toward the voices of our pursuers.
Lithia’s face is streaked with soot and sweat, her pale eyes reflecting the orange glow of the flames. “We can’t go back.”
“And we can’t go forward.” I scan the burning forest, looking for any option, any way out. “Unless…”
I point to a steep rocky slope rising to our left, barely visible through the smoke. “Can you climb?”
She follows my gaze to the treacherous-looking cliff face. “In this smoke? With these restraints?”
“It’s better than burning alive.”
Another tree crashes down behind us, sending up a shower of sparks that spark and sizzle against our skin. The voices are getting closer—I can make out individual words now, orders being shouted between the searchers.
“There! I saw movement!”
“Circle around, cut off their escape!”
Lithia meets my eyes, and I see the same desperate determination I feel burning in my chest. “Let’s go.”
We scramble toward the cliff face, using our hands as much as our feet on the loose scree. The silver cuffs make every movement awkward, throwing off our balance. Behind us, the fire roars closer, and ahead, the rock face seems to stretch endlessly upward.
“Don’t look down,” I call to Lithia as we climb, my fingers finding precarious holds on the rough stone. “Just keep moving.”
A gunshot echoes through the smoke below us. Then another.
“They see us,” Lithia pants, hauling herself up another few feet. Blood seeps from her palms where the rock has torn them open, but she doesn’t slow.
We climb in desperate silence, the heat from below making the rock face almost too hot to touch. My lungs burn with each breath, and my vision wavers from smoke and exhaustion. The silver poisoning isn’t helping—my strength is maybe half of what it should be.
Fifty feet up. Sixty. The voices below grow fainter, but the fire is spreading faster than we can climb.
“Kier.” Lithia’s voice is tight with strain. “I can’t—”
I look down to see her clinging to a narrow ledge, her injured side bleeding through her shirt. She’s pale, shaking with exhaustion and pain.
“Yes, you can,” I tell her, scrambling down to her position. “Just a little farther.”
“No.” She shakes her head, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot on her cheeks. “I’m slowing you down. You should—”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I snarl, grabbing her chin and forcing her to meet my eyes. “We do this together or not at all. Remember?”
She stares at me for a moment, something fierce and desperate flickering in her gaze. Then she nods, taking my offered hand.
I force her ahead of me, following her climb. One handhold at a time, one foot after another, pushing through pain and smoke and the terrible heat rising from below. The world narrows to just this—rock under our hands, air in our lungs, the solid warmth of each other beside us.
I lose track of time, of distance, of everything except the need to keep moving up. The fire below sounds like a freight train now, consuming everything in its path. But ahead, through the smoke, I can see the edge of the cliff face.
“Almost there,” I gasp, following Lithia’s painful ascent.
As she reaches the edge of the cliff, I reach up, boosting her onto the stone outcrop.
I haul myself over, finding her flat on her back, gasping for air.
She’s climbed the fucking thing on pure stubborn will.
I flop beside her, sucking in lungfuls of the slightly cleaner air.
Below us, the forest burns. The entire valley is engulfed in flames, smoke rising in towering pillars that block out the sun. And somewhere in that inferno, our pursuers are either dead or retreating.
“We made it,” Lithia whispers, her voice raw from smoke.
I want to agree, but something’s wrong. The smoke up here is different—not just wood smoke, but something chemical and sharp that makes my eyes water.
“Lithia.” I grab her arm, pointing to the horizon. “Look.”
She follows my gaze and her face goes white.
An aircraft circles in the distance—helicopters dropping something that makes the flames burn hotter and faster.
“They know we’re here.”
As if summoned by my words, the sound of rotors cuts through the air above us. A helicopter, emerging from the smoke like a predator, already swinging in our direction.
“Run!”
We scramble across the rocky plateau, looking for any cover, any escape. But there’s nowhere to go—just bare rock and empty sky, and the helicopter closing fast.
The searchlight finds us, cutting through the smoke to pin us like insects in its glare. Over the rotor noise, I hear a voice amplified by a megaphone.
“Stop running. You’re surrounded.”
I grab Lithia’s hand, pulling her toward the far edge of the plateau. Maybe we can find another way down, another route—
The rock explodes inches from my feet, shards of stone spraying across the plateau. Not a warning shot. They’re trying to kill us.
“This way!” Lithia yanks me toward a narrow crevice in the rock face. It’s barely wide enough for a person, but it’s cover.
We squeeze into the narrow crevice in the rock face, gasping as the helicopter’s searchlight sweeps past. There’s another shot, but it lands about three feet to our left. The angle of this crevice is all that’s keeping us from becoming Swiss cheese.
But our relief is short-lived.
The sound of rotors cuts through the air above us—another helicopter, different from the first. Through the gap in the rocks, I watch in horror as it drops a line of liquid fire across the plateau above us, the chemical accelerant igniting instantly.
“Fuck, they’re boxing us in,” Lithia breathes.
Fire below us, climbing the cliff face with terrifying speed. Fire above us now, spreading across our only escape route. And somewhere in the smoke, helicopters circling like vultures, making sure we have nowhere to run.
The smell of smoke grows thicker. The fire is climbing toward us from below while the new blaze spreads across the plateau above, following the wind currents down through the rock formations.
Through the narrow opening, I can see orange light dancing closer from both directions, hear the roar of flames consuming everything in their path.
“Kier,” Lithia’s voice is tight. “The fire—it’s coming up.”
I can feel the heat building, see the glow intensifying from both directions. We’re trapped, sandwiched between walls of flame, with nowhere left to run.
The heat is becoming unbearable. Sweat beads on our skin despite the fear, and each breath burns our lungs. Through the gap, I can see flames licking at the rock face not twenty feet away from below, while the fire above spreads closer with each passing second.
“We’re going to burn,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice rough. “I should have gotten you out of here. Should have—”
“No.” She grabs my face, forcing me to look at her. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
Her pale eyes reflect the orange glow, wide with terror and acceptance. My chest tightens watching her—this fierce, beautiful woman who’s become everything to me in a matter of days. If we’re going to die, if this is our last moment—
I crush her back against the rock, my mouth crashing to hers with a hunger that’s been building since the second I saw her—hell, maybe since before that.
She meets me with the same wild, reckless need, a moan vibrating from her throat as she fists her hands in my shirt, pulling me closer like she’s trying to crawl inside me.
I pour three years of isolation, days of unspoken tension, the terror of impending death into a kiss that tastes of smoke and salvation.
I’m unprepared for the taste of her. The feel of her. Her mouth is soft and warm and perfect. I relish the sweet slide of her tongue against mine, the way she gasps when I bite her bottom lip, the shift of her hips under my hands.
I growl low in my chest, crowding her harder into the stone, fingers sliding into her hair, tugging just enough to hear the sharp intake of breath she gives me.
Her nails drag down my back, a sting that shoots straight to my blood, and I swear the fire behind us is nothing compared to the heat sparking under my skin.
She arches against me, mouth parting wider, hungry, desperate, devouring.
The smell of smoke wraps around us, sweat-slick skin, pounding hearts, adrenaline and the electric crackle of something too big to name.
I slide a hand down, gripping her thigh, hiking it around my hip, needing her closer, needing her more.
We’re going to die. We both know it.
So I kiss her like a man starved, like a man drowning, like a man who wants to leave his mark on her soul before the fire takes us both.
The fire roars closer, but I don’t care. Nothing exists except the heat of her mouth, the way she rocks against me, the small sounds she makes against my lips.
I press harder against her, trying to shield her from the approaching flames. Desperate to make these final seconds of life perfect. My hands tangle in her hair as I deepen the kiss, pouring everything I can’t say into our desperate fucking kiss—
The rock behind her gives way.