61. BULLET
ariella
For a fraction of a second, everything pauses.
The compound is screaming, sirens tearing through steel corridors, gunfire folding into itself somewhere far beyond this room.
But inside me, there’s a strange, suspended silence. Like the world has paused just long enough for me to understand what’s about to happen.
Alistair’s father, the Crown of the Triarch Dominion, I assume, just shot a bullet in my direction.
I don’t make any attempt to move.
There’s no calculation left in me. No escape route. No argument with probability. Just a single, absurdly calm acceptance that this is where all of it was meant to go.
If I walked into the darkness of Alistair’s world willingly, then I’ve no right to fear what awaits me inside it.
Maybe this was always the price of falling for the devil.
Maybe this was simply the cost of choosing him.
So I close my eyes, already accepting my fate. This is it—the end.
Something massive collides against me, knocking the air out of my lungs as my body is pulled backward, not falling, not hit—held. I’m being held by someone.
A sound tears through the room. A strangled grunt followed by the gunshot.
My eyes fly open only to see his body wrapped around mine.
Arms tight around me. Protective in a way that makes no logical sense in a place like this, especially after all he’s done to me till now.
Alistair.
For a second, my brain refuses to process it.
He was standing beside me. He was calculating. He was watching everything like it was already written and expected.
And now his body is between the Crown and me.
I feel it before I understand it.
His breath stutters near my ear as he drops his forehead over my shoulder. “Ariella,” he whispers. “You should—argh—you should run, your brothers are here…” he somehow manages to speak.
Suddenly, my hands are shaking as I reach for him without thinking. Warm, thick, and sticky liquid seeping through his side covers my palms.
“No…” my voice breaks seeing the blood.
The impossible truth lands in me with violent clarity. He took the bullet for me.
My mind refuses it again. Rejects it. Rewrites it. Because Alistair doesn’t take anything for anyone. He calculates. He anticipates. He avoids.
He doesn’t sacrifice himself for others.
But his hand slides away from my body. He’s letting me go.
He chose this. In the end, he chose me.
The doors behind us explode inward. Light fractures across the room. Footsteps. Shouts. Familiar chaos enters from every angle.
“Ariella!”
Adrian’s voice crashes through the laboratory before I even see him.
Both he and Asher run inside to me, outrunning his men. For one horrifying second, I can’t even answer him.
I can’t warn him.
I can’t tell him that the man with the gun might decide to take another person I love.
I can’t lose my brother too.
The guards recover from their surprise before I do. A dozen rifles that had been aimed at the laboratory doors finally find their new targets.
I try to scream, but the sound barely leaves my throat.
The room erupts.
Muzzle flashes tear through the laboratory, bright enough to blind.
Still, my brothers don’t slow down but fire once, then again, each movement precise and terrifyingly calm.
They reach me through the chaos instead of avoiding it. One of the Dominion soldiers swings his weapon toward Adrian.
The man falls before I even understand that Asher fired first.
Behind them, Keinston men pour through the now-destroyed entrance.
Their eyes are scanning, already moving toward me—the second they see me, they stop for half a heartbeat. Like neither of them expected this.
The world collapses into overlapping truths at once.
Asher sees Alistair.
Adrian sees me.
And I see everything I was never meant to understand all at once.
They knew.
Not everything—but enough. Enough to be here. Enough to move through this nightmare like it was already mapped.
Enough that I was never truly alone in it.
My knees threaten to give out as Alistair steps aside, leaning weakly against a nearby wall. His eyes flick at both Asher and Adrian. The tension immediately wears off him at the sight of them.
I notice there’s fresh blood and dirt on both of their shirt. I try to ask if they’re being injured, but they keep brushing it off.
Meanwhile, the laboratory descends into complete mayhem as bullets ricochet off steel walls and glass equipment explodes around us.
Alistair shifts slightly, shielding me even while bleeding, even while failing in the most catastrophic way I’ve ever seen him fail.
That’s when I notice I’ve never seen Alistair fail at anything. Not until now.
The Crown slowly steps forward, his movement calm and unbothered, even though he just happened to shoot his son.
And here I thought my Dad was a bitch.
“You ruined my best creation,” he accuses me with disappointment dripping off his distorted voice.
I feel something in Alistair’s demeanor shift. He pulls me to him and shields me with his body again. I try to push him off, but in vain.
The Crown exhales through something like frustration. “I refined him,” “while you corrupted him,” a beat. “And now you’ve broken him beyond repair.”
The gun in his hand lifts once more.
Not toward Asher. Not toward Adrian. Toward me. Again.
The Crown still tightens his finger around the trigger.
However, another shot never comes from him.
The gunshot echoes from somewhere behind me instead. It’s Adrian.
The bullet still tears through the Crown’s wrist, even though it sends his handgun spinning across the laboratory floor.
A distorted scream rips from behind the mask, ugly and furious, as blood drips between his fingers.
For the first time since I met him, he looks less like a god and more like a wounded animal.
The scream seems to wake the remaining guards from their shock. Their commander is bleeding. Their founder has fallen.
For one desperate moment, they still choose loyalty. Some flee the scene, and several of them reach for their weapons.
They never get the chance to use them. The men who entered with my brothers starts finishing the rest with brutal efficiency.
Alistair drops forward, faster than he should be able to, one arm snapping out as if his body refuses to obey the injury, and the bullet hits him somewhere already broken.
He collapses to one knee. Then the floor.
Amongst everything, there’s only sound—my own screams breaking apart.
Even wounded, even disarmed, the Crown still found a way.
Before the handgun leaves his grasp completely, another shot explodes through the laboratory.
And once again, Alistair shielded me with his body. The second bullet strikes him instead of me.
If I could blame the first one on instinct, on miscalculation, on a lifetime of protecting the wrong things, then I’ve no such excuse left for the second.
This time, he knew exactly what he was doing—he chose me. Again.
“Alistair, no…” I fall on my knees with him, trying to hold him up.
Adrian catches my arm, trying to pull me back, but I refuse to let go of him. Because my entire world is on the ground.
Before either of my brothers can react, Alistair’s hand slips to the suppressor tucked in his back.
His fingers close around it with frightening familiarity.
The gun rises as the shot lands squarely in the Crown’s chest.
He staggers backward before his body finally crashes against the unforgiving floor with a loud thud. Like something inside him has finally been proven wrong.
That’s when I notice only a handful of us are still standing.
Somehow, Alistair forces himself upright. His legs shake beneath him. Blood keeps seeping through the fresh injuries.
Yet he looks at Asher and Adrian as though they are the ones standing in his way. “Let me have the honor.”
I try to go after him, but Asher catches my arm and holds me where I am.
“No,” he says quietly. “Let him.”