Chapter Thirty-Seven
THE FIREPROOF ROOM WAS SUPPOSED TO contain him.
It didn’t.
Lucien was a living inferno.
Golden flames roared across his body as if he’d trapped himself in a blazing hurricane.
The reinforced door glowed a cherry-red even on this side, and the glacier kept melting—groaning and creaking as centuries of ice gave way beneath his onslaught.
“We have to go.” Frank tugged on my arm. “I’ve evacuated everyone else. We have to leave. Before it’s too late.”
Another earth-rumbling crack made us flinch as another chunk of glacier fell into the room meant to contain fire, explosions, and other lab mishaps.
Lucien had burned for two days.
He’d beaten me to Rook as she’d raced to the surface.
He’d caught her as she fell from the sky and erupted in a cloud of snow.
He’d collapsed on the ice the moment she vanished, and it’d taken all my training to lock down my heart-wrenching grief of losing Rook and do my best to protect him...all because that was what she would’ve asked me to do.
I’d carried him back into the lab and begged Frank to save him.
I’d slapped the elderly CEO when he gave in to his sobs that Rook was gone.
We didn’t have time to grieve. Not yet. Rook died because she refused to live without Lucien.
I’d told him she would never put herself first. I blamed him for her death, and it took strength I didn’t have not to beat him to a pulp for pushing her to die.
The only thing keeping me sane was the knowledge that Rook had been dying anyway. She’d been dying her entire life and no matter what I did as her bodyguard, I would never have been able to change that fact because her parents signed her death warrant the day they created her in a test tube.
But if I could save the man she’d fallen in love with.
If there was a way to bring him back—
Lucien snarled in his sleep as another blast of fire attacked the ice walls.
The lab creaked as the heat became too much.
Steam hissed beneath the door, clouding the corridor.
Whisper paced like a wild thing, claws out, fangs dripping, snarls ringing in my ears. He hadn’t calmed since Lucien had been brought back and began burning.
Nothing woke him.
Before the flames completely engulfed him, we’d tried physical force, adrenaline injections, and even resorted to defibrillation. Whisper had bitten him, licked him, jumped on the table and roared right in his face.
And nothing.
He just kept burning.
He’d kept burning and burning until we’d had to retreat from the room, then close the door, and now...evacuate the entire lab.
Something crashed in the distance, the entire glacier threatening to transform into a flood.
“Dillon!” Frank tugged my arm again. “We have to go!”
“We can’t fucking leave him. Rook would kill me.”
“He’s past the point of help.” Frank sniffed, guilty tears wet in his eyes. “The ascension has him. It’s only a matter of minutes before he burns out. And we can’t be here when that happens.”
I knew he was right.
I’d seen what happened to Rook when she reached the point of death.
How she’d shattered the sky and rumbled the earth. How giant crevasses opened and the entire universe seemed to flex as if something new had been created.
If that happened to Lucien when he died, then...the entire lab would be burned and buried.
Frank clenched his fingers so tight on my arm that his knuckles turned white.
“We can’t help him, Dillon! We can’t even get to him anymore.
The hinges on the door have melted. The temperature inside is over two thousand degrees.
If we force entry, the whole lab will go up—not to mention we’ll be incinerated. ”
Whisper snapped his jaws, pacing, always pacing. His tail whipped against my thighs as he glowered at me. I had no doubt if I failed to save his master, he would eat me. Whatever tentative friendship we’d formed would be null and void.
I slammed my fist against the wall. “Then what the fuck do we do?!”
The alarms started screaming as another crash echoed down the corridor. Cracks spiderwebbed down the wall like lightning bolts. Red emergency lights strobed as a deep, ominous groan echoed through the facility like the earth was about to swallow us whole.
Whisper howled.
Scratching at the burning door, he whimpered with such grief that he tore my fucking heart out.
Fuck!
Looking through the glass that’d turned wavy and on the precipice of turning liquid, I could barely make out Lucien in the middle of his fireball. “Lucien! Wake up. If you don’t wake up, you’re going to die!”
“He can’t hear you!” Frank shouted, frantically pulling his belt out of the loops on his pants. “Nothing can help him—even if he did wake up. No one comes back from this. No one.” Staggering to the keening panther, he looped the belt around Whisper’s neck. “Come on. We’re leaving. Right now.”
Whisper spat and hissed, swiping at Frank.
He cried out as claws carved bloody grooves in his thigh.
“Goddammit!” Grabbing his leg, Frank dropped the belt, leaving it dangling around Whisper’s throat. “If you want to survive, you better follow us.” Limping past me, he grabbed my wrist and jerked. “I’m not asking this time, Dil. We’re leaving. Before he buries us along with him.”
Shaking him off, I cupped my mouth and bellowed with all my might, “LUCIEN! Wake up, you stubborn bastard! Wake the fuck up!”
A pillar of flames smacked against the door, making the metal buckle.
Flecks of ash rose faster off Lucien’s body, swirling like embers and sticking to the ice walls.
Another crack and fissure as the glacier lost the war.
A massive crack split the glass in the door, sending a spear of flickering fire directly for us.
“Dillon!” Frank roared. “Come on!”
Whisper tucked his tail and flattened his ears.
And I didn’t know what the fuck to do.
I’d lost Rook.
Lucien was beyond saving.
And his damn panther would rather die with him than come with us.
Our truce was nothing compared to a lifelong bond but...
I dropped to my haunches and grabbed the panther’s huge face. “He’s gone, cat. There’s nothing we can do. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but if you can understand me, you have to make a choice. Right now.”
Frank limped down the corridor, the red alarm lights making it look as if he’d already stepped into hell.
Whisper hissed but didn’t pull out of my grip. His whiskers fanned as if listening and I locked eyes with the giant beast. “Either you stay with him and die or...you come with me.”
Tearing himself away, he spat and scratched at the door. Rivers of metal poured from his claws, puddling like lava on the floor. The panther yelped as the molten metal burned his paw.
“He’s not in there,” I said as gently as I could.
“He’s not hurting you on purpose. He’s just...
already gone.” My heart ached as I added, “He’s gone to join Rook and we can’t follow.
Not yet anyway.” Yanking off the belt that Frank had lashed around his neck, I gave him one last grimace. “Your choice, Whisper.”
Tossing the leather away, I headed down the corridor to where Frank waited by the emergency stairwell.
“Hurry!” Frank took the steps two at a time, half-limping, half-bolting toward the surface.
Every survival instinct commanded I chase after him, but I stared at the panther sitting sadly by the melting door.
“I’ll regret not being able to protect them for the rest of my life,” I choked, tears running down my cheeks as smoke stung and grief poured.
“But...if you let me, I vow I’ll protect you for the rest of yours. ”
Whisper bared his fangs.
I supposed that was his answer.
“I get it. I’ll see you then.” Giving him a strained smile, I swiped away my sadness and flung myself up the stairs.