Chapter 49
SLOANE
The woods had gone quiet after the bodies hit the ground. “They’re coming.”
Ella’s hand landed on my shoulder, firm, grounding, but it didn’t stop the tremor that ran through me. Holland and Cami stayed angled outward, scanning the tree line and the dark beyond it. They were ready to move at the first wrong sound.
My lungs wouldn’t fill all the way.
Ahead of us, the woods shifted. People. Three figures separated from the black and moved toward us with steady purpose, their footfalls swallowed by dirt and pine needles. Moonlight caught the pale edges of their masks, and my heart stopped.
Fuck. Not those. Not here.
I looked at Ella. “Shit. The masks?”
The man in the crow mask took point. That stride. The weight in every step. That refusal to hesitate.
Ryker.
My legs tried to carry me forward before my brain caught up. I stepped, one quick movement, too obvious, and Ella’s fingers closed around my wrist, stopping me.
“I know you want to see your brother,” she said quietly. “But we have no idea if we’re surrounded or if there are more men out there. We let them come to us. We’re safer that way. They’re safer that way.”
I hated her for being right. Not Ella. The situation. The fact that even now, even with him bringing Nate back, we had to measure our hope. We had to portion it out in careful doses, so it didn’t get us killed.
Seconds stretched. The space between us and them felt endless, one long held breath.
Then my vision sharpened. Ryker wasn’t walking alone.
He was carrying someone. A limp body against his chest. A head lolling back, hair matted and dark, arms hanging wrong.
My soul cracked wide open, nearly taking me to my knees. My brother.
“Nate,” I whispered, the name barely sound. My lips couldn’t form anything else around it.
“Oh God.” My hand flew to my mouth, pressing hard enough to hurt. Tears filled my eyes instantly, hot and humiliating. I blinked and they fell anyway, blurring the world.
Don’t run. Don’t do something stupid. I’d put us all in enough danger. I couldn’t lose my fucking mind now. Not when we were so damn close.
Ryker drew nearer. The man in the devil mask, and the other in the grim reaper mask remained several paces behind him, a silent perimeter. They moved as a unit, all of them alert, all of them prepared to turn violence into a wall around us if they had to.
I searched the edges of the clearing, the darker spaces between trees. I saw nothing but shadows and the pale line of road beyond. Still, the habit stayed. Years of being a detective didn’t disappear just because I was breaking.
My feet betrayed me anyway.
I stumbled forward, then caught myself, then broke into a run.
“Nate,” I choked out. “Nate. Oh, God—Nate.”
Ryker stopped when I reached him. Close enough now that I could see the shape of his mouth through the crow mask. Close enough that I could feel the tension rolling off him, contained and brutal.
He dropped to one knee.
His head bowed for a beat, a gesture that felt like apology and reverence in one motion.
Then he looked up at me and carefully lowered Nate to the ground.
My brother didn’t move. He didn’t flinch at the shift, didn’t groan, didn’t open his eyes.
The grief nearly choked me.
“You need to get the fuck out of here,” Ryker said. His tone left no room for arguing. “Get him to the hospital.”
I dropped to my knees beside Nate so fast the ground slammed into my shins.
“Nate.” My hands hovered for a second, terrified to touch him. Terrified I’d feel cold skin. Terrified I would touch him, and the last three years would prove they’d taken something I couldn’t get back.
My fingers finally landed on his cheek—on the only part not swollen beyond recognition.
His skin was warm. Warm. I sobbed, the sound breaking out of me before I could stop it.
“Nate,” I whispered again. “You’re almost home, little brother.
” My thumb brushed along his cheekbone where bruising had bloomed deep purple and black.
My hands shook so badly I could barely keep contact.
“It’s going to be okay.” The lie tasted bitter.
My voice tried to sell it anyway. “It’s going to be okay. ”
Not yet.
I would believe it when he was at the hospital, and I knew he wasn’t bleeding inside, wasn’t shutting down, wasn’t slipping away while I was still staring at him in disbelief.
Ryker’s shadow fell over us.
“You need to leave,” he said. “Everyone will make sure you get to the car and to the hospital.”
I heard what he was saying underneath the words. Leave. Now. Without him. I stood and lifted my face, tears streaming down my cheeks, and looked up at the monster who had become my hero.
He reached up and lifted his mask.
My chest clenched at the sight of him. He looked controlled but wrecked.
He leaned down and kissed me. It wasn’t gentle. It was a kiss that felt like a claim and an apology. A kiss that said remember this because he didn’t trust the world to give us another.
My hands went to his shirt automatically, gripping him as if I could anchor him here with my fingers.
He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine.
“I have to go, Sloane.”
I blinked hard. My vision shook. “Ryker? What are you talking about?”
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight against him. His body was solid, warm, real. The kind of warmth you don’t realize you depend on until it’s about to be taken away.
“Remember this moment,” he said into my hair. “Burn it into your memory.”
The words hit wrong. Fear slid under my ribs, cold and slick. “Ryker?” My voice cracked. “I don’t understand.”
His breath left him slowly, like it cost him.
“They didn’t give Nate back willingly,” he said. “They required payment.”
No! No! No! My head shook before I could stop it.
One of the masked men stepped forward, bent, and lifted Nate with practiced care. Nate’s head rolled to the side, his cheek resting against the man’s shoulder. “I’ll get him to the car,” he said, already moving.
My breath caught in my throat.
“They’ve got him,” Ryker said, watching me. Watching the break happen in real time. “You need to go.”
“I can’t.” I reached out, one hand half-lifting as if I could hold both of them at once. “Ryker, no—”
His fingertips traced along my cheek, slow and devastating. Then he kissed me again, shorter, harder. We both knew it wasn’t for pleasure. It was for survival.
“And you?” I demanded when he pulled back. “Are you coming?” I already knew the answer, but I refused to believe it until he said it out loud.
He looked at me. Unblinking. Steady.
“I’m the payment,” he said. “I traded myself for Nate’s life.”
The words landed and my knees threatened to buckle.
“What? No. No!” I grabbed his shirt, a fistful of fabric, and yanked him closer. “You can’t go!”
His hands came to either side of my face, forcing my focus on him.
“Don’t forget me.” His voice was so wrecked it sounded like it belonged to a different man. “Little fox.”
My throat tightened so hard it hurt to swallow. My brain screamed for words. For anything that could stop this. But shock clamped down on my tongue and I couldn’t make the right sound.
“I love you.”
I wanted to say it back. The words were right there, sitting at the base of my throat as if they’d always lived there.
But Nate was moving away from me in one direction and Ryker was about to disappear in the other, and my heart didn’t know which way to break first. So, it just stopped.
Like a circuit that couldn’t carry that much current without blowing.
I thought about his hands in my hair. The way he’d looked at me across that parking lot like I was something worth burning the world down for. Somehow our time together felt like a lifetime I wasn’t ready to give back.
He lowered his head and kissed me.
I kissed him back because that was the only answer I could give him. I held him close, hands at his shoulders, his neck, trying to memorize every detail. Trying to force my mind to remember his weight and his heat so my mind couldn’t betray me later.
Ryker stepped away. It was only one step, but it emptied the air.
He looked at me for a beat. Ryker slid the crow mask back over his face.
“I love you, little fox,” he said again, voice muffled behind it.
I still didn’t move. I still couldn’t speak. My mind had completely shut down.
With that, he turned and broke into a run in the opposite direction.
The world narrowed to the sound of his feet hitting the ground, fading, then gone.
My eyes went to the two masked figures behind him.
Neither moved. But the man in the devil mask had gone very still.
It was the stillness of something calculating.
Of someone already building the next move.
I suspected they weren’t letting this happen. They were letting it happen for now.
My brain hadn’t caught up yet, but my knees had. They buckled, and Ella’s arm slid around me before I hit the ground.
“Let’s go, hon.”
I couldn’t.
Shock held me upright and made everything distant. Ella’s words sounded wrong, disconnected, as if she were speaking through water.
She came closer, wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and tugged. Gentle, but unyielding.
I let her move me because my legs had stopped belonging to me.
“How can you leave one of your own?” I heard myself ask. My voice sounded broken, unrecognizable.
“We aren’t,” Ella said quickly. “We’re getting you and Nate to safety. Cami is checking Nate’s vitals now. We’re not close to the hospital, but she’s already making calls.”
Nate.
His name snapped through the fog.
My brother.
I turned my head and saw him being carried toward car lights approaching through the trees.
I lurched forward and Ella tightened her hold, guiding me into motion.
We broke into a jog, and footsteps sounded behind us. Panic flared hot in my chest.
Ella didn’t even look back. “It’s one of our people. Keep going.”
The car came into view, headlights slicing the dark. Holland was already moving, already getting ready to load Nate in and get out.
Ella stayed with me until we reached it, then stepped aside as I climbed into the back seat.
I reached for Nate immediately.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I only knew I needed contact. Proof. Proof he was here. Proof this wasn’t some cruel hallucination my mind had made to protect me from grief.
My brother. My chest split in two. How had I gained one of the people I loved most in the world and lost the other in the same heartbeat?
I lifted his head carefully and placed it on my lap. His skin was clammy now. His hair was blood-crusted and tangled, sticking to my fingers when I smoothed it back.
“Hey,” I whispered, voice shaking. “Hey, little brother.” My tears dropped onto his forehead. I didn’t even try to stop them. “We’re on the way to the hospital,” I told him, as if he could hear me. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up. We’re gonna get you safe.”
The car jolted as it pulled away, tires biting the dirt road, headlights bobbing.
Cami turned in the front passenger seat, looking back at me. Her face was drawn tight, all focus and urgency, but her eyes held something softer when they landed on mine.
“I know you’re new to us, Sloane,” she said. “And we can answer all the questions you have. Fuck, I had a ton of them at one time but understand one thing.”
She paused, as if choosing the exact words mattered. “This isn’t over. One way or another, we will get Ryker back. For now, focus on Nate getting better. He’s got a long road ahead, and he’ll need you.”
The words should have helped, but they didn’t. Because all I could see was Ryker turning away from me. All I could hear was him saying remember this moment as if it was the last thing he was allowed to give me.
“Why?” I asked, and it came out raw. “Why would Ryker agree to that?”
Holland’s voice came from the driver’s seat, her attention locked on the road ahead. “There’s only one reason a man would do that, Sloane.”
Tears threatened again.
“That man loves you more than his own life.”
My vision blurred. I pressed my cheek to Nate’s hair for a second, breathing him in, trying not to shatter.
Holland kept talking, the words sharp with promise.
“But also know this,” she said. “The men we’re with will burn the whole goddamn world down to get back to us. Ella can tell you all about that one day.”
Cami’s expression tightened, something cold and old flickering across it. She reached back, taking Nate’s wrist between her fingers. She counted silently, and I held my breath. After a few seconds, she let his wrist go gently.
“His pulse is a bit slow,” she said. “But he’s hanging in there.”
A sob ripped out of me.
Holland’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Help me keep an eye out for cops.” She punched the gas, driving as fast as my car would allow.
I stared down at my brother’s battered face and stroked his hair, again and again, because if I stopped, I might fall apart into something I couldn’t come back from.
“Stay,” I whispered to him. “Stay with me.”
And in the dark outside the window, the woods swallowed everything behind us.
Including the man I loved.