30. CHAPTER 30 #2
A few steps toward freedom, and a hand shoved her so hard she didn't have time to catch herself. Hitting the ground hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, her head bashed into the dirt, and pain splintered along her wrist and forehead.
Whizzing noises pierced her ears.
Thuds.
Kira felt someone beside her.
She opened her eyes to the vacant, unseeing stare of a dead man. Blood stained his cheek around a ghastly hole.
If she had the breath to scream, she would have.
A shadow flew toward her, and she made out the man right as he scooped her up against himself, diving over her. They rolled hard and fast through the foliage, his hand clasping her head against the inside of his shoulder.
Quiet pops chirped in the night.
Danger.
The woods hissed the word at her while she and the man tumbled to a stop.
His heavy body smothered hers, and he clutched her so fiercely against himself that he immobilized her.
Blinded by a black shirt, Kira pushed against the man's chest enough to gasp in a breath.
A force jerked them both.
Had they been shot?
She braced for pain but felt nothing. Saw him aiming his gun straight out to the side. It'd just been the kickback, jostling them with each muted shot.
Kira only caught blurred images in her periphery of soldiers collapsing within seconds of each other.
The violence broke out so fast that she had no idea what started it or who fought whom. But Kira did know who held her. Her heart twisted at the hard body conforming to her own, at the ache of his nearness. The ache she so longed for.
One of her hands was trapped against his chest, and she knew, even before sliding her thumb toward his heart, what she would feel.
A deep scar cut through his muscle.
Her palm traced the diagonal path, tears burning in her eyes.
Her stranger.
He was here. Came for her. Guarded her and his friend during their escape.
Pretended to be away.
And she didn't want him to die. His body covered hers, ready to take any damage meant for her.
Please, please, please.
No other words entered her mind, only the desperation for him to live. Fear ignited her vision with the eyes of the dead man.
Even as the panic tried to steal her away, his closeness—the scent of his skin and breath—tethered her to him and refused to release her to the chaos. For years, Kira yearned for his arms again, for a single glimpse, or just to know he was alive. And now, here he was.
So familiar. So wonderfully familiar.
Too familiar…
Her eyes shot open, and her breath seized in her lungs. Her other hand stole down his shoulder and grazed his collarbone right as he ripped away from her a moment too soon.
The stranger caught a fist above them.
Move. Move now.
A voice yelled it in her mind.
Kira rolled and pushed onto her knees, falling behind the cover of a tree. Her pointer finger burned with the feel of his collarbone and how close she came to feeling for the scar.
An attacker broke for Kira, but her stranger hooked his arm around the man's neck, while blocking a hit from another on his right.
He didn't try to defend himself as the one who'd lunged for Kira beat his elbow into his ribs. He just held tight, eyes on the other soldier who swiped at him with a knife.
Kira's hands searched for anything close enough to use. She didn't know how to fight, and these men wanted to kill her. The best way to help her stranger was to stay away from the danger.
But lobbing the giant ass rock she found at the soldier's head had to help too.
Just as an elbow bashed into her stranger's ribs again, she threw the rock with all her strength. The soldier tried to shift, but her stranger held too tight to him, and her projectile hit him right between the eyes. Blood rushed down his crushed nose.
No time to celebrate.
The other man lunged for her stranger with the knife again. He caught the soldier's wrist and then dragged the dazed man in his other arm directly into the blade, skewering his throat. Blood gushed down to the leafy ground. Dying breath wheezing out like the breeze.
Kira's view of the corpse blurred, her mind desperate to block out the image.
No hesitation.
Her stranger retrieved his gun with his hands now free. But instead of firing on the man closest to him, he shot at a distant target, side-stepping the soldier still attacking him. He did too many things at once, too swiftly, for Kira to follow his movements.
In a blur of motion, her stranger evaded the last soldier and shot him twice in the head.
Through the trees ahead of them, the friend stood over a fallen soldier and aimed his weapon at his face. “Clear.”
Her stranger scanned the woods. “Clear.”
The attack felt like it happened in slow motion, but Kira thought only a couple of minutes passed, if that. She kept her eyes on her stranger, forcing herself not to look at the dead.
All the panic was too distant to feel.
For the first time in three years, the man she'd never been able to forget looked at her.
The man she was never supposed to see again.
His thick chest moved deeply with hard breaths and blood splattered his sleeve from stabbing that soldier.
It all froze for those few seconds that he stared at her in the dark. All the danger and death and fighting.
Was this real?
“Are you hurt?” Hearing him speak with that voice changer sent chills dancing down her spine.
“N-no,” she managed, tongue clinging to the roof of her mouth. Her eyes fell to his collarbone, to the space beneath she hadn't been able to touch. Dizziness spun her world.
He clasped her arms and lifted her to her feet, raising the flashlight at his side to scan her body. “You sure?”
Kira nodded. “Are you—”
The light hit her eyes, and she closed them, feeling his gloved hand brush the hair back from her face. Squinting, she saw those dark goggles trained on her. Her head hurt a bit, but she didn't feel blood. His low growl sounded terrifying with the voice changer.
Still moving as fast as during the fight, her stranger stormed toward the only soldier left alive and ripped him up to his feet. The man stumbled while he forced him toward a tree.
Kira followed on numb legs, the cold of the night biting through her jacket. She gasped when he punched the lone attacker in the face so hard that blood sprayed from his mouth, and his limp body crashed against a tree.
But he wasn't finished. Her masked stranger rammed his shoulder into the other man's chest and pinned him against the trunk.
“Give your general this message.” He cracked his head against the attacker's skull with a snap that reverberated through each of her own bones. The man fell limp, but he pressed him back against the tree with his forearms, strong back straining with effort and threat. “Kira Stiles is off limits.”
The soldier's head lulled. Her stranger smacked his face.
“You don't get to pass out, motherfucker. Eyes on me.” Another smack. “Eyes.”
Strands of blood hung from his mouth as he struggled to lift his head. His moan made the back of Kira's arms ache.
“You get nothing now, no information, no deals,” her stranger said. “Touch her again, and you're dead.”
“We… can't… get her out… of the country…” The garbled, broken words barely reached her. A deep groan. “This was… the only way…”
His gloved hand tightened around the soldier's bloodied mouth until a whimper slithered into the night.
“If anyone hurts her, there isn't a soul in this entire empire who can save you. I will kill you and every person involved.” He dragged the man forward and smashed his head back against the tree with a ghastly thud. “Every last one of you.”
The survivor's body crumbled to the ground, listless.
Those hands felt so safe when they were on Kira, guiding her from ledge to ledge, holding her when she fell, drawing her close to kiss her. Everything about him screamed violence now.
“Any more and you'll kill him,” his friend said.
Her stranger didn't look done as he stood over the soldier. His body remained locked in the fight, his muscles stiff through his uniform. He unleashed a quiet and dissatisfied groan, taking a single step back. “Leave the bodies. Cuff the survivor. Help is coming to clean up.”
“I'll stay until they get here,” the friend said. He withdrew something from his pack and drew medicine into a syringe before administering it to the man. “This will keep him out. Go.”
The masked man walked toward her now. In his wake, he left dead bodies and one man who likely wished to be among them.
Kira's knees threatened to buckle.