Chapter 10
“AM I GOING TO DIE NEXT?”
For a split second before he turned his head, everything inside Alaric went painfully still. The instinct to lie battled the instinct to promise, both crushed beneath the brutal certainty that whatever came next, he would stop it—or die trying. Then he turned his head to answer her.
He never got the chance.
Light erupted across the windshield, wrong in every possible way. Too high to be headlights. Too wide to belong to a car pulling out. Too fast to be anything that could be avoided.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up. His foot slammed the brake so hard the pedal shuddered beneath it. His hand shot out toward Sera, involuntarily and useless and desperate, even as the world detonated.
The truck hit them broadside.
The sound was not a crash. It was a tearing, rending scream of metal and glass and force, like the road itself had split open beneath them.
The impact punched the air from his lungs and snapped his head sideways.
Pain flared hot and immediate as the seatbelt bit deep into his shoulder and airbags exploded all around them.
Metal buckled with a high, vicious keening.
Glass shattered, spraying across the interior in a glittering, violent storm.
The car spun, tires shrieking as traction vanished.
The world fractured into angles and noise and impossible motion.
Alaric tasted blood and copper and burned rubber, his teeth clenching on a curse that tore out of him anyway.
“Sera!”
The car slammed again, a brutal second impact that rattled his bones, then skidded violently toward the shoulder.
Momentum bled off in a long, grinding scream.
Everything went still in the wrong way. The engine coughed once, twice, then died.
Smoke curled up from the hood, white-gray and ugly against the dark.
For one brutal second, Alaric didn’t breathe.
His entire world narrowed to the space beside him—and the terrible fear that Sera wasn’t moving.
Then she made a sound.
It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t even a cry. It was a broken, shocked gasp, thin and unsteady, ripped from her chest like her body wasn’t sure it remembered how to breathe.
The sound punched straight through him.
He was moving before the car fully stopped rocking. He wrenched at his seatbelt, ignoring the burning pain in his shoulder as it released. The driver’s side door protested, bent inward and warped, but he shoved it open with a snarl and was out, boots hitting pavement hard, balance already set.
The truck loomed nearby, angled across the road. A man jumped down from the cab.
Not injured. Not limping.
Running.
Alaric’s hand was already inside his jacket. The gun slid into his palm smooth and familiar as breath, the mass of it settling against his palm like an old promise. He pivoted, stance widening automatically, shoulders squared, eyes tracking the movement with cold precision.
The man didn’t look back.
A second car rolled up fast, door already opening before it fully stopped. The driver dove inside. Tires shrieked. The car tore away, merging into traffic with horrifying ease, disappearing as cleanly as if this moment had been practiced until it was flawless.
Alaric stood there for half a heartbeat, gun trained on empty space, fury roaring up through his spine, sharp and blinding and useless.
Then Sera made another sound.
Everything else vanished.
He holstered the gun without conscious thought and turned back to the car.
Nothing mattered except her.
He yanked open the passenger door, heart hammering so hard it hurt. Sera was still strapped in, body rigid, eyes wide and unfocused. Blood trickled from a cut at her hairline, dark against her skin. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths that scraped at something raw inside him.
“Sera.” He cupped her face carefully, thumbs brushing her cheeks, forcing her to look at him. “Hey. Stay with me. Look at me.”
Her eyes found his, glassy but aware. “Alaric.” The word trembled out of her, thin and fragile. “It hit us.”
“I know.” His voice stayed calm because it had to, because she needed it steady. “You’re okay. You’re breathing. You’re talking. I’ve got you.”
He scanned her fast and thorough, forcing himself to be methodical. Neck. Shoulders. Arms. No obvious deformities. Bruising already bloomed along her collarbone where the seatbelt had caught her, vivid and angry. Rage burned hot and vicious in his chest at the sight.
“Does anything hurt badly?” he asked.
“My ribs.” She swallowed. “And my head.”
“Okay. That’s okay.” He kept his tone steady, grounding. “Don’t move yet. I’m going to get you out, but I need you to tell me if anything seems wrong. Dizziness. Numbness. Anything.”
She nodded faintly. “Okay.”
Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. Too close. Too slow. Alaric didn’t like the way the road was suddenly exposed. Open. Watched. As if this wasn’t finished.
He unfastened Sera’s seatbelt carefully, bracing her as it released so she didn’t jolt. She hissed softly but didn’t cry out. That restraint nearly broke him.
He lifted her out of the car and held her against his chest, her weight solid and real and terrifyingly fragile all at once. She clutched at his jacket, fingers curling tight like she was afraid he might vanish if she let go.
“I’m here,” he murmured, bending his head close. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He carried her a short distance off the road, positioning them behind the wrecked car for cover. He kept one arm locked around her, the other already pulling out his phone.
Magnus answered on the first ring.
“Al,” his brother said, sharp. “What’s wrong?”
“We were hit,” Alaric said flatly. “Deliberate. Truck. Driver swapped cars and vanished. I’ve pulled us out. I need you now.”
No questions. Just a clipped, furious, “Where?”
Alaric sent the location. “Bring the SUV. No ambulances. No police. I’ll explain later.”
“I’m already moving.”
Alaric ended the call and shifted his attention back to Sera. She was shaking now, the adrenaline finally cracking, tremors rippling through her despite the way she tried to hold herself still.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said, brushing his thumb gently over her face, careful to avoid the cut. “Magnus is coming. We’re leaving before anyone else gets here.”
Her eyes searched his face. “We’re not staying?”
“No,” he said abruptly. “Not here.”
She nodded again, trusting him without hesitation. The strength of that trust settled heavy and fierce in his chest.
Minutes felt like hours before headlights appeared at the edge of the road. Magnus’s SUV pulled in smoothly, stopping at an angle that shielded them from view. Magnus was out of the vehicle in seconds, gun in hand, eyes scanning the scene with lethal focus.
He took one look at Sera in Alaric’s arms and swore. ”Get in,” Magnus said. “I’ve got you.”
They moved fast. Alaric slid into the back seat with Sera, keeping her close as Magnus pulled away just as sirens grew louder behind them.
They were gone before anyone arrived.
The SUV ate up the road, Magnus driving like every second mattered and none of them could afford a mistake.
The city slid past in fractured streaks of light, red and white blurring together.
Alaric kept his body angled protectively around Sera, one arm locked behind her shoulders, the other braced against the seat as if he could physically hold the world steady for her.
Magnus checked the mirrors constantly, eyes narrowed, one hand on the wheel, the other already tapping out messages Alaric didn’t need to see. Containment. Cleanup. Quiet questions asked in the right ears. Alaric trusted him with all of it without discussion.
Sera shifted, a small movement that sent a spike of fear through Alaric’s chest. He leaned down immediately, pressing his forehead to her hair, breathing her in. Exhaust and blood and her. Alive.
“Talk to me,” he murmured. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
“My ribs hurt when I breathe deep,” she said after a moment. “And everything is… too loud.”
“That’s the adrenaline,” he said. “It’ll fade. You’re doing exactly right.”
Her fingers curled into his shirt again. He covered her hand with his, holding her there as the city fell away behind them.
The drive back felt unreal, the world narrowed to the sound of Sera’s breathing and the steady pressure of her body against his. He kept his hand at the back of her neck, thumb stroking slow and measured, grounding them both.
“There’s a doctor heading to your place,” Magnus informed them.
The words landed like a marker in time. Not relief, exactly, but direction.
The last of Alaric’s wild adrenaline begin to drain, leaving behind something heavier and colder.
The crash was behind them. The consequences were not.
He shifted slightly, tightening his hold on Sera as the house came into view, already cataloguing what came next: assessment, treatment, containment. Only then did he let himself breathe.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said quietly to Sera.
She let out a shaky breath. “I asked you if I was going to die. How ironic was that?”
He closed his eyes briefly, forehead resting against hers. “You’re not going to die.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I won’t let you.”
The words came out rough and absolute. He didn’t soften them. He didn’t qualify them. He meant them with every brutal certainty in his body.
Magnus pulled into Alaric’s garage and cut the engine. The space closed around them, private and secure.
The doctor arrived ten minutes later.
Those ten minutes stretched endlessly. Alaric refused to sit. He paced instead, restrained and silent, every sense still tuned outward. He noted the locks engaging, the security system cycling, the way Magnus positioned himself near the entry without being asked. This was family business now.