Page 168 of Scars Run Deep

“And what the hell would you, of all people, know about that?”

“Aurora,” I said, reaching out to her.

She jerked away. “We were building something between us, something I thought was real.”

“It was—it is—real.” I looked around the pillar at the carnage taking place. Caleb caught my eye through it all and I gave him a chin lift. I needed to implement a backup.

As I saw my father and his men getting a lock on our location, that became even more imperative.

“We can’t get into this right now, I need to get you out of here. Get you safe.”

“Okay,” she uttered in a broken voice that pulled at something inside of me. She blinked through it, trying to focus in her compromised state much like mine. “Killian? Jonah? Where are they?”

“MIA currently.”

“What? Then we can’t leave without them, without knowing they’re safe.”

“I’ll take care of that. After I get you out.”

She stumbled against the bar, blinking rapidly. Yeah, she didn’t have much energy left. She was still suffering under the sedation and the energy she’d expended to fight off the onslaught back in that room had been the last vestiges of it. She was fading fast, just like I was.

I wrapped my arm around her, supporting most of her weight as I pushed us along toward one of the emergency exits fifty feet away. The battle was raging all around, blood spurting, screams sounding, blurs of movement rushing by in a haze.

“Ash.”

The familiar voice had me managing to focus through it all and zone in on Caleb.

He signaled two of his team members to clear a path for me and Aurora.

He brushed against me and I made the transfer in that second, feeling my phone slide into his hand. He gave me a discreet chin lift, then spun back to finish off the takedown. I looked to see the hostages already being protected, some being filtered out through another exit.

I pushed through the emergency exit with Aurora, forcing us onward. Barely managing it, but managing it nonetheless.

“Everything I’ve done was to protect the four of us,” I ended up blurting out as we made our way through the labyrinth of corridors where an exit to the street awaited. Just a couple of blocks from where I’d parked my car earlier in anticipation of us requiring a discreet exit.

“You really think keeping me away from my dad was in the name of protecting us?”

“Yes. Considering his intentions, definitely.”

She glared at me. “My dad isn’t anything like yours. He’s not a threat to me.”

“He doesn’t know who you are, he doesn’t know what you’re capable of. He didn’t just want to bench you, he wanted to extract you completely, take you away from all of us. He sees you as a damsel in distress, not the tough, capable, and powerful woman that you are.”

The harshness in her gaze wavered at my words.

But then it was replaced by pain.

“My dad, Asher. You kept him from me. For three years, I’ve been searching for him non-stop. I’ve upturned my life to track him down. And for weeks now you’ve had a line to him. You could’ve brought me back to him, yet you didn’t. You acted as though nothing had changed, that he was still in the wind. You should’ve come to me with this!”

“The contact was intermittent at best.”

“That doesn’t matter! You still had a line to him!”

I stroked her shoulder as I continued to help her along. “Sweetheart—”

“No,” she said, shrugging off the intimate touch, and trying to pull from my hold. “Don’t,” she gritted out, managing it, then stumbling along ahead of me. “There’s nothing you can say.”

“You’re still ours, Aurora. That won’t change. It can’t.”

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