Page 85 of The Bait

Yunho looked up at him.

And smiled.

SEVENTEEN

Harry wasn’tsure if it was the lack of air in the room or his punctured lung that made it so hard to breathe.

He was sweating, hot and cold, and could barely keep his eyes open.

He longed for sleep, but the idea of falling asleep now and not waking up scared the shit out of him. He’d seen a lot of death. His entire adult life had been a war game of kill or be killed. He’d taken more lives than he could remember.

It shouldn’t have scared him to know it was his turn. After all, there could be worse ways to go...

But he didn’t want to die.

Not like this.

Not without Asher.

Without seeing his face one last time.

He tried to regulate his breathing, slow and steady, minimal use of oxygen. Not that it mattered. Lucas was panting, rattling.

He couldn’t fight his eyelids any longer.

Harry woke with a start,realising it was Lucas’s cough that startled him awake. A wheezing rattle that surely meant Lucas’s end was near.

Harry reached out for Lucas’s hand. It was cold and unmoving at his touch. Jesus. Were his fingers broken? Fucking hell.

“I’m here,” Harry whispered.

No one should die alone.

Harry couldn’t join the dots between MI6 Lucas—who had lied to them and was probably half the reason they were in this mess—with the Lucas who had welcomed them into his home. Fed him, laughed with him, cared for Asher when he’d been kidnapped in Oman, helped them escape. Harry had seen the way Lucas looked at Yunho with nothing but love in his eyes. So pure it had made Harry blush.

How were these two Lucases one and the same?

Harry didn’t know.

But he had considered Lucas a trusted friend. So it wasthatLucas’s hand he held as he sat there in the dark, his back to the cold concrete wall. He closed his eyes and listened to Lucas’s breaths get weaker, further apart, slower.

Waiting for the silence to engulf them.

Harry stirredto find himself slumped to the side. Pain radiated through his neck as he tried to straighten up, through his whole fucking body. He was dazed, unsure ifit was the lack of water or oxygen that would win the fight to take him out.

He couldn’t hear Lucas breathing anymore.

He couldn’t hear anything.

He thought he heard yelling and banging, but he was sure his mind was playing tricks. Everything was muted, far away. Even his thoughts.

His pain was still close though. Nestled in his chest, in his bones.

He could smell that acrid metal sulphur smell again. The same rank odour he’d noticed when he’d first come to.

God, his mind was really going.

He’d read once, a long time ago, that some people experienced aromas from distant memories as they succumbed to death. Things like sunshine or cut grass, or jasmine from a garden they’d grown up in.

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