Page 4 of Fastlander Phoenix

Blood and glass.

Fuckin’ Lucia.

The woman had dirty-blonde waves of hair that were peppered with sparkling glass and specks of blood, and there was blood trickling down her face.

She parted her full lips, and her light eyebrows arched up delicately as she said something too low for him to understand over the roaring in his ears.

“What?” he demanded, kneeling beside her.

“Are you okay?”

He was shocked to his bones and froze, unsure how to answer. She swallowed hard and repeated it. “Are you okay?”

Wreck frowned. Was he okay? The only person who had ever asked him that was his mother, and not for many years. This woman had just seen him absorb a massive fire off her carand come back to her on two legs with flames in his eyes, and she was asking him, the Fastlander Phoenix, if he was okay?

“Of course I am,” he lied.

The woman’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped over, leaning toward him, held in place by the seatbelt.

His body needed to get rid of the excess power right now. He needed to streak across the sky like a shooting star, burn a field. Maybe eat some ashes like Damon had taught him to do.

But this woman needed him. This was a dead road at night.

He leaned into the car and unbuckled her seatbelt. The front of the car had been destroyed, and it was pinning her right leg inside. The scent of blood was stronger inside the car.

Panic flared in his chest. He was too close to the human, and he needed to relieve himself of some of this power. He felt as if he would burn alive!

Smoke clogging his lungs, Wreck grabbed her arm and pulled her out, but the scent of burning flesh had him flinching back. Horrified, he released his grip and stared at the perfect handprint blistering the skin on her upper arm.

It was too dark out here. He ignited a flame that hovered two inches above his palm, but it didn’t look right. The flame was bright green.

The flame shot from his palm into the sky in a glowing green stream, and he could feel the power drain. He huffed a breath at the relief, but something strange was happening. The woman was drawing off some of the aura of the flame. She gasped, and her back arched against the ground.

What the hell? What the hell!Stop, stop, stop!He tried to close his hand and cut the power to the flame, but the green aura covered the woman completely and a strangled sound wrenched from her throat.

He had to stop! He was going to kill her!

Wreck bunched his muscles and then shot into the sky, dragging the green fire with him.

He forced his Change so that he wouldn’t have to land, extended his flaming wings, and put as much distance between him and the car accident below as he could, as fast as he could.

The woman would be dead now.

The woman would be gone, and it was his fault.

Again.

No, his mother hadn’t named him Wreck Itall.

The fire had named him.

Chapter Two

Timber Harris eased her eyes open, and tried to focus her blurry vision on the white ceiling tiles above her.

Where was she?

She looked around the room and took in the bag of fluids hanging next to her, and the IV in her arm. Wait, what?

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