Page 31 of Hellfire to Come
DOMINIC
Rowan’s weight pressed into my shoulders like penance.
He was light now. Too light. As if whatever Frederic had done to him had burned away everything solid, everything human in my friend. I shifted him carefully across my back, muscles straining, but I didn’t complain. Couldn’t. Not when the only sound behind us was the slow, groaning collapse of a place that had nearly devoured the people who counted on me to protect them.
The others moved ahead, Brooklyn clutching Alice to her side, her steps rigid with purpose. The wolf padded behind them, limping slightly, its muzzle still stained red. Chester and Echo scouted the path, flanking the tunnel like a pair of tired sentries. All of us were barely breathing.
But breathing nonetheless.
I should have felt relief. But it didn’t come.
Instead, it sat heavy in my chest like smoke after a fire. The kind that seeps into your lungs and settles there, unshakable. Rowan hadn’t stirred once since collapsing. Not even when his head bounced against my spine. His magic was silent. Too silent.Like someone had locked the doors from the inside and thrown away the key.
And Alice… She hadn’t moved since we left the mansion. Her body sagged into Brooklyn’s grip like an overfilled vessel trying to remember how to hold its own weight. Her skin was too warm. Her pulse too fast. And I could feel it, something still tangled inside her, like residual wires buzzing from Frederic’s last attempt to tell me fuck you.
The bastard hadn’t needed to chase us.
We delivered ourselves on a silver platter like he knew we would.
Whatever that fucker touched, he left poison in his wake.
And Brooklyn, gods, my mate, walked like she was made of steel, but I knew the truth. I knew the way her shoulder dipped just slightly when she carried too much weight in her soul. I saw the tremor in her fingers when she thought no one was watching. She was holding on by threads. Rage. Love. Sheer willpower. The female was a force to be reckoned with.
But even steel bends when it’s heated enough.
I was afraid for all of them.
Beneath that fear, older and quieter, something else stirred—something I hadn’t dare speak aloud.
Couldn’t.
That presence back in the mansion. The one that didn’t follow. Didn’t attack. Only watched.
It hadn’t felt foreign.
It had felt... familiar.
Not in the way an enemy feels familiar after too many battles. No. This had been intimate. Intrinsic. Like the echo of a dream I once lived or a shadow that had grown up alongside my own. Its attention had been sharp, specific, like it knew me. Like it belonged to me.
Or worse, like I belonged to it.
I swallowed hard, the weight of Rowan shifting as I adjusted my grip.
We broke through the tunnel mouth just as the car came into view, hidden beneath thickets and trees, half-sunken into the dirt like it had been holding its breath for our return. Brooklyn opened the back door and helped Alice inside, cradling her head with gentler hands than I’d seen her use in all the time I’d known her. I laid Rowan in the back as well, watching his chest rise in tiny, stuttering motions. It was a miracle he was still alive.
Chester started the engine. Echo sat up front, scanning the woods with that permanent scowl I’d noticed she wore when she was too focused. Brooklyn climbed into the back with me, and the wolf settled at our feet, growling low at nothing.
My mate grabbed my fingers, squeezing tight like she was too afraid to say anything until we were far away from here.
And me…
I kept staring at the tree line.
Because the feeling hadn’t left.
That presence… it wasn’t in the mansion anymore. It was here. Lingering. Just out of reach. Just out of sight.
And it wanted something.
