Page 222 of Without a Trace
Too cold.
“Scar,” I whispered. “Stay with me, Sunshine.”
Her eyes fluttered, lashes wet with blood and ash.
“I didn’t want to go like this,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Then it hit again.
The bond. Fuck.
A sharp pulse in my chest.
Then another—fainter, fracturing.
Like something was being ripped out by the root.
Alden looked at me, panicked. “Trace—do you feel that?”
“Yeah,” I choked. “She’s slipping.”
“Hold her. “Don’t let her go.”
“I won’t.”
Zeke dropped beside us, pressing gauze hard to the wound. “We need evac now. She won’t make it like this.”
“She’s not fucking leaving.” I growled.
Rhett dropped into cover beside us, breathless. “We’ve got thirty seconds tops. We move or we die. If we’re gonna move her, we move now.”
Scarlett’s eyes opened again—barely.
And in that shattered second, she looked at us—me and Alden.
Blood on her lips. Her voice barely a breath.
“I love you.”
And then her eyes closed.
The bond pulsed—once.
Then it unraveled.
Gone.
Epilogue
Rhett
She was still bleeding.
I don’t know how she hadn’t bled out already.
Trace was on his knees, whispering something I couldn’t hear, his hands stained red and shaking. Alden didn’t say a word. He just pressed harder on the wound like he could hold her soul in place if he pushed hard enough.
