Page 46 of Into the Fire: After
The doctor meandered our way, reproach in his gaze. “I’m disappointed, Ms. Maddox,” he said. “You’d performed so well. I had high hopes for our journey together.”
Well, excuse the fuck out of me.
Lin and Caine stood at attention, our fresh bonds vibrating with fear, with fury.
All thoughts of pain and the torment of the last who knew how long disappeared from my mind. The obscuring cloud of exhaustion and misery dissipated. Clarity unlike anything I’d ever known overwhelmed me.
Hilt would kill them. Then he’d take me back. Keep me in heat until I died screaming.
Fuck. That. Noise.
There was no time to second-guess, no time to waver in indecision or fear. With everything I had left, I threw myself forward out of Lin’s unsuspecting grip. Cement bit into myhands and my knees. I ignored the stinging pain as I scrambled up, making a clumsy drunken sprint to that too-low wall. I stepped up, heart pounding as I looked down at the busy street many, many stories below. Little lighted ants milling about beneath us.
My ears rang as I turned to face Hilt and the guards, who stood frozen along with my horrified alphas, five feet back from my perch.
I swallowed hard, stepping backward until my heels felt the very edge of the ledge.
“Stop!” Hilt cried out, eyes wide and panicked.
Funny, that he stood on solid ground and panicked, while I hovered an inch away from death and felt so calm.
This was always the only way out of this place. I’d denied it for a while, deluded myself that some miracle would come to save us all and bring us to a safe and happy place where none of the bullshit could touch us again.
Standing literally on the edge, body weak and wavering with nothing but air and concrete below, the truth finally won out. Fresh strength pushed through my veins.
“Think you’ll get anything useful off my body from this height?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the howling wind.
Hilt cursed under his breath, and his guard took a step forward. I moved one foot backward, my toes gripping the concrete of the ledge and my heel hovering over a deadly drop.
“No!” Hilt shouted, pulling the guard back. “She’s mad enough she’d fucking do it.”
I was, too. Finally, after so long just running and looking over my shoulder, just submitting to their torture, I had the power. I had leverage over them. He had reason to do as I told him for once.
Heart pounding, I called out, “Let them all go free. You do that, I’ll step down and you can have me until I rot. Any funny business, I step backwards. Got me?”
Doc glared at me with hatred, white coat askew, chest heaving with angry breaths. He raised his fist, the silver of his fancy handgun glinting in the sunlight.
Pointed it at Caine’s head.
My heart stuttered, crashed, burned.
“You jump,” he seethed, “and I’ll take your debt out of their flesh. You remember the deal we made when you arrived, I assume?”
Chills cascaded down my body like a million icy needles. Terror for my alphas prickling over every inch of me.
Hilt interpreted my silence as consideration. “Step forward now,” he said, tone slightly more placating, “and they’ll each get a quick shot to the head. And we’ll leave the two others alone as well. You have my word.”
A hysterical half scoff, half laugh burst from my lips. The threat of killing my pack wasn’t the incentive to obey that this jackass believed it to be.
The world tilted sharply one way, then the other. My body swayed. I blinked, trying to steady out our rocking stage.
I swallowed, boning up to call his bluff. “I’d still be gone.” My voice trembled, but it was loud. “Besides, an omega splattered on your doorstep?” I shook my head. “A lot harder to explain away than the missing ones.”
Something evil flashed through his eyes at my words, his hand tightening on the gun.
In the distance, the low hum of whipping blades sang out like an angel’s chorus.
Chopper.
