Page 182 of The Savage

She looks up at me again, lips pressed together so tight that the split opens, red and raw. It doesn’t matter how fucked up her face is—nothing in this world can take away her beauty. It shines out from within, a fire that can’t be extinguished. Not even now.

“It’s not enough, though,” Sabrina says, her voice cracking. “If love was enough then we would have made it.”

Rafail stands directly to my left, halted by Vlad’s rifle. Spider-like in his dark suit, Yuri creeps around behind Sabrina instead. All of Yuri’s men have their guns trained on my closest friends.

I point my Beretta at Sabrina’s forehead, the barrel an inch from her skin. Her lips tremble, but she doesn’t beg, she doesn’t even flinch.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” I say.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “For everything.”

Yuri is behind her now, raising his gun.

I glance at Jasper on my right.

Jaw tight, he gives me the smallest of nods.

I take a deep breath and pull the trigger.

* * *

47

SABRINA

Itry to keep my eyes open until the end so the last thing I’ll see is Adrik’s face.

When his finger jerks the trigger, my lids slam shut without my consent.

The gun explodes louder than a cannon shot. I expect a burst of pain and sudden darkness. Instead, something huge slams into me and knocks me backward, my whole body enveloped in heat and mass, and a scent that I know better than any other.

Adrik.

He’s wrapped his arms around me and taken me to the ground, rolling me over and over as shot after shot fires all around us. Something rips at my arm, a jolt of heat and pain, and something else bites into my calf.

Adrik drags me behind a stack of crates, shoving his gun in my hand.

Without a word, I position myself at the edge of the crates and start firing.

The warehouse is utter chaos. Bullets rip across the room from all angles, tearing chunks of wood out of the crates, ricocheting off the truck, the SUV, and the rusted old forklifts.

The dusty glass panes stacked against the wall shatter, raining broken glass everywhere. Thunder confuses the sound of gunfire, and flashes of lightning blind us all.

Vlad is closest to us. He rips a handgun from his belt and throws it to Adrik, before turning his rifle on Yuri’s men, firing shot after shot. A bullet rips into his thigh. He drops to one knee and keeps shooting, teeth gritted, sweat running down his face, mingling with the rain.

It’s hard to tell where anyone is hiding in the jumble of equipment. Hard to tell who’s even on our side.

The driver of the truck pops his head up and I almost shoot him, before seeing his terrified expression as he dives back down on the floorboards, hands cradled behind his head.

I see Yuri’s body sprawled like a rag doll on the ramp. That’s when I realize Adrik fired over my shoulder, hitting his partner in the face.

The Wolfpack are wearing vests. Most of Yuri’s men are not, except the one dressed in military gear. He changes positions like a trained soldier, his aim terrifyingly good. Hakim pokes his head around the trunk of the SUV for a fraction of a second and the soldier nails him in the shoulder. Hakim drops to the ground.

Andrei roars with rage, emptying his clip at the soldier, only to take a bullet in the center of his vest, knocking him backward. Lucky for him—the next shot from the soldier’s gun whistles through the air right where his face would have been.

I follow the soldier’s movement with the barrel of Adrik’s gun, ignoring the hectic flashes of lightning and the freezing rain pouring down from the roof. Adrik fires at him too, missing as the man ducks under cover.

The soldier pops up to let out three shots, then drops down again.

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