I push at his chest.He’s walking me toward a wall, and I’m pretty sure that means he has some improvised safe room hidden away, and as smart as that sounds, I don’t trust it.“Are you going to hide with me?”
“I can’t, Harlow,” he says.Mateo sets me on my feet but keeps an arm around my waist, his other hand stretching for the wall.“I’ll deal with the hunters who reach us, and I have to coordinate—”
His words are cut off by a muffled explosion that shakes the entire room.Another alarm sounds, this one obviously automatic.
My eyes swing past him, to the door I’d come through, which has been locked tight for at least an hour.Smoke is wafting through.“Mateo!”
Something beeps behind me.“Get inside, Harlow,” he hisses, his hand fisting the dress over my hip.“And stay quiet, please.Don’t let them find you.”
My heart constricts, feeling as if it’s folded in on itself.I grab his shirt to keep his focus.“You can’t fight them off, protect me, and coordinate everyone else.”
He actually growls at me.“I can’t lose you.”
Somehow, his words make me smile.Instead of replying, I reach up and snag the earpiece off him, holding our strange staring contest and ignoring the building smoke as I proceed to stick the thing onto my own ear.“Then don’t die.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mateo
The House Falls
The coven house isa war zone.
Walls are splintered, doors ripped from their hinges, and the acrid smoke of gunpowder mingles with the metallic stench of blood.Glass crunches beneath my boots as I weave through the chaos.My family fights around me—Kyson’s roar shakes the rafters, and Elfde is a whirlwind of claws and teeth—but still the jagters push in, desperate and fanatical, their eyes glazed with their unholy blood thirst.
Through the crackle of gunfire and the screams of dying men, Harlow’s voice cuts sharp and sure in my ear.
“Two coming left.Duck, now!”
I drop low without hesitation.A blade sings over my head, close enough that I feel the rush of air against my neck.I pivot and sink my knife into the attacker’s stomach with a twist.Hot blood sprays across my chest as he crumples.His partner lunges in, but he is too slow.My boot shatters his knee, and the second blow cracks his skull.
“Good,” she whispers, her breath quick through the comm.
I can picture her in the saferoom—her beautiful hair disheveled, face pale but eyes burning as she hunches over the laptop, watching the feeds.My woman, fighting with me, even behind locked steel.Pride surges, sharper than the pain that rips through my ribs.
Then I see him.