Page 12 of Never Tamed
Torin rips open the door, sets her down with a gentleness that doesn’t match the panic in his eyes. She doesn’t stir. Her head slumps against the seat, and when he looks at me, his jaw clenches like it might crack.
With a grunt of pain, Noble flings himself into the second row across from her.
Torin slides onto the bench on her other side and I reach over him to brush the hair from her forehead. “Is she breathing?”
Torin doesn’t answer, but I hear the answer through the mate bond.Barely.
Jaw tense, tendons bulging, I round to the driver’s side and yank open the door.
“Out,” I bark at Dax. I tear the airbag out with a swift tug.
When my beta isn’t fast enough, I growl. “MOVE!” I shove Dax aside.
I half throw him into the passenger seat and get behind the wheel. Dax lets me, blood pulsing around the broken glass embedded in his forehead.
She’s safe. I glance at Ren in the back painted, in blood like she bathed in it. Alive, safe, tucked underneath Torin’s arm like he has any goddamn right to touch her after the shit he pulled.
“After we kill Andras, you’re getting driving lessons,” Torin snaps at Dax.
I slam the door and gun it in reverse. Tires shriek. Rubble flies. We fly backward through what’s left of the wall, broken benches scraping the undercarriage. The massive cross above us gives one final groan before crashing down in front of us, right where the SUV just was.
The whole church convulses as the crucifix lands, shattered wood and marble exploding behind us.
“Get us the hell out of here Mathis,” Noble barks.
“With pleasure.” I throw the truck into reverse and the lacy patterns of broken glass crack apart and fall everywhere.
The front bumper is absolutely mangled, one of the tires flat from the romp through the wall.
As the car bumps and spins in the parking lot before peeling out onto the road, I twist to look at Ren. Her body far too still, blood soaking through his shirt like ink.
“She’s lost too much blood,” I choke out, the words catching on the knot in my throat. “She needs help. She needs—”
“She’s going to be okay.” Torin’s voice is raw. “She has to be.”
He says it again, quieter this time. Like a prayer. Like if he stops saying it, she’ll slip away.
Dax doesn’t say anything. He’s slumped in the passenger seat, barely upright, blood dripping in slow trails down the side of his face. His temple’s cut open, and his breathing is rough and ragged, like every inhale is a fight.
Noble lies across the back seat, trembling from the pain of whatever hell they put him through down there in the hole.
I maneuver the damaged vehicle out from the church wall and over the grass, past the lines I dug in the dirt.
Dax shoots the finger to whoever is left alive and watching us from inside.
“Never again,” I mutter.
“What?” Dax turns to him, sniffing.
“No, you driving.”
Now, no one speaks.
The SUV rattles as we speed down the road, wheels groaning with every turn. The silence stretches between us, thick and unbearable, broken only by the hum of tires on pavement and the occasional, choking breath from the backseat.
We’re out. We made it out alive.
Weshouldfeel relief. Should feel something like victory. But all I feel is the ache in my chest and the taste of fear in the back of my throat.
