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Jonas had ripped out his heart, placed it on the table between them, wrapped it in a bow, and made it hers.

“I love you, too,” she told him quietly.

And he looked... haunted. Wild and electric. Furious.

But he reached across the narrow table, fitting his hand to her cheek in a manner she could not quite describe as tender. It was too hard. Too intense.

His gaze was boring into her so intently she almost thought that look alone might save them. She was surprised it didn’t.

“Don’t you dare say that to me when you think you’re going to die.” It was possible he was whispering, harsh and low, but she heard every single word like a shout. Deep inside her and all around her, so loud it drowned out the world. “Don’t you throw it at me like some kind of Hail Mary.”

“I felt like it needed to be said.”

“Love is for the living,” Jonas growled at her. “Which is why I’ve never wanted any part of it. You want to love me, Bethan? Figure out how to keep us alive.”

Some women might like flowers. Chocolates. A sonnet or two written in their honor.

But Bethan got Jonas, big and pissed off and more animated than she’d ever seen him while he was fully clothed, ordering her tolive. Then love him. In that order.

If she were the kind of woman to swoon, she would have, but she was too afraid she might not come out of it.

“I’ll love you any way I want,” she told him. “But you’re right. I would like to do it for more than forty-eight hours and a steep decline.”

“Bethan,” he began, and she could see the torture on his face. All over him. All the things she’d always known had lurked there beneath that cold facade of his. “You have to know—”

There was a crackling burst of sound in their comm units. They both jerked back, each putting a hand to the ear where the noise was coming from. Once again, their gazes were locked together.

Another long, loud crackle.

“Who has an open channel?” Griffin demanded, sounding arctic. “This is not the time.”

There was a pause. Then a long, fluid, creative string of curses.

But Bethan’s heart leapt inside her chest. Because there was only one person she knew—

“Templeton,” Jonas said, his voice cracking slightly. He coughed to cover it, but it didn’t matter. Bethan felt the same.

“Templeton, you beautiful bastard,” came Blue’s voice, sounding as suspiciously intense as Bethan felt. As Jonas looked. “Tell me some good news.”

There was another long crackling sound, another loud spate of swears and invocations, but again, all clearly Templeton.

“We are all present, accounted for, and intact,” came another voice, cool and measured.

Isaac. Bethan sagged a little against the lab table, while across from her, Jonas dropped his head for a moment.

“The warehouse was leveled, and it blew up our vehicle,” Isaac said. “Kicked out the comm router.”

“Would’ve taken us with it,” Templeton said, sounding mildly irritated and a little bit lazy, and Bethan had never been so happy to hear him being perfectlyhimin all her life. “But there were some disgusting bunkers to hide out in.”

“Old garage bays,” came Lucas’s voice. “I think this place used to be a chop shop.”

“I’m a little banged up,” Isaac said, sounding clipped.Pissed, Bethan thought, and that was enough to make her straighten her spine. “My ears are still ringing. I thought I was about to bite it, and I have to tell you all, the idea that this lowlife could take me out remotely did not sit well. I want him ended.”

“Hear, hear,” August said.

“But first,” Isaac continued, all leashed rage and tempered fury, “what’s this I hear about a containment unit?”

“Oh, just SuperThrax exposure, no big deal,” Bethan said.