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Behind him, around him, gunmen step out from the trees on all sides. Three or four for every torch bearer, some with shotguns, some pistols... and a handful with heavy, military-grade assault rifles.

No . Stunned, confused betrayal cuts through my chest. This isn’t what we agreed.

He lifts his hand.

“Stop!” I shout, panicked. “No, Alastair, don’t?—”

“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep,” he says softly, and it feels like the words are meant just for me.

His hand drops.

Gunfire explodes around him.

It’s thunderous, and Jasper yanks me back into his arms as Reaper flesh rips apart. The earth bursts in a dozen places around their camp. It sprays the hazy smoke with dirt and bullets and blood until I can’t tell them apart.

The screams follow.

Reapers try to flee back toward Bristlebrook, but without the bridge in place, they’re pinned to the moat, helpless and terrified as faces beside them split apart like burst fruit.

I see Buck stand from behind his tent and turn, heaving himself toward the moat with white-eyed panic. There’s nowhere for him to go.

This is a massacre.

“Stay back.” Alastair’s voice carries, resonant, despite his calm as he strides in front of the forest. “Hold the tree line. Fire from cover.”

“They’re stuck!” a large, bald Sinner shouts over the top of him as he runs forward. “Forward!”

“Back! Mierda ! You’re in the line of fire, idiot!”

I could swear it’s Mateo, but I can’t see him anywhere.

Men peel from the ranks of Sinners, leaving the trees as they begin to surge forward, firing on any Reaper they see. The bald Sinner clips a round-faced man through the throat, and I flinch.

The Reapers scatter, panicked—trapped. One man teeters on the edge of the moat, the ground crumbling under his heel as he backs up.

“Jasper...” I breathe, the cold air cutting me through.

I swear I can hear a woman’s voice screaming among the men’s, and Jasper tenses.

Akira? Oh God. My pulse squeezes panic into my chest.

Jennifer! Where’s Jennifer?

The mule, Cherub, screams in panic, pulling back on its rope ties, causing bags of food to spill out at its feet.

If the Reapers die, it’s not just their lives we’ll lose.

I storm forward.

“Jayk!” I scream. “The bridge!”

Jayk’s head whips back at me, then toward the Reapers. Buck fires back at the Sinners, and he howls in despair as he rings on empty.

Jayk hesitates for half a second, staring at them.

“Fuck!” he curses.

Then he runs.

“Ooh shit. He’s doing it,” Lucky groans. “We’re going to die. This is stupid.”

“Together, then?” Jasper asks, releasing me, and Lucky throws him a startled look, then lets out a choked laugh.

He dashes past me, running at full speed to help Jayk and, with a slightly flustered curse, Jasper follows. Katherine hits Ava on the arm, and Shelby looks up as Lucky bolts past them, and they all start running too.

But on the other side of the moat, the Sinners are getting closer.

Panic flutters through me, and Beau squeezes my arm.

Dom shouts from atop his platform.

“Bristlebrook, hold fire until my call!” He lines up his own shot. “I said hold ! Snipers. Sloane, Sara, Valerie, June! Clear shots only! Do not risk friendly fire!”

The muzzle of Dom’s rifle pokes through the rectangular hole in his shielding wall, and in seconds, he clips off half a dozen shots. Beyond the bridge, several Sinners drop mid-run.

It sets off a new round of terrified shouts, and my heart pounds.

Bullets start flying toward Jayk, then the civilians on the ground, too, as they near the firefight. A lot of them fling wide, and I glance around. Jayk and Dom have kept all our lights off.

We’re entirely in the dark.

Jayk reaches the bridge first, and he kneels, trying to shift it, but it’s too heavy for one person to carry.

We are in the dark, but if they get close to that moat, the torches will reveal their approach, too.

“Reapers, get the fuck down!” Jayk shouts, and they scatter back, away from the bridge. Half a dozen drop to hands and knees.

Jayk swings his rifle around and fires at the Sinners, buying time as, one by one, the others join him. Katherine, Shelby, Ava. Jayk jumps up and they fall along the sides of the bridge, hefting it up off the ground with obvious strain. When they begin to shift forward, it’s slow. Shuffling.

Too slow.

A horde of Sinners winds through the woods after the first wave, torch light after torch light shining like funeral pyres behind Alastair.

Move , I silently urge, watching the bridge.

But then Jasper and Lucky join Jayk, ducking under the bridge and lifting it higher, until they can heft it up and the wood bites into their shoulders.

And then the group starts to move.

I step forward, and Beau yanks me back again with a glower.

“I can?—”

“You can get yourself killed. Eden, I’m sorry. I need you to stay. Get the wounded inside as they come through, I don’t know, but stay back,” he urges before I can protest, shifting his medic bag over his shoulders. His rifle is steady in his grip.

He can do both—heal and kill and lift and fight. He can do it all. This is what they do.

My rifle sweats in my hands. I don’t know how to use it, not really, and my strength isn’t much to add to a team carrying a bridge. Out there, in this situation, I’m a liability.

But how can I stay here?

I watch as a man’s knee explodes while he tries to run. He collapses into the dirt as another runs past Buck and jumps, trying to make the leap across the moat. For a moment, he’s suspended, floating—but then he hits the sharpened pikes hard, skewered through from groin to throat.

I flinch.

Here, I can only watch.

I can only help the wounded if they live.

Buck skids to a stop, staring at the impaled Reaper, but a bullet kisses the dirt beside his feet, and he lets out a hoarse cry before taking off again.

“We’re too late,” I whisper.

We cut off the bridge. We saved ourselves.

They didn’t have a chance.

“Maybe not.”

I glance up at Beau, and he nods up and to the right, where a group of Reapers are firing furiously, carving out a small pocket as they push the Sinners near them back into the trees.

Cole and Sawyer fight at their head, Pete and Jennifer behind them, and slowly, so slowly, they gain ground.

As I watch, two more Reapers abandon their hiding places to join them. Then another. Then three more.

“Sinners, hold back! Fire from cover!” Mateo shouts again, and I finally make him out, standing beside a torchbearer, his dark hair dancing with reflected flames.

One torch bearer takes a bullet through his skull, and his light drops between gnarled tree roots, right as a Reaper beside Cole dies on a scream, his throat spurting blood.

It’s horrific, twisted music.

All the while, Alastair looms by the trees, knighted by black.

“Bristlebrook, fire for effect!” Dom barks. “Suppressive fire. Clear shots only.”

Arthur steps forward. “Elena, Theo, Amir! Fire in rounds!”

Like a sudden beat shift, bullets rise from our side—a synchronized counterpoint that adds roars of “incoming!” and shrieks of “back!” to the tune.

On the outermost defensive platform, the three from Red Zone step up too, letting loose a wicked barrage of dark arrows. One slams through a Sinner’s thigh, and the man topples into the moat.

Beside me, Beau’s jaw flexes, and my fear sticks in my throat.

Our bullets thud into the tents just beyond the bridge, several striking Sinners down. In response, more guns turn our way, and there’s a sharp, metallic patter as some of their return fire slams into the protective steel mantlets guarding the defensive platforms.

All the while, the bridge moves closer to the moat.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please, please, please.”

As they begin to close in, Alastair’s attention sharpens like throwing daggers.

“Stop the bridge,” he says, and his voice is something that creeps out of the night.

My last, flickering flare of hope withers into dull horror. My brutes’ safety was supposed to be guaranteed. We were supposed to be safe. The women and children were supposed to be safe. He... played me. About everything .

It was always going to be war.

In unison, the Sinners turn toward the bridge—toward my men —and there’s no air left in my lungs. I can’t negotiate here. There’s no soup, no poison, no clever scheme to turn on its head. Only the Sinners’ guns and my unarmed Brutes and me, helpless on the sidelines.

I sent them out there, and now Alastair is going to make me watch them die... because I was wrong.

Because I was wrong, I might have killed everyone I love.

“Son of a bitch!” Beau swears, cold murder flashing across his face.

Beau explodes forward as I stand frozen. Numb.

Useless.

In his group, Sawyer turns with wild, desperate eyes, taking in the bridge, the guns, Buck running with everything he has.

“Reapers, to the bridge!” he roars.

Nearby, a man shouts. A woman screams. More bullets hit our defenses.

“Eden! What do we do?” Mary Beth asks, edging back, but I’m caught by the nightmare in front of me.

More Sinners step forward, dozens, directing their fire toward the bridge.

Toward Jayk.

Jasper.

Lucky.

I sink to my knees.

A bullet shatters the wood by Lucky’s hand, but he doesn’t flinch. None of them do.

“Eden!” Mary Beth shakes me, and I finally look up, glaring at her, only to see greying, kindly Valerie gripping one of the wooden struts on the nearest defensive platform.

Blood is pouring from her shoulder, and she sways as she stands.

Her husband tucks one arm under her good arm, shuffling forward. Behind them, I see two more civilians carrying Jessica, who looks to be unconscious.

This is only the start.

And the med bay only has three beds.

“Caleb! Help!” I shout, and Caleb looks down from the platform, spotting Patrick and Valerie. The younger man passes off his rifle to hurry down.

Urgency pounds me, and I get up, grabbing Mary Beth. I’m not sure which of us is shaking harder, but I shove my fear down as Caleb rushes over to help Patrick.

I’m not useless. Damn it, I won’t be useless.

“Start clearing the furniture in the sitting room,” I tell Mary Beth quickly. “Then go to the linen closet, and get as many sheets, blankets, and pillows as you can. We need more beds. Get Kasey to see if Deanna needs anything, then she can help you.”

She nods, then bolts, and I turn to Caleb.

Beside him, Patrick is trembling, watching his wife.

“Get her to the med bay and then come back. Both of you,” I clarify when Patrick’s jaw sets stubbornly. Thick fear aches in my throat. “We’re going to have more.”

They go, and I edge forward and hold onto the platform’s wooden strut, looking for more wounded.

Only to lock back in on the bridge.

“Again!” Dom yells from his platform, and another round of shots blisters out.

Sinners go down with staggering swiftness, and several others shy back from the moat, and Jayk takes advantage of the reprieve, pushing everyone faster, laden by the enormous weight.

They’re almost there.

They’re all almost there.

Buck’s face is dark red and sweaty, only feet away from the moat—from the death that lies behind and ahead, unless they get that bridge in place.

Please.

My nails crack as I dig them into the wood, thinking of Buck shyly pulling his cap off when we met. Of him blushing, scandalized by Mila’s flirting.

I don’t want him to die, either.

How many people have I killed because I set Alastair free? How many people have I killed, because I was so, so sure I was right?

“Fucking pussies! Forward!” the bald Sinner shouts, firing hot and fast, and Mateo storms over to him, disarming him in seconds.

“Stay back !” Mateo backs up as a shot nearly takes him out.

But a bold Sinner steps out from behind the trees and lines up a shot toward the bridge—toward my brutes. The first one glances off the bridge, and the Sinner walks forward, lining up again. Zeroing in.

My breathing stalls—only for the man to slam backward, caught in the chest.

“Nice one, Beau, baby!” Ida hollers, and my heart squeezes as Beau slides behind the other brutes, firing on anyone approaching the bridge. Defending them. Protecting them fiercely.

Beau will always come out swinging for his family.

Tears sting my eyes, and damp earth presses between my toes. They’re going to make it.

The civilians pass me with Jessica, and I check on her quickly before directing them to the med bay.

The bridge slams into place, and Buck’s foot comes down on the bullet-scarred wood a moment later. The women let out a wild cheer, and a choked, relieved sob escapes me as a grin finally finds his exhausted face.

Then he stops.

For a moment, I don’t understand what happened. Why he’s just stopped in the center of the bridge with bullets still flying from all angles.

Then I see the blood trickle between his eyes.

Buck collapses gracefully, still smiling, into the moat.

I slam a hand over my mouth to trap my scream.

By the trees, Alastair pulls back his rifle. In the hazy, orange glow, I could almost swear it smokes.