Page 261 of Fractured Allegiance

Elias sits behind me, one hand gripping his gun, the other pressing his phone against his ear again. His voice is a blade cutting through static. “Status?” A pause, then: “Good. Stay on her until I arrive. If they breach, you shoot until nothing’s left.” He ends the call, leans back, Tension ripples through him,

Jax shifts nervously beside him. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Elias cuts him off. “Not while she’s breathing.”

No one argues.

The silence in the car is a different kind of loud. I can feel Lydia’s stare burning into the side of my face. When I glance at her, she doesn’t look away. Her expression is unreadable, but her hand drifts to the knife strapped against her thigh, fingers resting on the hilt like it’s the only anchor she trusts.

She says nothing, but I hear her anyway. She’s ready to kill for this. Not for Elias. Not even for Mara. For herself. For survival.

The speedometer climbs. The city narrows around us: buildings leaning in, windows flashing past. My hands are steady on the wheel, but inside, something twists. I’ve walked into hundreds of fires under the Bureau’s leash. None of them felt like this. None of them felt like the ground shifting under my feet, pulling me toward her whether I wanted it or not.

Elias leans forward, voice low, guttural. “When we get there, don’t hesitate. You see Drazen’s men, you drop them. I don’t care how many. I don’t care how fast. If Mara bleeds, so do you.”

The words hang in the air. A promise. A threat. Both at once.

The street opens ahead, the turnoff toward the safehouse looming. My grip tightens on the wheel. I catch Lydia’s reflection in the side window, her eyes alight with something dangerous—fear, desire, anticipation. Maybe all three.

We’re almost there. And if Drazen’s already inside, we’re about to find out who survives the night.

The safehouse is lit up like a crime scene before we even pull onto the street. Shattered glass glitters across the pavement,alarms wail into the night, and the front gate sags under the weight of bullets already lodged in its steel.

“Fuck,” Jax mutters.

Elias doesn’t curse. He doesn’t even blink. He shoves his door open before the car stops rolling, gun in hand, eyes locked on the wreckage.

“Go,” he snaps, and I don’t waste time asking if he means all of us.

We spill into the street. The biting sting of cordite and smoke slaps me in the face, carried on the wind. Muzzle flashes blink from the shadows. There are men stationed behind cars, crouched along the fence, moving with the desperate chaos of mercenaries who don’t know what they’re walking into.

Lydia draws her pistol with her right hand, knife on the left, she crouches low beside me, eyes scanning the angles faster than I can. She points once, quick and precise, toward the second-floor windows. “Two on the east side.”

I see them a second later—shapes framed in the glow, rifles glinting. She’s sharper than I want to admit.

“Take the left,” I mutter, raising my pistol.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Our shots crack almost at the same time, glass shattering as both figures collapse into the room behind them.

Elias is already moving. He doesn’t fight like other men—he doesn’t duck or cower, he advances. His stride cuts straight down the center of the street, bullets sparking around him, his gun barking like thunder. He drops one, two, three men before they can blink. He looks untouchable, like violence itself has stepped into a body just to clear a path to Mara.

Jax trails after him, firing wild, ducking low, a boy trying to imitate a wolf.

Another figure lunges from the shadows near the gate. Before I can pivot, Lydia’s blade flashes, cutting clean across the man’s throat. He collapses at her feet, hands clawing at a wound that doesn’t stop spilling.

She doesn’t look at him. She looks at me, lips curved in something dangerous. “Keep up.”

I almost laugh, almost tell her she has no idea how much I’ve been waiting to hear her say that. Instead, I reload, push forward, and match her pace.

The front door hangs open, splintered by a battering ram. The thunder of gunfire isn’t all Drazen’s. Elias’s men are already here. I catch them through the chaos—two crouched behind the ruined front gate, returning fire with practiced precision, another dragging a wounded merc out of the street and finishing him with a clean shot to the head.

These aren’t mercenaries hired by the highest bidder; they’re Elias’s, bound by the kind of loyalty men only give to someone they both fear and worship.

One of them nods once as we pass, no words wasted. They know who we’re here for. They know who Elias will kill them for if they fail.

We rush inside, boots crunching over broken glass. The interior is chaos. Furniture overturned, blood smeared across the walls, bodies already cooling in the hall… The air is thick, humid with gunfire and fear.

Lydia moves at my side like she’s tethered to me, covering blind spots, finishing the strikes I start. We don’t talk. We don’t plan. We move as if we’ve rehearsed this in another life, the choreography baked into our very bones.