Page 262 of Fractured Allegiance

From upstairs, a scream cuts through the air. Mara.

Elias’s head snaps up. The storm inside him breaks. He charges the staircase, firing at anything that moves. Men drop like paper targets, their weapons skittering across the floor. Jax follows, panting, eyes wide.

I grab Lydia’s wrist, tugging her forward. “We don’t let him get there alone.”

She doesn’t resist.

Together, we take the stairs two at a time, bullets whining past us, boots pounding against wood soaked with someone else’s blood.

We’re going to reach her, or we’re going to die trying.

Two of Elias’s men are inside, bleeding out on the floor near the threshold. They gave us a short nod when they saw Elias, recognition evident on their worn-out faces. Their presence is a brutal reminder: Elias didn’t just send muscle ahead to hold ground; he sent men to hold down the front until he could reach her.

It buys Mara seconds, maybe more, but seconds matter. Seconds are the difference between a scream that ends in silence and a scream that Elias can answer with bullets.

Three men circle Mara, who’s pressed against the wall, clutching a broken lamp like it’s a weapon worth anything. Her hair is tangled, her blouse torn, her eyes wide with sheer terror.

Elias doesn’t pause. He fires once, twice, three times. The men drop like flies, their spurting blood painting the carpet crimson. The echoes haven’t even died before he’s on her, shoving the gun back into his holster and pulling her against him.

“Mara,” he says, voice breaking in a way I’ve never heard. His hands move over her shoulders, her face, checking for wounds, holding her like he could fuse her body to his just by force of will. “You’re here. You’re safe.”

She’s trembling, clutching at him like he’s the only solid thing in a collapsing world. A lone lighthouse in this shitstorm. Tears streak down her face, but she nods, choking on sobs that won’t stop.

Elias lowers his mouth to Mara’s hair, murmuring words too quiet for us to hear, his hand fisted against the small of her back. She shakes, but she nods, nods again, letting his strength wrap around her like armor. He doesn’t notice us anymore. His world has narrowed to the space between her heartbeat and his.

For a moment, the battle disappears.

It’s just Elias and her, a storm wrapped around its center, nothing else able to touch them.

One of Elias’s men, already shot, staggers against the far wall. He lifts his weapon weakly, but Elias ignores him—his attention is only on Mara. Loyalty kept the man alive long enough to see his boss reach her. Nothing else matters.

I glance at Lydia. She’s frozen, her knife still gripped in her hand, her chest heaving. Her eyes aren’t on the bodies littering the floor. They’re on Elias, on the way his rage has melted into raw, savage devotion. On what he’s showing without meaning to: a devotion so raw it borders on madness.

And I see it—the flicker in her gaze. Curiosity. Unease. Maybe envy.

Because this is what devotion looks like when it’s stripped down to bone: a man who would gut the world just to keep one woman breathing.

She feels it. I know she does. And she hates herself for it. I see her falter. Just slightly. Enough for me to know she’s imagining what it feels like to be held like that—protected not because it’s practical, but because it’s ruinous, because it makes a man like Elias tear through the world barehanded.

Elias pulls Mara closer, burying his face against her hair. His voice is low, harsh, meant only for her. “I’ll never let them touch you again. Not while I breathe.”

Lydia turns her head, catches me as my gaze flicks back to her. And it’s a mistake.

I close the distance in three strides. My hand fists in her collar, dragging her forward until our mouths collide. It isn’t a kiss. It’s teeth, rage, the taste of blood and gunpowder. She gasps against me, not from surprise but from the way her body betrays her.

Her knife slips from her fingers, clattering against the floor. Her hands seize my jacket instead, yanking me closer, refusing to let me be the only one taking.

She tears her lips free long enough to hiss against my mouth, “You’ll destroy me.”

I press harder, teeth grazing her bottom lip. My voice is a growl against her skin. “That’s the point.”

It’s desperate, feral, nothing soft about it. The kiss isn’t a comfort. It’s a war we’ve both been waiting to lose.

When we finally break apart, her eyes are blazing, her chest heaving, her pulse hammering so hard I can feel it against my own.

Even in this hell, when she smiles at me, she looks like a goddamn angel.

Chapter 34 – Silas - In the Ashes