Page 48 of Into the Fire: After

Sevrin appeared on my other side, and a second later she collapsed, dead weight on top of me.

“Just a sedative,” he said as he tossed a syringe behind him with one hand, the other pressed to his side. Lin scrambled to get us up. Only then did I realize he was growling. “We have to go.Now.”

Twenty

Brea

SunriseinGreysmokeNationalPark was a sight to behold. Or so I assumed. I couldn’t appreciate the pastels painting the landscape. I watched the brightening sky with only one thought in mind.

Well, three thoughts.

My pack. Who should be crossing over that horizon anytime. We stood hidden in the treeline at the northernmost tip of the park, eyes peeled.

“You’re sure this is where he said?” I asked for the fiftieth time. My fragile calm of the last three hours was slowly disintegrating to dust.

To her credit, Vikki only nodded again. Brooks squeezed my hand with a force that betrayed his own nerves. I returned the pressure, eyes never halting from their scan of the clearing ahead of us.

Just as the the deep orange of early dawn bled to pink, a new sound met our ears. My heart raced. Was this a good sound, or a bad one?

“There!” Brooks pointed to the sky, a speck no larger than a fly at this distance. Humming like one, too. Every second, though, it grew.

A helicopter. Heading straight for our clearing.

The watercolor sky blurred. A sob broke from my throat as I stepped forward, but Vikki snatched me back into the tree cover. “We don’t know who that is yet. We wait.”

Ten minutes. The longest of my life. My muscles cramped with the effort to stay locked in place as the helicopter approached, descended, and landed. Still, Vikki bade us wait. Not that it mattered. If those were enemies, we were dead already.

My blood whooshed through my ears in time with the slowing blades of the chopper as I watched one door open in the warm dawn light. As an alpha in blue scrubs with dark shaggy hair jumped out.

Caine.

Zero to sprinting in the space of a blink, with Brooks on my heels. Gods, they were so far away. Too far. Every inch was too far. I still couldn’t see her. I needed to see her. Why hadn’t she climbed out?

“Taryn!”

Caine’s head snapped up toward us as we closed in, still so many inches between us. My eyes homed in on the dark interior of the helicopter, on the shadows of two figures still sitting inside. One large, cradling one small.

My breath abandoned me. My heart stalled. My legs too. My knees crashed into the soft earth, my palms slid across it. My lungs caved in. I couldn’t breathe.

Close enough I should feel her. But nothing.

God no no no no please no—

Caine’s sharp citrus scent enveloped me just as his arms did. Vision blurred. Couldn’t see.

“She—is she—I—”

“Sedated,” he responded, one hand smoothing down my back while his other was outstretched, reaching toward something beside me. “She’s okay, Brea. She’s okay.”

An inhuman sound escaped me as I fought my way back to my feet. His caressing arm wrapped around my waist, restraining me.

“Brea—”

“Let me go! Taryn!”

“Brea,listen to me,” Caine said between clenched teeth. “Lin’s alpha is out, full force. He barely let me sit beside them. Wait—”

Like. Fucking. Hell.