Page 135 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

Carrying Hank.

The coffin is simple. Clean lines. But it holds more than a body. It carries my heart.

I can’t breathe.

The air thickens. The sound of their boots on the trawler’s deck matches the pounding of my pulse.

Six across. Steps perfectly in sync.

This is brotherhood. This is love.

Gabe’s arm comes around my shoulders, solid and grounding. His hand flexes once against my arm, a tremor he doesn’t hide.

They reach the dock and descend the ramp, backs straight, eyes ahead. The coffin rests like it belongs to them—because it does. They don’t hand him off. They carry him all the way to the waiting transport.

The rear doors open with a soft hiss.

He disappears inside.

The doors close with a gentle finality that punches the air from my lungs.

I sway. Gabe catches me.

“Where—” My voice snaps off, caught on a sob I can’t swallow. I try again, quieter. “Where are you taking him?”

Gabe says something, but I hear none of it. The pain is too loud. The loss too much to bear.

The vehicle disappears, and no one moves. We stand there, suspended in the hush left behind.

“Ready?” Gabe asks beside me, voice rough with everything he isn’t saying. None of us are. But we move anyway.

They bring a bus to carry us all home. Doors open and close in subdued clicks. No chatter. No ribbing. No comfort in routine.

Just silence.

The drive back to Guardian HQ is a blur of streetlights and reflection. Rain streaks the windows. Red taillights bleed across the glass. Rebel rests her head against Ethan’s shoulder. Jeb runs his fingers gently along Stitch’s spine, careful of the raw wounds beneath her shirt. Rigel doesn’t take his eyes off Mia. Walt hasn’t spoken since the trawler. Blake stares straight ahead like he’s still carrying Hank’s weight in his arms.

Gabe’s thigh presses against mine. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t look away from the dark outside. But his hand stays wrapped around mine like it’s the only tether he has.

At HQ, no one lingers. There’s no debrief. No gear unload. Just weary bodies peeling off into the night—each of us shattered in our own quiet orbit.

Gabe leadsme to his car, fingers brushing the small of my back. He opens the door like he always did, like nothing’s changed. But everything has.

The car door slams shut with metallic finality. Gabe’s hands shake as he grips the steering wheel, knuckles still split and bloody from the bulkhead, from Malfor’s face, from everythinghis fists could find to destroy in the aftermath of violence and loss.

I sit in the passenger seat, numb. My body feels disconnected, like I’m floating somewhere above myself, watching a woman who looks like me stare through rain-streaked glass at a world that doesn’t make sense anymore.

The engine turns over. Gabe’s breathing is too controlled; the kind of deliberate rhythm that means he’s fighting something larger than grief.

The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. Not the comfortable quiet we used to share, but something raw and bleeding that neither of us know how to bandage.

“Is he really dead?” The words slip out before I can stop them, barely above a whisper.

Gabe’s hands tighten on the wheel until his knuckles go white. “Yeah. He’s really dead.”

The confirmation hits like a physical blow. My chest constricts; my lungs forget how to expand properly. Some part of me has been waiting for this to be another nightmare, another trick, another psychological game Malfor was playing.

But it’s real. The flatline was real. The sheet over his face was real. The cold skin beneath my fingers was real.