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He isn’t paying a lick of attention to me as he cuts down men twice his size and doesn’t double take. As if he knows they are done for without confirmation. It’s so hot. Out of all of the sides of Har, this is the one that equally scares me and sends a shot of adrenaline through my veins.

The plan Kai reported back to us was simple. Don’t kill anyone with a collar, kill everyone else. I haven’t used a gun in half a year, but today it was necessary.

The moment the door was kicked in, shouting followed and hasn’t stopped as the people inside fumble for their weapons, not quick enough.

This ‘compound’-as they call it-is now nothing but a slaughter house once we clear the first room and move forward. Carters men break up in groups, going in different directions, shouting their excitement as if they’ve been waiting on this.

Shaide cuts in front of me to go down the opposite hallway as Harlyn and indecision wars inside of me for point two seconds before I’m following in Har’s footsteps. There’s no way I’m letting him out of my sight. Not today, not ever.

Not possible.

Pushing aside that infuriating fact I ignore Shaide when he curses me, and pounding sounds behind me as my brothers follow.

“Plenty of men are going this way, we should have taken a different route. You’re supposed to be following my lead.”

He seethes, bullets flying from his gun as he unloads on the crazy fuckers coming at us.

“I’m not leaving him.”

I say as my aim hits true in the middle of a man’s forehead.

“That manic motherfucker has nine lives and has killed twice as many men than all of us combined since with stepped in here, he doesn’t need us!”

Shaide yells.

He wasn’t wrong. Har was a force of nature, his movement like that of wind. Natural. Effortless.

His name is gasped and whispered as we continue killing our way through this place. The name Devil falls from their shocked lips more often than not before the collared men and woman join us, taking arms against the ones who imprison them.

The moment feels powerful. Like something we could never comprehend. The day that survivors break their chains and we’re just intruders.

“Where is he?”

Har asks a brave looking tall woman.

“Haven’t seen him today.”

She responds and I wonder who he’s looking for.

I don’t have to wonder for long when Harlyn yell’s, “B!”, his head swinging this way and that as he searches for him through the fray of men, woman and… children, fighting for their lives.

There’s something familiar in the eyes of everyone here. It takes me a second to realize it’s because they remind me of Harlyn’s. The light has been snuffed out of the people locked away. The realization makes me feel foolishly stupid for ever believing what those man told me about Har that day in the club.

My self-loathing intensifies.

No matter how many times I take my gaze off of Harlyn, I ensure to always have him in my periphery. If he and Rex cut a corner, I cut a corner, if they slow, I do. Where his knife’s land, my bullets follow just in case.

This place is fucking huge, and I have no idea how we will ever find our way out with how deep we’ve gone.

Rounding a bend Harlyn screams over the gun fire and cries of death. “B!!”

Distantly I hear someone yell his name, but the voice doesn’t register from afar. It seems it does for him though because his face lights with that of hope and he takes off in a full sprint in that direction.

“Shit,”

I curse, then follow.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Shaide says as they follow my lead once more.

He’s so quick it’s hard to keep up. My heart beats faster and faster as Harlyn ducks and dodges the men reaching for him and just keeps going.

“B!”

“Harlyn?”

The voice sounds so familiar it stabs at the back of my mind while I try to place it.

He enters a large room and I follow. My brothers and I picking off anyone Har darts around. It’s crowded in here, Carters men and ours, along with the collared fighting off the men with the massive nasty scars across their faces.

A choked sob sounds to my right and I look over, anxiety turning my blood cold. Ressyn has stopped staring straight ahead, face ashen, body trembling.

We’re all over him immediately. “What’s wrong, are you hit?”

I ask just as Har’s voice sounds somewhere in the room. The name he calls for steals my breath and gives us all pause. As if we are one we slowly turn our heads and lay eyes on the ghost of my brothers dead husband.

“Blithe!”