Page 132 of His Eternal Claim

Kyle breathes hard on the other end as his bullet cracks through the air. “I lost visual.”

“What?”

“The tracker glitched when the blast went off—”

I yank my phone from inside my jacket while sprinting through the smoke. My hands are slick with blood as the tracker flashes a red dot.

It is moving.

It’s not here. It’s a few blocks away.

My pulse turns savage.

No.

Did she run while we blasted the building? Or did someone take her? Whatever it is, she can’t be far.

“Kyle.”

“Yeah.”

“Corner Vane and Hannah.”

“They’re trying to break south.”

“Trap them.”

“What about you?”

I shove another man into the wall hard enough to crack marble and put two bullets in his chest, and he drops.

My eyes stay on the red dot as I rush down the stairs. “I’m getting my wife.”

I cut the line and run. Everything around me blurs into bodies, smoke, and blood. My lungs burn, but there’s only one thing going through my head. I can’t lose her again. Not after years of surviving without her, of not being able to breathe the way I did with her.

I reach the entrance, and a foolish man lunges from a doorway with a blade. Well, they never learn.

I catch his wrist before he can raise it and snap it backward as the knife falls, and I drive it up under his ribs with his own hand. Warm blood floods over my hand as he collapses.

The tracker turns left. Twenty meters. Ten.

I hit the alley, and rain slams into my face, washing away the blood, but the crimson has already soaked through my shirt. Do I care? No. The only thing I care about in this godforsaken world is my wife.

The lightning splits the sky overhead, thunder shakes the buildings, and the red dot stops moving. My chest pounds so hard that it hurts.

I am about to take a left when a sharp pain explodes through my shoulder. I never anticipate the bullet that tears through me from behind as I stagger forward. My vision flashes white as my knees slam hard into wet pavement. I catch myself on one hand, blood spilling fast down my arm.

I inhale sharply and look down at the bullet wound blooming through my shirt as a laugh bubbles up my throat.

Of course, somebody thinks a bullet is enough to stop me. How fucking adorable.

My shoulder burns as my vision blurs for one ugly second before I taste copper.

And all I can think, all I can fucking think, is that Selene is somewhere close enough for me to feel it.

A few blocks. One red dot.

One heartbeat. Mine.