The phone is fused to my ear.
Leo's scream loops, high, raw, endless. Mommy. Mommy. Glass explodes. Something heavy crashes. Then silence so complete it feels like drowning.
I stand in the storm and die a thousand times in one heartbeat.
Ryan tears the phone away. Listens. His pupils blow wide, black swallowing gray. The burner cracks in his fist like cheap plastic. He hurls the pieces into the mud.
"Listen to me." His voice is gravel dragged over steel. "Your father is breathing. He stays hidden. We are three hundred miles from our son with no wheels and no time. We fix that now or we lose everything."
Acid has eaten his legs down to red meat and white bone. Blood hisses where rain hits it. He does not feel it. He is pure forward motion.
I nod. My spine straightens. My heart narrows to a single point of light: Leo.
We crash through underbrush, branches whipping my face, drawing blood I do not feel. The service road appears suddenly, a scar of mud and gravel lit by distant lightning.
Headlights.
A black armored SUV barrels toward us, royal crest gleaming wet on the door. Two guards inside, warm, dry, laughing over the radio.
They never even slow.
Ryan moves like the storm gave him claws. He is a shadow, then he is on the driver's side. The door rips clean off its hinges with a shriek of tortured metal. The guard has time for one startled grunt before Ryan's hand punches through the window, closes around his throat, and pulls. Blood fountains across the windshield in a perfect red arc. The SUV swerves drunkenly.
The passenger fumbles for his rifle.
I am already there.
I vault the hood, boots skidding across wet steel. My palm slams the open window frame. The guard's eyes meet mine, wide, terrified.
The Voice is quiet this time. A whisper meant only for him.
"Sleep forever."
His body jerks once, rifle clattering to the floor mat. I shove the corpse out into the mud and slide across the blood-slick seat.
Ryan drops behind the wheel. The engine roars before my door even latches. Tires spin, catch, and we rocket forward.
Rain lashes the windshield in sheets. Wipers fight a losing war. The speedometer needle kisses one-fifty and keeps climbing.
I brace one hand on the ceiling, the other clutching the dash. Every pothole feels like it will tear the axle apart. Every second is a knife twisting deeper.
I dial the landline again.
Dead tone.
Again.
Dead tone.
Leo's last scream is burned into my skull. I hear it between thunderclaps, between the engine's howl, between my own heartbeats. Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.
Ryan reaches across the console. His fingers brush my knuckles, gentle despite the blood and acid eating his skin.
"Aria."
I jerk away so hard my shoulder hits the door.
"Not now." My voice is razor wire. "Do not touch me until I have him in my arms."
He withdraws. Says nothing. Just presses the pedal harder.
The forest blurs into black walls on either side. Lightning forks overhead, turning the world white for an instant. In that flash I see the road ahead, endless, merciless.
Hours collapse into raw distance.
My thighs tremble from bracing. My lungs burn with exhaust and terror. The wooden wolf toy is still clenched in my fist from the prison, edges cutting my palm, grounding me in pain because pain is proof I am still moving.
Ryan's breathing turns shallow. Acid fumes have done something terrible to his lungs. Blood pools beneath his seat, thick and dark. He does not slow.
Mile markers flick past like heartbeats.
Two hundred miles.
One hundred and eighty.
One hundred and fifty.
Every number is a scream in my head.
I try the landline one more time.
Nothing.
The silence is worse than the scream.
I slam the phone against the dash until plastic shards rain across my lap.
Ryan's voice cuts through the storm, low, steady, the only anchor I have left.
"They burned our home. They took our son. When we find who did this, I am going to tear their world apart one scream at a time. But first we get Leo. Then we burn everything else."
I nod. My reflection in the window is a stranger, silver eyes glowing, mouth set in a line I do not recognize.
The safe house mountain rises ahead, crowned by fire.
Orange light paints the clouds from underneath. Even through the storm I can see it: flames devouring timber and stone, punching through the roof like a volcano. The heat reaches us miles out, a wall that slaps the windshield.
Ryan downshifts hard. The SUV fishtails, tires howling. He fights the wheel and slams to a stop sideways across the access road, blocking it completely.
I am out before the engine dies.
My door flies open. I hit the ground running. Mud sucks at my boots. Rain turns to steam the instant it touches the inferno.
Heat rolls over me, thick, choking. Smoke claws down my throat like talons.
"Leo!"
My voice is swallowed by the roar of fire.
Bodies litter the courtyard, resistance wolves I trained with, ate with, laughed with. Throats torn open. Silver bolts buried in hearts. Some are still burning.
I vault a collapsed beam, flames licking my sleeves. Sparks swirl around me like angry fireflies.
"Leo! Answer me!"
Nothing.
I tear through the main hall, kicking aside flaming furniture. The roof groans overhead, ready to cave. Heat blisters my face. My hair singes.
Still nothing.
I stumble out the back, past the armory now a crater of exploded ammunition, past the medical wing where healers once saved Damon's life.
Near the shattered perimeter wall I find him.
Not Leo.
A royal attacker in melted armor, face charred beyond recognition. His fist is frozen in death around something small, wooden, familiar.
I drop to my knees in the mud.
Pry the rigid fingers apart one by one.
The carved wolf Ryan made last winter stares up at me, ears chewed flat by puppy teeth, fur worn smooth by Leo's constant grip.
It is soaked in blood, warm, fresh.
I turn it over slowly. A single claw mark gouges the belly, deep enough to splinter wood.
Whose blood?
Ryan staggers up behind me, skin blistered, clothes half burned away. He sees the toy and makes a sound like something dying.
The safe house is ash.
Our army is broken.
Our son is gone.
I rise.
Rain cannot touch the silver fire pouring from my eyes. The carved wolf presses against my heart, sticky with someone else's life.
I do not feel the storm anymore.
I do not feel anything except the promise carved into my bones.
Someone took my son.
I will find them.
And the world will learn what happens when a mother's love turns to war.