He collapsed behind me.
I spun around too fast, panicked breath exploding through my lips, head spinning with adrenaline and exhaustion.
As I stumbled, someone caught me.
He smelled of spices and leather.
Instantly, I burst into tears as Nova wrapped me up against his body in a tight, desperate hug that hurt as much as it comforted, and then he pushed me away so quickly I couldn’t protest.
“Got you, Li girl,” Zeus soothed in a rough whisper as he caught me and held me close.
I settled almost instantly in the protection his huge arms, but mostly because my eyes were transfixed on Nova.
He’d bent to the remaining sex trafficker, lifted him with a hand fisted in his bullet proof vest and then hammered a bone crunching punch to his right cheekbone. His silver rings cut three long gashes in the cheek, blood fanning through the air against Nova’s face.
He didn’t care.
If anything, it seemed to spur him on.
I watched in a trance as Nova beat the man to a bloody pulp systematically, ruthlessly. Sitting on his hips, pinning him to the floor of the freighter as The Fallen spoke softly to the traumatized girls behind me, Nova killed a man with his bare hands.
Just for threatening me.
When he was finished, he stood and turned to face us. There was blood dripping from his fists, in his hair, and on his feral, savagely handsome face.
The anger in his eyes scorched a hole through my chest that was cauterized the moment he stepped forward, hands open in benediction, face collapsed in sweet, aching relief.
“Lila,” he croaked, and then I was in his arms.
I didn’t care about the blood, the violence, the fact that this man had just murder another in front of me.
Bloodshed and violence were a part of The Fallen, Nova was a part of that and he? He was a part of me. I couldn’t judge him for doing what I wished I could have done.
Because I would kill them too.
All of them.
Irina, Javier, Piston, and the rest of their crew, the rest of the men on the boat bent on selling female flesh.
I was glad they were dead and gone.
I was proud that The Fallen had done it.
And Dane.
I pulled away from Nova’s fierce hug just long enough to whisper Dane’s name.
“Yeah,” he responded hoarsely, dipping his head down to press his forehead against mine. “He’s alive, Li. Fuckin’ beautiful asshole is alive.”
I nodded as my legs wobbled and tears ran scalding down my cheeks. I was too dehydrated to waste moisture on crying, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
“Mi hermana,” Dane called softly from behind me as if summoned like the devil by his name.
Nova didn’t release me, but he turned me in the circle of his arms so I could face my brother.
The second he did, Dane surged toward me, covered in sweat and blood, tears already streaming, and he hugged me.
He hugged us both.
My eyes clamped shut with the force of my sobs as I collapsed between the two men I’d loved since I was a girl and let them carry my entire weight. They only pressed closer, Dane’s hands in my hair, on my neck, eyes scouring my face like a cartographer mapping lands before he forgot what they looked like.
I didn’t do the same.
I didn’t care what Dane looked like, how he smelled, different or the same.
I only cared that he was in my arms after so many years, loving me still as I loved him the same. All I needed to do was press my cheek to the hard muscle over his chest, my hand to his neck over his thrumming pulse, and listen to the sound of his heartbeat.
All around us, women wept with relief as The Fallen coaxed them down the ladder into boats waiting below to take them to safety.
But I stood there for a long time, shaking like a leaf, but pinned between the two bodies that had always kept me anchored and safe.
It was all worth it, in that moment.
The fear, the trauma, the heartache.
To have saved those girls, protected my family, and finally, fucking finally, have Dane back in my life.
LILA
I didn’t leave the Booths’ for two weeks.
Mostly because they didn’t want me out of their sight. Diogo even took time off work to stay home with Molly and me. He taught me how to make my favourite vegetarian Portuguese dishes like caldo verde and pastéis de feijão in exchange for lessons on how to make Ellie’s maduras. Milo and Oliver insisted on working out with me in their makeshift garage weight room, so that I’d be stronger if anyone ever tried to fuck with me again. Hudson and Ares didn’t leave my side at all. Between Hudson’s constant jokes and cheer, and Ares peaceful aura and spoken poetry, I was distracted from the trauma of the past few weeks from the time I woke up until the time Molly put me to bed.