Savage Heart (Wreck & Ruin 2)

He breaks, no, break isn’t the word. The man shatters, literally falls apart at my feet. Tears stream down his bloodied face and his scream shatters the air, piercing the space around us. I feel it in my bones, his pain, his anguish.

Sorrow grips my chest.

“Lex!” Wren sprints to me, panic written all over her face, followed by Eleanor, Kingston’s girlfriend.

Wren practically jumps into my arms, “I thought you were inside,” she whisper cries, “I thought.”

“I’m safe, little bird,” I smooth my hand down her hair, holding her to me. Feeling her body, she was safe. My Wren was safe. We should never have come but the Syndicate, I look back to the burning house, the shattered glass and bodies concealed inside, they were dead. They were officially over.

Eleanor kneels at Kingston’s side, pulling him to her. She cradles his head to her chest, crying silently while he shakes with his sobs.

“She didn’t get out,” I whisper to Wren. “Neither did Hunter.”

Wren blows out a shaky breath, tears welling in her eyes, “Kingston, I’m so sorry.”

“We have to get out of here before the services show up,” I say, “We need to leave Kingston.”

I felt numb.

I didn’t feel it when the doctors stitched me up later that day, didn’t feel it when Eleanor helped clean me up and washed away the blood and dirt on my skin. She stayed with me, at all times. Her hands and her kisses, and her words the only thing keeping me awake.

My baby sister was truly gone.

She was dead.

Isobel was dead.

No bodies had been recovered and the fire was still blaring if the news coverage on the event was to be believed. It was the second explosion in the city within days. They were linked of course.

But this one, this one took my sister.

It took her lover too.

She died in the Syndicate’s cells. Where it all began.

The pain flares at that thought. She died there.

I couldn’t cry anymore.

Eleanor soothes a hand down the back of my head, this whole thing reminding me of Ace only weeks ago.

I close my eyes.

Life was cruel.

Life was fucking savage.

And I wasn’t sure if I would ever recover from this.