Chapter 107: Close Your Eyes, Baby

The corridor was a throat made of fire and they were being swallowed.

Alpha Thunderfang moved at a speed that should have been impossible for a man carrying two women, one of whom was coughing so hard her ribs felt like they were splintering inward. Maria’s red flame held. The cocoon around all three of them was the only reason the corridor hadn’t cooked them, the Emberclaw fire bending the orange outward in a radius that shrank with every step because Maria was running out of air and Emberclaw immunity didn’t extend to suffocation.

Derek was behind them. Nova could hear his boots. Could hear the axe dragging against stone because he had lowered it to one hand and was running with the other arm shielding his face. The sound of him was the only thing keeping her chest from caving in completely, because as long as she could hear those boots, he was alive and moving and the alternative was something her brain refused to model.

CRACK.

A support beam in the ceiling buckled. The beam swung down from the ceiling like a battering ram made of burning oak, trailing fire and embers, arcing directly towards Alpha Thunderfang’s back.

Derek saw it before anyone else did and processed the trajectory in a fraction of a second. The beam was going to hit his brother, who was holding two women. Unacceptable. He lunged forward and shoved Alpha Thunderfang between the shoulder blades with everything his body had left. The push was so hard it sent Alpha Thunderfang stumbling forward ten feet, clear of the impact zone.

The beam came down where Alpha Thunderfang had been standing half a second ago and where Derek was standing now.

BOOM.

The sound was concussive. Stone cracked under the impact. Embers exploded outward in a shower that peppered the walls and ceiling and every surface that hadn’t already committed to being on fire. The beam hit the floor and bounced once, rolling with the momentum of something that weighed more than a transport pod and had been accelerating since the ceiling released it.

"KEEP MOVING, LANDON. GO."

Derek’s voice tore through the smoke from somewhere behind the wall of fire and falling debris. The command was raw. Wrecked. Delivered at a volume that said the man giving it understood what he had just done and was making sure the man he did it for didn’t waste it by turning around.

Alpha Thunderfang stopped.

Nova felt him stop. Felt the muscles in his arms lock. Felt his entire body go rigid the way a body goes rigid when it hears something it was built to never walk away from.

He turned his head.

Through the smoke, through the fire, through the haze of heat and ash and collapsing infrastructure, she saw it.

Derek was on the floor. On his back. The beam was across his torso, pinning him from ribcage to hip, burning against his bare skin with the intimate cruelty of something that had chosen him specifically. His hands were on it, pushing, and his muscles were corded and straining and the beam was not moving because physics had made its decision and the decision was final.

His axe lay three feet from his right hand. Unreachable. Decorative at this point. A souvenir from a fight that was still happening because the headless body was in the corridor behind him, dragging itself towards him across the stone with the wet, grinding persistence of something that didn’t need a head to know where its target was.

Nova tried to pull out of Alpha Thunderfang’s arms. His grip tightened instantly, locking around her like a cage that she had not agreed to. She reached one hand towards Derek, stretching, fingers open, and tried to call his name. What came out instead was a raw, broken cough that tasted like smoke.

Across the fire, through the smoke, through the heat that was distorting the air between them like a lens made of hell, his eyes found hers. The gold behind them was dimming. What was left was the man, just the man, looking at the woman he had carried through a thunderstorm, who he had bought at a sacred ceremony, who he had held in a bath and kissed in the rain and called baby like the word had been invented for her specifically.

"NOVA, STOP FIGHTING HIM," he called over the flame.

He pushed against the beam. The wood was burning against his palms and his skin was blistering and healing and blistering again in a cycle that his Alpha blood was losing because the fire was faster than the regeneration and the regeneration was running out of material to work with.

"LANDON. I SAID GO. TAKE THEM AND RUN!" he roared, and the roar turned into a cough, smoke filling his lungs, his head falling back against the stone.

Alpha Thunderfang moved. Next to Nova, the Emberclaw princess was thrashing in Alpha Thunderfang’s other arm, trying to get back to Derek because Maria Emberclaw did not leave people in burning buildings and the concept of accepting loss was a language she had never learned and was refusing to study tonight. The Alpha was ignoring both of them

"PUT ME DOWN. PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW, ALPHA," she yelled.

"BE STILL," Alpha Thunderfang ordered, using his Alpha voice.

The Alpha command worked. Nova felt her entire body lock in place. Maria also went still next to her.

Derek turned his head back to look at Nova, who was still watching helplessly with tears in her eyes, being carried away by Alpha Thunderfang.

Derek’s lips moved.

She couldn’t hear him over the fire. But she could read it across the distance.

Close your eyes, baby.

Nova shook her head. More tears cut tracks through the ash on her face, and she was shaking her head because she was not going to look away from him. She was not going to let that be the last thing he saw. This was not his end.

Alpha Thunderfang turned a corner. Derek was gone, out of sight, and she was being carried away to a stairwell, leaving him behind.

Alpha Thunderfang set them on the landing, out of the flame.

Both of them were coughing. Maverick Emberclaw was still on Maria’s arm saying something that didn’t register in Nova’s ears.

"STAY," Alpha Thunderfang ordered, using another Alpha command before turning back towards the corridor.