Sienna’s boots crunched on dry pine needles, the shack a fading speck behind them as she and Roman cut deeper into the woods. The truck’s bloody mess was miles back, that scream still ringing in her skull, but the air here was still—too still—thick with the tang of sap and something sharper, like metal or smoke.
Her fingers flexed around the vial in her pocket, its cold glass a tether to whatever hell Dorian had left her, and Roman walked ahead, his stride long and sure, gun tucked close, his silence loud enough to grate on her nerves.
“Say something,” she snapped, voice low, cutting through the quiet. Her breath puffed in the chill, her jacket stiff with dried mud, and she hated how exposed she felt—out here, with him, no walls to lean on.
He glanced back, eyes catching the faint starlight—dark, steady, peeling her open in a way that made her skin itch. “What’s to say?” he said, voice rough, low, like he’d swallowed gravel. “We’re moving. That’s it.” But there was a hitch in it, a c
