Betrayed And Reborn: I Hoarded While He Begged의 모든 챕터: 챕터 1 - 챕터 8

Nora's POVThe ash tasted like iron and burnt lime, coating my teeth every time I pulled air into my lungs."Eli, please! Keep your eyes on me!"Eli was too thin. He was seventeen, but right now he looked twelve, crumpled in the grey dust against the perimeter fence of our compound. My hands were pressed flat against his chest, trying to hold his warmth inside his torn flannel shirt. Dark, thick blood welled between my fingers, refusing to stop.Behind us, the heavy iron blast doors of the shelter I had spent seven months fortifying stood shut.Through the narrow observation slit in the steel, two faces stared down at us.Julian Reeve, my fiancé. His dark hair was combed back, his collar spotless. Beside him stood Tessa, my best friend, clutching her designer leather duffel bag."Julian!" I screamed, my voice cracking until my throat tore. "Open the override valve! Eli is bleeding out! Let him in!"Julian didn't reach for the lever. He adjusted the cuff of his clean jacket, his expres

Cade's POVThe pain was an old enemy, but the face looking down at me was impossible.I had died watching her choke on grey ash. On Day 212, my boots had hit the dirt twenty minutes too late; her brother was cold, raiders were swarming like flies, and a rusted spear was buried in her stomach. I had held her while her pulse faded into nothing, screaming her name until an anti-materiel round took my skull from two hundred yards.Now, she was hauling two hundred pounds of my dead weight out of an alley, smelling like vanilla and clean soap, her pulse hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.*Nora Calder.* Alive. Seven days before the sky was supposed to turn to poison."Keep your head down," she hissed in my ear.Her grip around my uninjured arm was surprisingly fierce, digging into the nylon of my jacket. Rook flanked my bleeding side, his broad shoulder pressing into my hip to keep me upright.We cut through the service entrance of a pre-war apartment tower two blocks down, slipp

Nora's POVAt eleven-thirty that night, the basement was freezing.I slid through the heavy service door into the storage corridor, a thermos of hot broth and two heavy tactical flashlights tucked under my arm. Rook was on his feet the moment my boot hit the concrete, his tail giving two solid thumps against the chain-link mesh before he pressed his cold nose against the gate.Inside Cage 18B, Cade was already awake.He had tied off his wound with clean linen, pulling his black windbreaker on over his tactical vest. The color had returned to his face, though dark hollows still bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He sat on the milk crate, field-stripping his 9mm sidearm on a clean shop rag, inspecting the firing pin with the detached focus of an assassin."Stitches holding?" I asked, setting the thermos on the concrete."They'll hold." He snapped the slide back onto the frame with a sharp, metallic click, loaded the magazine, and slid the weapon into his waistband holster. His grey eyes

Cade's POVI didn't use the stairs to check the perimeter. I used the shadows. By four that afternoon, the construction crew had packed their industrial hammer drills into a van and cleared out. The hallway smelled of fresh masonry dust, cured epoxy, and the sharp chemical tang of high-tensile silicone sealant. I walked down the eighteenth-floor corridor with Rook pacing silently at my heel. The door in front of Unit 18A wasn't residential hardware anymore. It was an armored blast bulkhead—cold-rolled structural steel, recessed flush with the concrete frame to prevent pry-bar leverage, secured by three synchronized commercial deadbolts. I laid my flat palm against the center panel. The acoustic resonance was dead. No hollow ringing. The core was packed with ceramic composite. Before I could reach for the brass knocker, the primary lock turned with a clean, hydraulic *thud*. The steel slab swung inward three inches. Nora stood in the gap. She was wearing faded denim, work boots, and an