Prologue
12 years ago
Rain hits like needles. Cold, endless, and biting.
It soaks through my clothes, washing away the blood crusted to my skin and turning the dirt beneath me into a thick, red sludge.
I can’t breathe.
Every single nerve in my body screams in agony. My ribs are broken, at least two of them, splintered and digging into my lungs. My throat is torn open, my voice completely stolen by the iron taste of my own blood. My left eye is useless. Swollen. Slashed. Blind.
I’m not entirely sure how I’m still alive. Or why.
My knees buckle, my body giving out completely as I collapse into the mud. The freezing ground welcomes me like an open grave.
I close my one good eye. I let the darkness take me.
“What the actual hell do you think you’re doing?”
The voice cuts through the roaring storm like a flash of lightning. It’s sharp, feminine, and absolutely dripping with attitude.
I force my eyelid open. Just once. I can’t move my neck, so I barely manage to tilt my chin just enough to see...
Boots. Slim legs.
She is standing directly over me, looking for all the world like she owns the very earth I am currently bleeding into.
“It’s raining, you idiot,” she says, planting her hands firmly on her hips. “What, you thought this was a good time for a nap?”
What...
I can’t talk. My throat is nothing but a raw, open wound. But inside my head, my mind screams: Is she insane? I am literally dying.
She lets out a deep, dramatic sigh, as if my dying body is nothing more than a minor inconvenience to her day.
Then, I feel her hands grip tightly under my shoulders. She’s small, but she is actually trying to lift me.
“You’re heavy as hell,” she mutters, straining against my dead weight. “What were you, a linebacker in a past life? Or did you just snack on concrete for fun?”
I want to kill her.
If I had a fraction of my strength left, I would grab her by the throat and... well, then I'd kill her. Slowly. Very, very slowly.
But as she pulls, my body shifts. Pure survival instinct fights to take the weight off her, kicking in just so I don't let her carry all of me. Every single micro-movement is white-hot agony. She grunts, dragging me forward anyway, step by brutal step.
“Okay, listen up, big guy,” she pants, her grip tightening on my jacket. “If you die in my house, I will personally raise you from the dead, strangle you myself, burn your corpse, and dance on the ashes. You got me?”
I can’t speak. But if looks could kill... she’d already be buried six feet under.
Still… she’s here. Holding onto me.
And somehow…
She’s the first reason I’ve ever had to want to live.
