Chapter 1006
Liam didn’t answer. He didn’t look at Skye. He just pressed harder, using his body as a wall to keep Alistair from making a fatal mistake. But from where Skye lay on the ground, it looked like surrender. It looked like Liam was stopping the only person trying to save her.
Preston laughed. “Smart boy, Liam. You always knew when to fold.”
He crossed to Skye and grabbed her injured arm, his fingers finding the wound and pressing in. She cried out — a jagged sound that tore her throat.
“Get up, cousin,” Preston sneered. “Someone is very eager to meet the woman who burned down the mountain.”
He dragged her toward the helicopter. Her feet carved furrows through the dirt. She couldn’t fight. The blood loss was tilting the world sideways.
“Liam!” Skye gasped, reaching out with her good hand.
Liam turned his head. He saw her. He saw Preston dragging her like debris. His eyes were wide, filled with a panic she had never seen there before. But he didn’t release Alistair. He kept him pinned against the rock.
“Don’t hurt her!” Liam shouted at Preston. “That wasn’t the deal!”
“The deal changed when she blew up the legacy,” Preston said, shoving Skye into the back of the helicopter.
ո𝗈𝘃e𝗹𝘴 𝗂𝘯 𝘁𝘳еn𝗱 𝗈𝘯 𝗴𝘢l𝗻o𝘷𝖾ls.𝗰o𝘮
“What about the boy?” one of the mercenaries asked, gesturing toward Liam.
Preston paused with one foot on the skid. He looked at Liam, then at the unconscious Julian, then at the raging Alistair.
“Take the Kensington heir,” Preston ordered, his voice cold and flat. “Bastian wants a family reunion. Leave Thorne. Let him howl at the moon.”
Before Liam could react, two mercenaries drove the stocks of their rifles into his skull. He crumpled. They dragged his limp body into the helicopter and dropped him beside Skye.
“No!” Alistair screamed, scrambling to his feet as the laser dots vanished. He ran toward them, ignoring everything.
The helicopter lifted. The downwash blasted dirt into Alistair’s face. Through the window, Skye watched him running toward her, reaching out, his mouth forming her name over the roar of the engine.
Then the door slid shut.
Pain has a way of waking you up even when the drugs want to keep you under. It was a sharp, rhythmic throbbing in Skye’s shoulder that pulled her out of the darkness.
She tried to move, but her limbs felt heavy, like they were filled with lead. She blinked, her eyelids sticky. She wasn’t in a hospital. The ceiling was ornate plaster, peeling in the corners, illuminated by a harsh, portable surgical light.
She was moving. Or rather, the bed she was on was moving.
“Careful with the corners!” A voice shouted. Familiar. Panicked.
Liam.
Skye forced her eyes open. She was on a gurney being rushed down a long, tapestry-lined hallway. Liam was there, his hands zip-tied in front of him, flanked by two guards, but he was shouting instructions at the people pushing her gurney.
“She’s lost a liter of blood,” Liam was saying to someone Skye couldn’t see. “If you don’t get a surgeon in here in five minutes, she goes into shock.”
“She is resilient,” an older voice replied. Calm. Detached. “She survived the fire once. She will survive a bullet.”
.