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“Yes. I’m going to be fine, Brock.” Her smile was somehow sorrowful. Her hands trembled as she reached out to take light hold of his. She kissed him, a fleeting graze of her lips across his. “You don’t have to worry about me now. Do what you need to do.”

“We have to get rolling,” Niko pressed. “This place needs to be cleared before any curious humans start sniffing around.”

Brock reluctantly agreed, stepping back from Jenna. She gave him a faint nod as he drew away another step.

He turned and strode toward the waiting Rover. As he got behind the wheel and started backing out to follow Rio in the other vehicle, part of him couldn’t help feeling as though the chaste kiss Jenna had given him was something more than good-bye.

It took Jenna and the others better than an hour to dispatch the dead Minions and clear the big old house of all traces of the battle that had occurred there. Hunter and Chase had since come and gone with the last of the rescued captives, leaving one of the Order’s SUVs for the cleanup team to drive back to the compound.

Jenna had worked in heavy silence, feeling tired and exhausted—emotionally drained—as she helped Alex roll up one of the bloodstained rugs and carry it out to the back of the Order’s vehicle.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Brock. Couldn’t stop dreading that she’d made a terrible mistake in letting him go to Newport with Corinne.

She wanted desperately to call him and urge him to come back.

But as much as she wanted to claim him for herself, she couldn’t be that unfair to him.

He had been granted a miracle tonight, and she would never dream of trying to take that away from him.

How often had she prayed for a second chance with Mitch and Libby after she’d lost them? How often had she wished their deaths had just been a cosmic mistake that could somehow be righted? How many times had she hoped beyond all hope for some impossible twist of fate that would bring back the love she’d lost?

She wondered now if she would still be able to make those prayers and wishes. She knew she couldn’t. To do so would be to negate all she felt for Brock, something that seemed even more impossible to her than a miraculous reversal of death.

But at the same time, she couldn’t ask Brock to make that kind of choice.

Even if it shattered her heart to let him go.

A wave of sadness rushed over her with the thought. She grabbed for the side of the Rover, her legs all but swept out from beneath her.

Alex was at her side in an instant. “Jen, are you okay?”

She nodded weakly, feeling suddenly more than empty inside. Her head spun, vision beginning to blur.

“Jenna?” Alex moved in front of her and sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, my God. Jenna, you’re wounded.”

Dazed, she glanced down to where Alex was now unfastening her bloodstained coat. As the thick wool parted, she saw the terrible truth of what had her friend’s face turning white as a sheet.

Jenna’s mind flashed back to the Minion who’d crashed into her from out of the shadows in the cellar. She recalled the glint of something metallic in his hand. A knife, she guessed now, staring at the slick red blood that soaked her shirt and ran all the way down the side of her leg, dripping a dark pool in the snow beneath her feet.

“Kade, hurry!” Alex shouted, panic climbing into her voice. “Renata, Niko—somebody, please. Jenna’s been hurt!”

As the others rushed out of the house in response, Jenna’s world began to fade around her. She heard her friends speaking anxiously around her, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Couldn’t keep her legs from crumpling beneath her.

She let go of the vehicle and the heavy darkness pulled her under.

CHAPTER

Thirty-three

Andreas and Claire Reichen’s house in Newport was a hive of anxious activity as the rescued Breedmates arrived that evening and began to settle into the large estate on Narragansett Bay. Brock and Rio had been the first to get there. Hunter and Chase had arrived moments ago with the rest of the former captives and were in the process of bringing them inside.

“Unbelievable,