I’d been running on pure adrenaline, the kind that burned through my veins hotter than the gunpowder still in the air behind us, boots pounding against the pavement as I rounded the corner with my men at my back.

My mind was still replaying the last few seconds of the shootout, the flash of muzzle fire, the men who went down, the voices shouting for me to keep moving.

I couldn’t have seen you no matter how hard I tried.

You were stepping out from a doorway I hadn’t checked, right into the line of my momentum before I even realized you existed. There was no time to stop.

My shoulder collided with you hard enough to rip the breath from your lungs, and the soft sound you made right before you collapsed hit me harder than any bullet ever had.

“Shit! Ryker, leave her,” one of my men barked out behind me, but the moment your body went limp, everything else dropped away. I caught you before you hit the ground, your head falling against my chest, your breath shallow, trembling.

In the pale streetlight your face looked small, too innocent for a night like this.

Another voice snapped, “Boss, we don’t have time! There are more coming-”

I glared over my shoulder. “We’re not leaving her.”

They tried one more time. “Ryker-”

“I said we’re taking her.” My voice cut him off.

Their silence told me they hated it. Their fear told me they wouldn’t argue again.

Carefully, I lifted you into my arms, your weight settling against me in a way that made something inside me tighten unexpectedly.

You didn’t even stir. Not a word. Not a single ounce of awareness of who I was…what I was, or what kind of hell you’d been dropped into.

“Who is she?” one of my men muttered.

I didn’t answer. Mostly because I didn’t know. But partly because even unconscious, you clung to my jacket like you thought I was safe.

My grip tightened around you as I walked faster. “Get the car,” I ordered. “She stays with us until I know she’s breathing right.”