Jake barely caught her before she tore free.

The world was still shaking—echoes of gunfire, burning air, the chaos of war refusing to stop just because they had broken. Their child lay unmoving behind them, too still, too quiet, the kind of quiet that screamed louder than any explosion ever could.

She was shaking. Not crying—shattering. Breath coming too fast, eyes gone wild with a grief that had already tipped into fury. Jake knew that look. He’d seen it on battlefields, right before someone stopped caring whether they lived or died.

“Hey—hey,” he said, gripping her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. His voice cracked despite his effort to keep it steady. “Look at me. Please. Look at me.”

She struggled, a sound tearing out of her that wasn’t words, wasn’t anything human. She wanted blood. She wanted the world to hurt the way she did.

Jake pressed his forehead to hers, grounding, anchoring, his own tears finally spilling. “I know,” he whispered. “I know it hurts. I know you wanna burn everything down. I do too.”

His hands trembled as he held her face, thumbs brushing away tears that wouldn’t stop. “But not like this. Not now. If you go out there like this, we lose you too. And I can’t—” His voice broke. He swallowed hard. “I can’t lose both of you.”

The war raged on around them, indifferent, cruel.

But Jake stayed right there, holding her in the wreckage of their world, murmuring her name over and over like a prayer. Like an anchor. Like if he said it enough, she’d stay with him instead of disappearing into rage and grief.

Their child was gone.

But she was still here.

And Jake would do anything—stand against armies, against gods, against her own fury if he had to—to keep her breathing through this moment.

Because if grief was going to take them, it would not take them both.