The light she held was so stark it cast the rest of the world into grays and blacks. Slowly, her eyes opened, amber blazing like the first pure rays of dawn. A soft, secret smile graced her mouth.

Her eyes lifted to the Gate looming above her. The light between her hands grew stronger.

Ruhn fell to his knees.

“I am Bryce Quinlan,” she said to the Gate, to the void, to all of Hel behind it. Her voice was serene—wise and laughing. “Heir to the Starborn Fae.”

The ground slid out from under Hunt as the light between her hands, the star she’d drawn from her shattered heart, flared as bright as the sun.

Danika knelt on the asphalt, hands interlocked behind her blood-soaked hair. The two gunshot wounds to her leg had stopped leaking blood, but Bryce knew the bullets remained lodged in her upper thigh. The pain from kneeling had to be unbearable.

“You stupid cunt,” the asp shifter spat at her, opening the chamber of his handgun with brutal precision. Bullets were on the way—as soon as his associate found them, that gun would be loaded.

The agony in Bryce’s injured arm was secondary. All of it was secondary to that gun.

The motorcycle smoldered thirty feet away, the rifle thrown even farther into the arid scrub. Down the road, the semitruck idled, its cargo hold filled with all those petrified animals on their way to gods knew where.

They had failed. Their wild rescue attempt had failed.

Danika’s caramel eyes met the asp shifter’s. The leader of this horrific smuggling ring. The male responsible for this moment, when the shootout that had taken place at a hundred miles an hour had turned on them. Danika had been steering the motorcycle, an arm looped through Bryce’s leg to hold her steady as she’d aimed her rifle. Taken out the asps’ two sedans full of equally hateful males intent on hurting and selling those animals. They’d been nearing the racing semi when the male before them had managed a shot to the motorcycle’s tires.

The motorcycle had flipped, and Danika had reacted with a wolf’s speed. She had wrapped her body around Bryce. And taken the brunt of the impact.

Her shredded skin, the fractured pelvis—all thanks to that.

“Bryce,” Danika whispered, tears running down her face now as the reality of this colossal fuckup set in. “Bryce, I love you. And I’m sorry.”

Bryce shook her head. “I don’t regret it.” The truth.

And then the asp shifter’s associate arrived, bullets in hand. Their clink as they loaded into the gun echoed through Bryce’s bones.

Danika sobbed. “I love you, Bryce.”

The words rippled between them. Cleaved Bryce’s heart wide open.

“I love you,” Danika said again.