“Things?” I blubbered, blinking rapidly. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I sniffled. Pathetic, really, but he looked so awful. “You could be shot and you don’t know it.” Definitely, too awful to be unharmed. “I think you should sit down.”
Ezra chuckled softly, staring into my eyes. “I wasn’t shot.” My lips started quivering, and his eyes dipped to my mouth, then back to my gaze. “Don’t do that. You know I suck when you start crying.” His fingers tightened on my cheeks, and he shook my head a little, which — oddly — did stop my tears. “I’m fine. I promise.”
My eyes darted over him again. “You sure?” That didn’t smell like his blood.
“I’m sure,” he crooned gently, leaning forward and kissing my forehead. “I don’t go down that easily. Have more faith.”
Believing him, the tension-filled breath that rushed out of me was enormous.
“Now that she’s done freaking out,” Antonio’s tone was factual as he glanced at the clock as Ezra pulled his lips back from my forehead, “it’s time for your next job.”
My wolf growled, my eyes still glowing. “He’s done enough.” Whatever it had been. He had enough blood on him that it should damn well be enough.
Antonio raised his eyebrows before returning his gaze to the window. “I was talking about the four of you.”
Ezra glanced to Pearl and Jack, both still unconscious. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
Vivian cleared her throat from under the desk across the room. Ezra and I blinked, both of us having forgotten she was here, and instantly dropped our hands from each other’s faces as she began speaking, her tone clipped. “I can probably carry one of them.”
“Your job’s the book,” Antonio specified. “Although, you will be going with the four of them.” He shot a Com man trying to get into the office. “And the others.”
As I stayed in a crouch next to Ezra in his blood-soaked black robe, my eyes were on Antonio, and I asked, “What job? What do you want us to do?”
After glancing at the clock again, his eyes found mine for a heartbeat before returning to his post. “What I’ve always trained you to do, Lil.” He paused to shoot another Com. “It’s time to run.”
“Run?” I asked sluggishly. Yes, I knew how to do that and what it took to do it successfully, but that didn’t seem advisable in the current situation.
He nodded. Another glance at the clock. “That was only the first round, with two more to go, and they’ve already got the place surrounded. If you want to save yourself, and your friends, it’s time to run. I taught you when. I taught you how. You know the odds. Think, Lil.”
First round. Two more to go. Already surrounded.
Slowly, I blinked. “Okay.” I nodded as I straightened, understanding. “We run.”
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