Ryker POV
“Get our boys back,” Reika says through the link as I raced toward the Packhouse. I repeatedly kept trying to command her through the bond and the mind link, but nothing worked as I felt her grow weaker. My lungs scorched as I tried to get to her, so close. Yet the distance felt impossible when she suddenly stopped talking, falling silent in my head.
“Reika!” I called through the link as I ran for the Packhouse. Brax pushed us as hard as we could go when Brax hit the dirt, and a tortured groan left him. My body felt like it was engulfed in flames. Brax writhed in agony as he tried to take her pain when it suddenly stopped.
We were five hundred meters from the Packhouse when I was forced to shift back, and I found myself lying in the dirt. Brax suddenly went as silent as Reika, and the bond felt numb.
The mate bond went quiet as I broke through the treeline surrounding the property. My legs almost gave way when I saw the house, and crushing pain shredded throughout my chest, making me clutch it.
I trip over the wire fence unseeingly as I force my legs to move, my claws slashing through the wire to free me.
So much noise filled the air as Pack members tossed buckets of water on the house, giving out orders to one another. Yet all I saw was flames, the roof had collapsed, and the front door was no longer accessible as the front porch collapsed as I grew nearer.
“Reika!” I screamed, and half broke down as I neared the house. I caught a glimpse of Tyson and Ace but couldn’t see Lucy as I raced forward when I was hit from the side. Arms wrapped around my waist as I hit the dirt, and his weight crushed me to the ground.
“You can’t go in there,” Tyson snarls at me, trying to pin me down.
“She can’t be saved; she is gone, brother,” he gasps, and I roared. Tossing him off me, Ace suddenly appears in his place along with some warriors, and my claws slip out, slashing and attacking anyone that gets in my way.
“She is there, let me through,” I bellow the command, and they hit the dirt as my rage-filled aura battered them down. Ace fights against it, and so does Tyson as they both charge at me.
I swing blindly at them, and my fist connects with Ace’s face, and he goes sprawling on the ground when Brax shoves forward, lending me his strength before we tear into Tyrant, Tyson’s wolf who tried to block us from getting to her.
I suddenly choked, clawing at my throat as I gasped for air, and my eyes flitted to the house. Brax takes over, and I let him have control. Driven on instinct, he searches for the pull to her, letting it lead him to Rayan’s bedroom window, yet it was too high for us to jump as the roof had now collapsed in, and Brax whimpers. My eyes move to a huge hole in the side of the house where the kitchen used to be.
A moment later, I rip at the hands that try to hold us back from stepping into my burning home before my foot connects with Tyson’s midsection and knocking him down, but I don’t wait to check on him. Instead, covering my mouth and nose with my hand, not that it did much, I step inside what used to be the kitchen, the bare frame of the house still standing thanks to the sandstone brick exterior.
Brax tore through the place just as the second floor started collapsing. The roof above crushed half the area, and my skin burned and blistered as the flames blew over me.
Brax tried to heal us as quickly as possible when we came to what remained of the foyer; the fireplace running up the center of the house was the only thing holding the roof up where we stood.
However, the roof had collapsed on the stairs, and the scorched brickwork of the structure was barely holding together.
“Reika?” I call out before choking on the hazardous fumes. My eyes dart around, trying to find a way to the next floor; water running over the landing above and spilling on the floor around me makes me look up, and the banister directly above still held firm. Regardless, the walls were covered in flames above.
“She is up there, she isn’t dead, she is alive barely,” Brax growls. The vibration of the bond barely existed. Still, it was there.
The living room suddenly caves in, sending flames and dust all over me, and I groan as pain flares across my back, face, and left arm.
“There,” I tell Brax at the crushed stairs, the tiled roof crushing the ground.
“We will be burnt alive,” He growls, yet I could feel his determination.
“Now!” I roar at him, not giving a damn it was the only way up to the banister; we just had to endure it. The collapsed roof made the place a raging inferno as the air fuelled the fire. Chunks of concrete fall from the floor above as the house crumbled around us, also trapping us in it firey confines. The only way out now is up.
Gritting my teeth, I run up what used to be the staircase, the tiles like hot coals under my feet, but adrenaline forces me forward, and we pivot at the last second and jump across.
My fingers only just managed to catch the banister above, and a mangled scream left me as my hands locked around it. The metal glowing red, and I feel the skin of my hands stick and melt to it as I force myself up. The putrid smell of flesh burning filled my nose.
The inside of my thigh melts to the metal as I swing my leg over, and my skin pulls away as I pull away from it. The ground was soaking wet but turning to steam and boiling hot as the flames licked at the walls around us.
Dropping to our hands and knees, we tried to remain under the smoke, the toxic fumes making us delirious as we made our way to where the bathroom was, feeling the pull in that direction. The tiles were hot under our hands. The double sinks and the overflowing bath spilled onto the floor.
The ground felt unstable as we tried to make our way to her. The wall shared with Rayan’s room was busted through, a hole barely big enough to squeeze through, the broken tiles covered in blood, and the mirror shattered on the floor around the sink basin.
The water still poured out, yet the pipes had heated, making the water boiling as it streamed out.
“She is in the tub,” Brax chokes as I clutch the side and pull myself up.
Gazing into the blood-filled water was Reika, her skin blistered, bright red and she was not breathing. She boiled herself alive. Diving my hands into the bathtub. I rip her out of the bubbling water.
It was that hot I groaned and fought the urge to pull my arms out. We pull Reika out, water sloshing over the sides of the tub, and my back melts against the clawfoot tub as I lean against it.
Moving her to the floor, I placed my hands on her chest and started compressions. We grew weaker, the smoke becoming too much, and not even Brax could heal us fast enough. I punch the center of her chest with one last breath before collapsing over her body.
My body tingled as life started to leave me when I felt her heave a breath from under me.
Her body convulses, and she rolls underneath me. “You fool,” she gasps and sputters before collapsing.
“Get out,” Brax orders, the words slurred, but the command is our final one as he forces what little strength we have left into forcing our aura over her. I welcome death with open arms, unable to move as the fumes ravage my lungs, praying some miracle can get her out. I couldn’t live without her, but please let her live without me. My kids can live without a father, but they need her; she needs to live for them.
“Nothing like a barbeque. However, a cooked wolf isn’t a delicacy I want to try; your ass would be tough like jerky,” comes a voice.
My mind was unclear about whose voice it belonged to, yet the smell of burnt almonds could be tasted on my tongue when I wheezed out my last breath. The smell and taste are somehow oddly familiar to me.