I definitely heard the boom.
Eleven
The floor trembled beneath his feet, and Midas knew in his bones that his world was ending.
“What was that?” Hand over her heart, Ares scanned the ceiling. “It sounded like…”
An explosion.
Alarms screamed through the room, deafening him, but he ignored the ringing in his ears.
All Midas could see beyond the red haze of his beast rising was the stack of boxes Hadley had been carrying. He skipped the elevator and hit the stairs, running as fast as his preternatural strength allowed. Prayers he had forgotten how to shape fell from his lips, pleas for mercy, for Hadley.
The knob on the door leading to her floor scalded his hand when he grasped it, and his heart lurched. He ignored the stink of skin cooking and yanked until it fell off its hinges. A gust of smoke blasted his face, and his eyes watered from the heat.
“Hadley,” he screamed over the roaring flames licking up the walls. “Hadley.”
Man and beast synced with a tectonic shift within him, and the two discordant halves aligned in a desperate bid to pool their resources to reach their mate.
Rushing into the hall, he pivoted toward her apartment and almost fell to his knees.
The door was gone, and shrapnel peppered the hall. Open sky nursed whirling smoke through the shattered windows, but the haze persisted as the fire burned hotter and spread faster than was natural.
“Goddamn it, Hadley.” His voice broke on her name. “Answer me.”
“Here.” A throaty cough pinpointed her location. “I’m here.”
Midas sprinted down the hall, burst into her apartment, and found her seated on a perfect circle of uncharred flooring.
“You set a circle,” he breathed, and instantly regretted it. “Thank God.”
With her finger, she smudged the line and lunged for him. “You’re on fire.”
“I’ll heal.” He would have carried her, but he couldn’t get his hands to work. “Don’t…worry…about me.”
“Your hair.” She hit him in the head and on the neck. “Why are you so flammable?”
Hair product, he wanted to quip, for one more of those smiles, but the edges of the hall warped and twisted as he ran out of oxygen.
Too much smoke in his lungs. Too far to run. Too late to escape.
Hands on his shoulders, she gazed into his eyes. “Tell your ego I’m sorry for this in advance.”
The world tilted horizontally, and he couldn’t figure out why.
“I’ve got you,” she panted. “Think light thoughts, okay?”
Disoriented, he didn’t fight the delusion of her carrying him to safety. It beat the reality, he was sure.
“Lighter,” she wheezed, her voice faint. “Light as a feather, a balloon, a…” She lapsed into a coughing fit. “I love barbeque too much to go out like this.”
Might as well tell the delusion the truth since the real Hadley was beyond his reach. “I love…”
Cool air kissed his face, sweet and clean, and he sucked in heaving gulps.
“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” she chanted as she carried him down the stairs. “Just another minute.”
Voices rang out in the stairwell, and more hands touched him until he wanted to scream from the agony.
“I’m Captain Gray,” a man rumbled from the other end of a long tunnel, “from Fire Station Thirteen.”
The man’s name was unfamiliar, but thirteen was the unlucky station that fielded the paranormal calls.
“Aubrey,” Captain Gray bellowed over the chaos. “Get upstairs and contain the fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring him to the infirmary,” Abbott barked over the others. “Her too.”
Hadley protested as Midas was wrenched from her arms, but Captain Gray didn’t bend.
“I’ve got him, sweetheart.” He called out two names, and more feet pounded the stairs. “Carry her.”
The grunts and curses told Midas that didn’t go over well with Hadley, and he wanted to smile with pride at how fierce she was, even with embers in her hair.
The bright scent of the blood she had drawn, fighting like a wildcat, stained the air with the smell of crimson…and feline.
God, his senses were fried if all it took was thinking cat to smell one.
The next thing he knew, he was lying in a hospital bed harder than some forest floors with Hadley next to him.
“Your hair,” she whispered, eyes closed. “I protected it.”
Midas glanced at her hand and the fistful of scorched curls she held in a death grip.
“It will grow back,” he assured her, grateful to be able to touch her, to convince himself she was alive.
“Promise?”
Smiling hurt, but he couldn’t help himself. “I promise.”
The squeal of rubber wheels over laminate flooring dragged Midas up from sleep, and he woke buried under Hadley, who had climbed over him in a protective cling while he rested. It made him ache, but not enough he would ever tell her so.
“First, she faked the flu to avoid a family dinner, and now this.” Mom clucked her tongue and gestured for the two packmates in the doorway to enter. “Am I such bad company that she would prefer blowing herself up to eating one meal with me?”
“I don’t think she blew herself up,” he rasped, his voice deeper than ever.
The nurses had wheeled a rolling tray over his bed and Hadley’s, which had been pushed together, giving them a broad dining surface. His mother had a third tray placed near the guest chair. Her helpers for the day unloaded fried chicken from Ben’s, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, corn on the cob, and potato wedges. There were individual chocolate lava cakes too.
“I wasn’t sure if you two were up to drinking more than water.” Mom did her best not to hover in front of the others, but her nervous tension vibrated through the room and cowed them all the same. Noticing this, she set a hand on each of their shoulders to disperse the oppressive sensation. “Thank you for your help. I’ll be home in an hour or two.”
Knowing better than to argue with their alpha about shucking her guards, they left.
“Water is fine.” He stroked Hadley’s hair, the ends as blackened as the curls she still gripped in her fist. “The more ice, the better.”
Mom ducked out to request three glasses of water from the nurses, and he used that time to wake Hadley.
“Open your eyes,” he coaxed, “and I’ll give you chocolate.”
“Mmm.” She snuggled closer. “Chocolate.”
“And fried chicken. From Ben’s.”
The faint rumble of her stomach where it pressed against him must have tipped the scales, and she yawned deeply.
“Breakfast in bed.” She went to rub her eye and got a face full of scorched hair. “What is…?”
“Hadley.” He clamped his hands on her wrists as her eyes rounded. “It’s okay.”
“I’m holding half your scalp in my hand.” She flexed her fingers. “That is not okay.”
“It’s only hair,” he soothed. “It will grow back.”