She could still hear them fighting, and that was the worst part.
Lucan had moved her so fast the world had simply skipped, one moment road and chaos and Victor's wings filling the sky, the next the dense green quiet of the scrub fifty yards back, his hand already over her mouth before she'd processed the transition, she hadn't screamed. She was proud of that. There was only the sound of the battle carrying through the trees and the particular agony of standing still while the people she loved were bleeding for her.
"Don't," Lucan said against her ear, quiet and absolute, his arms locked around her from behind. He hadn't moved his hand from her mouth even after she'd stopped needing it there. She suspected he knew that. She suspected he didn't care. "Don't think about going back, don't even think about thinking about it."
She peeled his hand away from her mouth with two fingers, carefully. "I wasn't going to run back into the fight."
