He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 328

He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly

Chapter 328

Axisy’s POV)

The air went from tense–and–silent to tense–and–explosive in less time than it took me to finish exhaling.

One second, a standoff. The next, gunfire ripping through the open ground from every direction at once, men dropping, screaming, scrambling. DeLuca and my mother hauled me sideways before I fully registered moving, and we ended up crouched behind what remained of a low perimeter wall, blasted hall apart sometime earlier tonight, close enough to the ground that I could feel every impact brating through the stone.

I’d never felt anything like what hit me in that moment. Not fear, exactly, though there was plenty of that too. Something closer to disbelief. I’d said words – actual, ordinary words, out of my actual mouth and the entire world around me had rearranged itself in response. I’d known, in an abstract, someone- explained–it–to–me way, that my decision mattered now. I hadn’t actually believed it. Not until it detonated in real time in front of me.

DeLuca’s hand found my shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Yes. I think. I looked him over properly, worry crowding out everything else for a second, my eyes catching on the hand still pressed to his side. “Are you

okay?”

“Yeah. A faint, crooked smile. “Couple of scratches. Nothing serious.”

I smiled back, and neither of us believed it. He was hiding the pain for my benefit, and the fact that he didn’t get to decide whether I worried about that anyway sat there, unspoken, between us.

An explosion cracked somewhere close, and we all flinched deeper into the wall’s shadow.

My decision had done this. I understood that clearly now, turning it over while the ground shook slightly under another impact. I hated chaos. I hated bloodshed even more, genuinely, all the way down. But I’d learned enough tonight to know the difference between the choice I wanted to make and the choice that actually kept people alive. Nico wasn’t going to surrender. That much had been obvious before I ever opened my mouth. So the decision, hard and ugly as it was, had been the right one.

A gunshot cracked beside us, and one of Nico’s men dropped just past the edge of our cover, wounded but conscious, gun still gripped in his hand, eyes already finding us.

My mother moved before I could.

She knocked the gun from his grip with one sharp motion, grabbed something off the ground – I didn’t even see what – and brought it down against his head hard enough to end the fight instantly. Then she leaned back into cover like she’d just swatted a fly.

I stared at her, still not remotely used to this version of my mother, the one who apparently existed underneath the sick, gentle woman I’d known my whole

life.

Her breathing, though. That was what caught my attention once the shock passed, Heavy, Labored, in a way that had nothing to do with adrenaline. She’d been tunning on pure survival instinct for hours now, and I could see, clearly, that the cost of that was catching up to her fast.

All 7 could do was hope. Hope that the men who d sworn themselves to me, for reasons I still hadn’t fully accepted, could actually finish this and get us out.

The battle raged on around us– shouted commands, more gunfire, bodies falling in glimpses I caught and immediately wished I hadn’t. It went on long nough then I finally surfaced from the pank enough to think of something else entirely

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15:03 Fri, Sep 4 M

Chapter 328

Tessa Mabel My head snapped up. Where are they?

Hata was already scanning the same way I was, a full epshead of me as usual.

and Mabel, nigga? i confirmed.

They ran the other way when it started.”

of searching anyway, catching flashes of horror I didn’t want cataloged in my memory someone falling, someone elses leg buckling wrong beneath

in–word DeLuca spoke again

We need to move

agree, my mother said

I thought they were both insane Bullets seemed to be traveling in literally every available direction, and moving felt like volunteering to become one mo statistic in this mess. I opened my mouth to suggest waiting, just a little longer, just until-

Someone dropped into our huddle.

I flinched hard, already swinging a fist–sized stone at the intrusion before my brain caught up to who it actually was.

The hoarse–voiced man. The same one whod led the others into kneeling.

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