ETHAN POV
The f**k?!
Why was she so fast?
I lunged after her without thinking, branches snapping under my boots as I pushed through the dark, my head already spinning through worst-case scenarios I didn’t want to name. The last time she’d thrown herself into a fight, she’d almost died.
That memory hit hard.
Too hard.
Fear followed right behind it, sharp and immediate, cutting through everything else.
One second she was beside me—
the next she was gone.
Just instinct. Just motion.
And then I heard her yell, half panicked, half angry. Enough to make countless terrifying scenarios spin in my head.
My chest tightened, I could feel in my guts something was very, very wrong.
There was blood.
A lot of it.
I broke through the brush and dropped beside her, my eyes already moving, sca
