Chapter 244 Chapter 244

Chapter 244 Chapter 244
Amber

My tears blurred everything in front of me, but I wiped them away with shaking hands.

Slowly. Deliberately.

If this was going to be the moment that decided everything, I needed to see clearly.

I turned to Erlan.

My heart was still breaking. My mate was bleeding out behind me. My entire world had already shattered. But my face was calm.

“You win,” I settled.

The words tasted like poison in my mouth.

Erlan stilled.

For a second, he looked almost suspicious. Then the suspicion melted into triumph.

A slow, rancid grin stretched across his face, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Smart girl,” he murmured.

I took a step toward him.

Then another.

I forced my shoulders to relax.

I spread my arms wide.

An offering. A surrender.

His grin widened until it looked inhuman.

He opened his arms too, welcoming me in as if this were some twisted romantic reunion instead of the aftermath of attempted murder.

I stepped closer.

I could smell the gunpowder on him. The faint metallic scent of blood clinging to his clothes—my Rayne’s blood.

I stopped right in front of him.

He leaned down slightly, clearly expecting my body to melt against his.

Instead, I leaned closer to his ear.

And with every ounce of hatred my soul could muster, I whispered,

“Go to hell, you despicable bastard.”

Confusion flickered across his face.

It lasted less than a second.

Because before he could react, before he could process the venom in my voice, I shoved him with everything I had.

With every ounce of grief. With every ounce of rage. And every ounce of love I had for Rayne.

I pushed.

Erlan stumbled backward, straight into the spinning helicopter rotors.

What happened next was instantaneous. And horrific.

The blades caught him mid-stagger.

There was a sickening, wet crunch as metal met bone.

For the briefest second, his body jerked violently upward as if suspended by invisible strings and then his head separated from his shoulders in a gruesome spray.

Blood erupted outward in a violent arc.

His decapitated head spun away, disappearing somewhere across the concrete as the rest of his body was dragged into the rotating blades.

The sound—

Goddess.

The sound of body grinding, skin ripping, flesh tearing and bone splintering was one I would never forget till the day I perish.

His torso twisted unnaturally as the blades ripped through muscle and organ, shredding him into pieces that were flung outward in all directions.

It was not clean.

It was not quick.

It was carnage.

Fragments of him scattered across the rooftop. Strips of fabric. Chunks of flesh. Dark red mist spraying into the air like a macabre rain.

And then it was over.

What remained of Erlan dropped in mangled, unrecognizable pieces to the ground below the helicopter.

Silence followed.

But not true silence.

The rotor blades kept spinning.

And blood—

His blood—

Covered me.

It splattered across my face, hot and thick. It soaked into my hair, dripping down the strands and matting them against my skin. It soaked the front of my clothes, saturating the fabric until it clung to me heavily.

I was bathed in red.

For a moment, I simply stood there.

Frozen.

Then my stomach heaved violently.

I stumbled backward and fell to my knees, bile rising up my throat as I vomited onto the concrete. My entire body shook uncontrollably. My hands pressed against the ground to steady myself, but they slipped slightly in the blood.

It was over.

Erlan was dead.

He couldn’t torment us anymore.

He couldn’t threaten Rayne or our daughter.

He couldn’t touch me.

It was over.

The realization flickered briefly.

And then my gaze shifted.

Rayne.

He was still lying there.

Unmoving.

Still bleeding.

The world narrowed again.

I scrambled to my feet and ran to him, my knees buckling as I dropped beside him.

“Rayne…”

My voice cracked.

I lifted his upper body carefully and pulled him into my lap. His weight was heavy and limp. His skin felt too cool beneath my trembling fingers.

I tapped his cheek gently.

“Rayne? Hey… hey, wake up.”

No response.

I tapped harder.

“Rayne.”

Nothing.

Panic clawed its way back into my throat. I pressed two shaking fingers against his neck, searching for his pulse.

It was there.

But barely.

So faint it almost wasn’t.

My heart plummeted into my stomach.

“Rayne fucking Hunter, get up right now!” I sobbed, my voice breaking as I cradled his face in my hands. “I command it. Open your eyes, please…”

My tears fell freely, splashing onto his cheeks, mixing with rain—

Rain?

A flash split the sky.

Lightning cracked overhead, bright and violent.

Thunder followed immediately after, rumbling through the air as heavy droplets began to fall.

Within seconds, the rain poured down relentlessly, soaking both of us as if the heavens themselves were grieving.

“I accept that this is my fault,” I choked out. “So please wake up. You can’t die. Too many people need you.”

My hands pressed against his chest as if I could physically keep him tethered to this world.

“This Pack needs you. Your mom needs you. Our daughter needs you.”

I sniffed hard, my breath hitching uncontrollably.

“I need you, Rayne.”

The words tore out of me raw and unfiltered.

“I need you because I love you.”

The storm roared around us, rain plastering my hair to my face, washing streaks of blood down my skin.

“I love you so much that it’s probably going to be the end of me,” I whispered brokenly. “Are you really going to die before you hear it from me? That’s not fair, now is it?”

I shook him gently.

“If you open your eyes, I promise I’ll never get mad at you again.”

Nothing.

He remained still and unresponsive.

I pulled him tighter against my chest, cradling his head beneath my chin as the rain beat mercilessly against us.

“You can’t leave me, Rayne,” I sobbed. “You can’t leave me after doing so much.”

My chest felt hollow. Empty.

“What will I do with all this guilt? How am I supposed to go on?”

My fingers dug into his soaked shirt.

“You promised to stay with me and Evalie. You promised to keep us happy. Whatever happened to that, huh?”

The rain mixed with my tears until I couldn’t tell them apart.

“I’m sorry for ignoring you,” I cried. “I’m sorry for pushing you away, I'm sorry for bringing Erlan back into our lives just because I wanted to make you jealous. I’m sorry for everything.”

My voice cracked completely.

“Just please open your eyes. I’m begging you, Rayne…”

He remained stiff in my arms. Too stiff.

I leaned down, pressing my ear against his chest.

The storm was loud.

Thunder crashed again overhead.

The rain drummed against concrete.

I strained to hear it.

His heartbeat.

Anything.

But I couldn’t hear it.

It’s the storm, I told myself frantically. It’s just the storm drowning it out.

That has to be it.

He can’t be gone.

HE CAN’T.

I pressed harder against his chest, willing myself to hear something.

Anything.

Even as I tried to convince myself, something inside me felt wrong.

Irma.

She had gone quiet. She wasn't just calm or resting. She'd gone radio silent. So silent that I could barely feel her presence at all. I reached out for her, wanting just a bit of comfort. Some reassurance that Rayne was just tired, that he'd fainted from exhaustion and blood loss but then, like the sudden, sharp prick of a needle—

Something snapped.

I felt it physically in my chest.

A violent, invisible crack.

The weak, deeply frayed bond between Rayne and I finally gave way like a cut string.

It lashed through me like a whip, searing and devastating.

And in that instant—

I knew.

“No.”

The word came out barely audible.

Then louder.

“No.”

My entire body began to shake violently as the truth settled in like ice in my veins.

He wasn’t coming back.

He wasn’t breathing.

He wasn’t—

A scream tore out of me unlike anything I had ever made before.

It was unhinged. Animalistic. Mad.

It echoed through the storm, rising above the thunder, above the rain, above everything.

I screamed and screamed and screamed, clutching his lifeless body to my chest as the sky wept with me.