The blast tore through Sera's side hard enough that for one heartbeat she looked… wrong.
She didn't look weak, she could never look weak. But whatever they had hit her with was enough to almost tear her in two.
A strip of her abdomen peeled away in a wet arc, her muscles exposed as her ribs flashed pale beneath. Heat and blood hit the air all at the same time, and the smell snapped across the ridge like a thrown hook.
Every single thing around her paused like even the very world held its breath to see what was going to happen next.
Lachlan's lightning stalled mid-crawl, the charge hanging in his fingers as if it had forgotten how to move. Zubair's heat held in his chest, compressed and ready, but not released. Even Aerenyx stopped walking for a fraction of a second, his gaze locking on Sera's torn body with a kind of cold attention that wasn't fear.
But for Alexei, he felt the pause like a fist around his throat.
