The world became a violent spin of metal, glass, and screaming brakes. One moment, Elara was driving through the lashing rain, the rhythmic thump of the wipers a futile mantra against the storm, her hands clenched on the steering wheel as if it were the only solid thing left in a universe he had shattered. The next, blinding white light flooded the cabin from behind, twin suns hell-bent on her destruction. A brutal impact jarred the car's rear, sending it into a sickening, graceful slide across the slick asphalt. Her last coherent thought wasn't of Alistair, but of the cruel irony: escaping one cage only to be delivered into another.
The rental car, a flimsy metal shell against the orchestrated violence, left the road with a shriek of tortured rubber. It tore through a flimsy guardrail as if it were tissue paper and began a tumbling, bone-jarring descent down a rocky, rain-swept embankment. The world was a kaleidoscope of inverted trees, shattered glass glittering like fallen stars, and the deafening roar of the crash. Her body was thrown against the seatbelt, a brutal restraint that stole her breath and painted livid bruises across her collarbone. The final impact against a gnarled pine tree was a thunderclap that silenced everything, leaving only the hiss of steam and the relentless drumming of rain on twisted metal.
Disoriented, paining a distant, throbbing bell in the fog of her shock, Elara hung upside down, suspended by the seatbelt. Blood trickled from a cut on her forehead, a warm, sticky thread against her cold skin. The acrid smell of deployed airbags, like burnt electrical fire, mixed with the clean, wet scent of torn earth and pine. This is it, she thought with a strange detachment. This is how it ends. Not by his design, but by random, brutal chance.
But then, through the fractured windshield, she saw them. Dark, impersonal figures materializing from the storm, their movements efficient and devoid of emotion. This was no accident. The precision of the impact, the sudden appearance of these men — it was an execution. A fresh, cold terror, sharper than any Alistair had ever inspired, lanced through her. He had broken her heart, but these men were here to break her body.
The car door was wrenched open with a metallic screech. Rough hands grabbed her, uncutting the seatbelt with a knife, and she fell in a heap onto the wet, leaf-strewn ground. The cold mud seeped through her clothes, a grounding, filthy reality. She tried to struggle, but her limbs were leaden, her thoughts syrupy. A man with a face as blank as stone hauled her to her feet, his grip vise-like on her arm.
This was his final move, she thought with a surge of bitter despair. The final phase. To have her killed and make it look like an accident. The ultimate possession — to own her very death.
But then, a voice cut through the rain, cold and absolute, a sound she knew in the deepest, most terrified parts of her soul.
"Unhand her."
The men froze. Elara's head swam as she looked toward the tree line. And there he was. Alistair. Silhouetted against the storm-lashed night, rain plastering his dark hair to his forehead, his tailored clothes soaked through. He stood without a coat, his posture not one of a businessman, but of a primal force of nature. And in his hand, held with a terrifying steadiness, was a gun, its dark metal glinting in the intermittent flashes of distant lightning.
His eyes were not on her. They were fixed on the man holding her, and in them was a promise of annihilation so complete it made the cold rain feel warm.
"She belongs to me," he said, the words a low, possessive growl that carried over the wind, a vow that was both her salvation and her eternal sentence.