Page 71 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
Freedom.
She looks at me, eyes burning.
I nod.
“Go.”
CHAPTER 24
LEAH
It happens fast. Too fast.
One second I’m sprinting behind Kalev through the fractured access corridor, boots splashing through ankle-deep coolant runoff, the next—an explosion erupts from the ventilation grate overhead, a sharp concussive boom that sucks the air out of my lungs and punches heat across my back. The blast slams me sideways into the wall. Bone hits steel. Pain blooms.
I go down hard, my right leg twisting under me at a wrong angle. Something cracks. Not a clean break—no, this feels messier. Searing heat flares from my thigh to my ankle, and the second I try to push up, lightning shoots through my entire side. I scream through clenched teeth.
I don’t remember falling, but I remember the noise—the metallic grind of my armor against the grated floor, the splash of blood, the guttural shout from Kalev up ahead.
“LEAH!”
His voice snaps me out of the fog.
I try to stand. My leg buckles instantly, dead weight, and agony follows like shadow. “Fuck. Gods?—”
Pain blinds me. Not the kind that screams like an alarm but the deep, throbbing kind that sets into bone and doesn’t let go. My leg’s fucked—twisted somewhere back in the last hallway when the concussive charge went off. I didn’t even register the fall until I saw blood seeping through my boot.
Now, every step feels like I’m dragging dead weight. Mine.
Kalev won’t stop. He doesn’t ask, doesn’t check—just loops an arm around my waist and keeps moving. Half-dragging, half-carrying me through the narrowing maze of corridors. His breath is hard in my ear. Wet. His grip tightens every time I falter.
“Don’t look back,” he growls. “Just keep your eyes on the light ahead.”
There isn’t much light—just strips of flickering white hanging overhead, a few still trying to fight back the encroaching dark. But I nod. I trust him. Even when my vision sways and my lungs burn and my body screams for rest.
“You’re hurt too,” I mutter.
“Not like you.”
“Kalev—”
“Later.”
There’s steel in his tone that brooks no argument. I know it. I hate it.
The passage narrows into a utility crawl, the walls sweating condensation. I catch the tang of ferrofluid—burned wiring and old coolant. It clings to my tongue, sour and metallic.
He ducks low and pulls me with him, one hand steadying my head so I don’t smack into the pipe above us. Every movement is intentional. Brutal. Efficient.
“You’re not carrying me through the whole evac,” I snap, trying to push against him. “I’m not dead weight.”
He doesn’t stop.
I fight harder, hands braced against his chest. His heart is hammering under my palms—too fast. Too wild. His eyes flash, not angry, but something close to grief.
“You’re not,” he says quietly. “That’s why you’re getting out.”
“No.”
