The impact ended it.
His body went slack beneath me, eyes glassy, chest still.
Dead.
I rose slowly, chest heaving, blood on my hands that wasn’t mine alone. The forest had gone eerily quiet again, broken only by distant sounds of struggle to my left.
I turned and sprinted.
Cole had the last attacker pinned to the ground, his knee planted firmly between the man’s shoulder blades, one arm wrenched back at an angle that promised pain.
The attacker was alive.
Breathing hard. Terrified.
“Three,” Cole said grimly, without looking up. “This one thought he could outrun me.”
I looked around quickly, counting bodies through scent and sight.
Two dead near the tree line.
One at my feet.
That left—
I scanned the shadows.
No movement.
“Where are the others?” I demanded.
The man under Col
