I barely had time to react when the first arrow sliced through the air, embedding itself in the wooden post beside me. My heart pounded in my chest as I spun, instinctively reaching for my weapons. But it was too late.
"Don’t move, Nina," a voice snarled from behind me. It was Elias. My mentor. The one who had raised me shaped me, and made me who I was. And now, he was aiming his crossbow directly at my chest.
I froze, the shock of seeing him here in front of me, after everything we’d been through, paralyzing me. But then Ryker stepped in front of me, his back straight, his eyes hard as steel.
“You’ll have to go through me first,” Ryker said, his voice low and deadly.
Elias’s gaze flickered to Ryker, then back to me, as if weighing the weight of the past against the reality of the pres
