"Collapse?!" Blaise echoed in horror, his eyes turning as wide as saucers. He groaned before picking Damon’s limp body up from the ground, heaving his brother over his shoulder as though Damon was nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

"The Alpha had me place detonators around the building!" Kyle explained, not caring that his plan was out for the entire load of hunters and vampires alike to hear. After all, once the bombs went off, the entire building would go and we would be nothing more than dead bodies stuck in the rubble. There wasn’t a difference.

My eyes went wide at the same time as my mother’s. I gave her one last scathing glance― she may have done me so much wrong in the span of the last week, but for years, she was that one light I had been trying to reach. In the end, I wasn’t able to kill her myself even after what she had done. But I wasn’t planning on saving her from this mess.

Tearing my eyes away, I bolted for where the guys were, skidding to a stop right in front of them.

’Get on!’ I yelled in my head, desperately hoping that they would understand what I meant.

Surprisingly, Blaise turned and looked at me, shocked.

"Harper, you can―"

’Get. On!’ I repeated, and Blaise quickly nodded.

He placed Damon down on my back first before climbing on himself, and I charged straight for Kyle after. Ever the experienced fighter, Kyle was able to hop on even without me needing to stop, and he found a spot for himself to sit right at the back, facing the horde of enemies behind us.

Some had already scattered in panic after hearing Kyle’s announcement, some were helping my mother and had gathered around her, while the rest — mainly the vampires — had fled the room. Hardly any of them were available to stop us with the discord that ensued, especially since the building started to rock as the sound of an explosion rang out from above us.

"How many did you place?" Blaise asked, horrified. He had to yell in order to even hear himself with the ruckus around us.

"Enough," came Kyle’s reply. "Alpha Darach showed up last night and brought weapons with him. About twenty detonators, enough for one on each alternate floor."

"You are going to kill the civilians like this!" Blaise chastised, but Kyle merely shrugged.

"I took a look around the city, Beta," he answered. "There are no civilians in the heart of Upper Lumen. Everyone is either a vampire or a hunter. This is the only way we have a chance to make it out alive!"

Gritting my teeth, I slammed my body against the door to the emergency stairwell. With the seal broken and the first bombs going off, the emergency alarms had started to blare through the building. I ignored the pounding of my ears, fueled only by the adrenaline rush that shot through my veins. Darting down the stairs, I skipped steps and twisted around the narrow space.

The building shook once more as the wall behind us blasted right open, and my breath was caught in my throat. Debris scattered behind us, and a chunk of cement nearly slammed right into Kyle’s head if he hadn’t dodged in time.

"Get out of the stairs!" Blaise instructed, and just as he spoke, the floor beneath us quaked. Fire quickly started to fill the area, and my eyes darted to the door and the sign above it.

The number four stood jarringly in bold black against the silver plaque.

Good enough.

Following Blaise’s instructions, I charged out of the stairwell and back into the main building. Fire had encased the rooms and corridors, and without the hunters and vampires filling the vicinity, it looked downright apocalyptic. The lights were flickering, some of the bulbs having burst due to the blazing heat. But between the fire and the light of the sun from outside, there wasn’t much use for them.

"There!" Kyle said, pointing ahead. "The window!"

’Shoot at it,’ I said, hoping that the first time hadn’t been a juke and Blaise would be able to hear me. ’I’m not sure if the glass is breakable otherwise.’

It might be bulletproof, and if a bullet couldn’t even shatter it, what was I going to do to it? I would get nothing more than a broken nose and a concussion if we were lucky, and if we weren’t, all of us might just burn and die in this building.

"Shoot at the windows!" Blaise commanded, and I all but sighed in relief when Kyle passed Blaise a spare gun he had before aiming his own, shooting at the same spots.

With Blaise’s help, the bullets eventually either penetrated the glass or broke it down to a weak enough state, and I charged at it with full speed. Squeezing my eyes shut and bracing for impact, I slammed against the glass, and for a brief second, we were suspended in the air before I wedged my claws into the wall of the opposite building.

We slid down, pulled along by gravity, and when my paws hit the pavement of the streets, I wanted nothing more but to collapse.

But we weren’t safe yet.

"We need to get out of here," Blaise said, eyeing the building. Puffs of smoke billowed from the topmost floors, and portions of the building had already cracked off, plummeting down to the streets below.

Turning, I dashed straight in the opposite direction. The crowd of Upper Lumen had already scattered, screams filling the streets as they sought for safety in the nearby buildings or drove away in their cars. The roads were congested, and I jumped on the roof of the cars whenever we hit a blockade.

Even though nearly everyone here was a hunter, none tried to stop me― they were too busy running for their lives after having witnessed the building that belonged to their leader fall to ash.

The dust cloud nipped at our heels, and it wasn’t before long it swallowed us whole.