Nicholas doesn't even look back, just keeps sprinting for the building. Smart.
But my relief is short-lived.
Because just as Nicholas reaches for the door handle, a fifth attacker emerges from behind a stack of supply crates. He must have been positioned there, waiting.
I see the glint of metal in his hand.
Not a gun. Something worse.
A syringe, held like a knife, ready to plunge into Nicholas's neck.
Time slows to honey, each second stretching impossibly long. I'm fifteen meters away. Too far. My weapon's up, but Nicholas is directly in the line of fire. If I miss by even a fraction--
"Down!" The word tears from my throat, raw and desperate.
Nicholas spins at the sound of my voice. Sees the new threat. Processes the situation.
And makes a decision that stops my heart cold.
Instead of dropping or evading, he steps toward his attacker, inside the arc of the arm, like he's embracing a lover.
My breath slams out of me.
Not Nicholas.
Not him.
The thought spirals around my brain as I watch helplessly from fifteen meters away, my weapon useless.
Nicholas drives his forehead directly into the man's face.
The headbutt connects with an audible crack, the sound carrying over the chaos around us.
The attacker staggers backward, blood streaming from his shattered nose, the syringe dropping harmlessly to clatter on the concrete.
I reach Nicholas and the attacker in massive strides. I grab the dazed attacker by his collar and drive my fist into his temple with enough force to drop him instantly.
He crumples, unconscious before he hits the ground.
"Inside," I grit out, seizing Nicholas's arm.
I practically throw him through the maintenance building door, following immediately and slamming it shut behind us.
The locks engage with a satisfying click.
I do a rapid tactical assessment of our shelter. Single room, maybe four meters by three. Cleaning supplies are lined up on metal shelving units. Mops and buckets in one corner. One window, high and narrow--defensible but not a viable exit. No other doors.
We're trapped, but we're secure.
"Status," Cavendish demands through my earpiece.
"The Thistle is secure in a maintenance building east side of the parade ground," I report, my voice rough with adrenaline. "Multiple hostiles neutralized. Need immediate perimeter security and extraction."
"Copy that. Team converging on your position. Two minutes out. Maintain cover."
I spin toward Nicholas, and the sight of him nearly drops me to my knees.
He's leaning against a supply shelf, chest heaving with each breath. There's blood smeared across his forehead from the headbutt--his blood or the attacker's, I can't tell. But his eyes are alert. His usually perfect hair is disheveled and his linen suit is torn at the shoulder.
He's alive. Battered, bloodied, but alive.
The relief that floods through me is immediately chased by rage so pure it burns.
"What the fuck was that?" The words explode out of me, anger and fear tangled so tightly I can't separate them. "A headbutt? Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
Nicholas straightens, wiping blood from his forehead with the back of his hand examining it with mild interest before looking up at me.
Even disheveled and bleeding, he manages that aristocratic hauteur that drives me mad.
"It worked, didn't it?" His voice is steady, only slightly breathless.
"By sheer dumb luck!" I advance on him, unable to contain the emotions surging through me. "He had a syringe, for Christ's sake! If your timing had been off by half a second--"
"But it wasn't," Nicholas cuts in, and there's something fierce in his expression now, something wild and alive. "I knew what I was doing."
"Did you?" I'm practically shouting now, professionalism be damned. "Did you know that your security team has protocols? That I had a clear shot if you'd just got down like I told you to? That stepping toward an armed assailant is literally the opposite of everything you've been trained to do?"
Nicholas's eyes flash. The otherworldly blue glittering. "I just went by instinct--"
"Your instincts are going to get you killed!" The fear that gripped me when I saw that syringe, when I thought I might not reach him in time, resurfaces with a vengeance. That moment is burned into my memory--Nicholas turning, seeing violence coming for him, and choosing to meet it head-on. Thoughts of what could have happened make my hands shake.
That moment when I thought I might fail in the one duty that matters most.
Not because he's a prince. Not because it's my job.
Because it's him.
My heart is thundering, adrenaline still flooding my system, making everything sharper, more intense.
I'm so angry with him that I want to kill him myself, save the terrorists the trouble.
"You don't do that!" I'm beside myself. "You don't put yourself in danger like that!"
My vision narrows to a tunnel, everything falling away until all I can see is him standing there, blood-smeared and triumphant, and so goddamn reckless and beautiful I can barely breathe. It feels like someone's taken a crowbar to my chest, prying open my ribs and exposing everything.
I do the only thing I can possibly do in this moment. The only thing that can possibly calm the raging monster inside me, can silence the screaming voice in my head that keeps replaying those seconds when I thought I might lose him.
I grab his shirt, bunching the expensive fabric in my fists, and pull him toward me so abruptly that he stumbles against my chest.
And I kiss him.
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