The explosion hadn’t happened yet — but the air already felt wrong.
Aria was on her way to deliver a stack of documents to Damian’s war room when a faint blinking glow caught her eye beneath the marble stairwell. At first she thought it was a reflection from the chandelier above. But when she crouched, heart twisting painfully inside her chest, she saw it clearly.
A metal device.
Wires.
A pulsing red light.
Her blood turned to ice.
“No… no, no—” she whispered, stumbling backward.
Her voice cracked in her throat but she forced it out, louder this time, fear strangling the sound.
“Guard! Somebody! There’s—”
But the footsteps that thundered toward her weren’t guards.
They were Damian’s.
He appeared at the end of the hall like a nightmare carved from shadow, eyes locked on her first — not the bomb. His expression shifted instantly when he saw her pale face, her shaking hands, the terror she didn’t even try to hide.
“What happened?” he demanded, voice razor-sharp.
Aria pointed with a trembling hand, breath stuttering. “There’s a—”
She didn’t even finish.
Damian’s eyes dropped to the device.
And everything inside him snapped.
In one motion he crossed the hall and grabbed Aria by the waist, yanking her so hard she slammed into his chest. She barely had time to gasp before he dragged her away from the stairwell, muscles wound like steel cables, breath shaking with a rage she could feel in her bones.
“Damian—” she choked, “you have to get out—”
“Shut up,” he snarled, voice low, lethal. “You move when I move.”
The red light on the bomb blinked faster.
A high-pitched whine started.
Damian didn’t hesitate. He shoved Aria behind a concrete support column, pressing her into it with his entire body as he curved over her like a shield.
The world exploded.
The blast tore through the lower floors with a roar that shook the tower down to its bones. Fire burst outward in a violent wave. Glass shattered. Heat slammed into Damian’s back with such force Aria felt it through the layers of his clothes and armor.
She screamed.
He didn’t.
Damian grunted, absorbing the full impact as the ceiling above them cracked and collapsed. A massive steel beam crashed down, slamming into his shoulder. Aria felt his body jolt — a tremor of pain he didn’t allow himself to voice.
“Damian—!” she cried, trying to push him away, trying to move him, to do anything—
But he held her down harder.
“Stay still,” he growled, voice shredded, breath hot against her neck. “I said stay still.”
Smoke filled the hallway. Flames licked the walls. The tower alarms wailed through the floors.
Aria’s heart clawed at her ribs. “You’re hurt— you’re bleeding— Damian, please—”
He snapped his head down, eyes blazing with fury and fear so raw it made her throat close.
“I don’t give a damn about me,” he rasped. “I told you. I’m not letting you die.”
Another explosion sounded deeper in the tower. The floor trembled beneath their feet. Ember and dust drifted around them like falling stars from hell itself.
Then the world went silent — the dangerous, suffocating silence after destruction.
Aria tried to breathe, but her chest felt tight, crushed under terror and Damian’s weight. “We need help— we need someone—”
“No one is getting near you,” he growled, pushing himself upright slowly, groaning when pain shot through his ribs. His back was slick with blood. She saw the gash through his ruined shirt and panic flooded her lungs.
“Damian, you’re— you’re hurt—”
He grabbed her jaw with his blood-coated hand, forcing her to look at him.
“I don’t care.”
She swallowed a sob. “But I do.”
His eyes widened — just for a second. A flash of something vulnerable, unguarded.
Then Jaxon’s voice erupted from the smoke.
“Boss! Aria!”
Jaxon sprinted toward them, horrified at the sight — Damian dripping blood, shielding Aria like a human barricade. He reached out to help but Damian shoved him away with a snarl.
“Don’t touch her.”
Jaxon blinked, stunned. “Damian— you need a medic—”
“I said don’t touch her.”
The words were a growl ripped straight from Damian’s chest, savage enough to silence the room. Even the guards froze, unsure if stepping closer meant getting shot.
Damian finally shifted, picking Aria up like she weighed nothing. His left arm slid under her knees, his right around her shoulders. He held her against him tightly, protectively — like she was the only thing he had left.
Aria’s hands trembled as they pressed against his chest, feeling the sticky warmth of his blood. She whispered his name, voice shaking.
“Damian… put me down. You’re hurt—”
“I’ll bleed later.”
His voice was low, dangerous, trembling with adrenaline and something darker.
He strode through the smoke-filled hallway, ignoring the shards of glass that sliced his arms, ignoring the rain of debris, ignoring the guards calling out to him. Every part of him was focused solely on the trembling girl in his arms.
Executives gasped as he emerged into the emergency atrium — carrying Aria like she was something precious, sacred, forbidden. They stared, whispered, stepped out of the way.
No one had ever seen Damian Wolfe protect anything.
Let alone someone.
Aria’s tears hit his collarbone. “Why— why did you run toward me?”
Damian’s jaw tightened. His voice was barely a whisper, trembling and furious.
“Because when I heard your scream… something in me broke.”
Her breath hitched.
His fingers dug into her waist, holding her closer, almost painfully.
“I’m not letting them take you,” he said, voice thick, raw, uncharacteristically exposed. “Not with bombs. Not with knives. Not with threats. Not with anything.”
Aria looked up at him, eyes wide, throat tight.
“Damian—”
He cut her off, voice cracking with the force of everything he’d been trying to bury.
“I’ll burn this fucking city down before I let you die.”
He didn’t realize his hands were shaking until she touched one — gently, softly — grounding him.
He exhaled like he was drowning.
She didn’t pull away.
And that, more than the explosion, more than the blood trickling down his ribs, more than the Syndicate’s war declaration…
Terrified him.
Because Damian Wolfe didn’t fear bombs.
He feared her.
And now he had no idea how to stop.