Lachlan was still laughing when they pulled off the side of the road and got back on the highway.
It wasn't the kind of laugh that sounded like joy… more of the kind that burned off leftover adrenaline and blood.
He leaned back in his seat, arm out the window, the wind catching the last smear of red drying on his knuckles. Alexei sat on the other side, quiet and pale, every movement deliberate, like precision itself had replaced thought.
Elias sat in between the two, looking more and more uncomfortable with every second that passed.
None of them spoke. They didn't need to. The air inside the cab still carried the metallic tang of what had happened behind them — that clean, irreversible moment when hunger and survival had finally become the same thing.
Sera rested her elbow against the passenger window, chin propped on her hand, watching the heat rise off the broken road.
