Lachlan felt her fall before he saw it.
The sound came first, wrong and heavy, followed by the way the air seemed to tear instead of move. His body reacted faster than thought, his knees hitting the dirt as his hands found blood where there should not have been blood.
There was too much of it.
Far too much.
This was not how Sera was supposed to die.
That thought landed clean and absolute, not fear, not panic, but rejection. The universe had made an error, and Lachlan would not accept a mistake like that.
Looking back down at her, he couldn't get over how wrong her body felt in his hands.
Not broken in a way he understood from his military days.
Not shattered, not burned, not torn by things that could be answered with force.
Instead, she was split with intention, cut by something that knew exactly what it was doing and had done it anyway.
And worse yet…the wound was not closing.
