She didn't wait. Plunging a towel into Agnes's water pitcher, she tied it roughly over her nose and mouth and ran towards the thickening smoke and heat. The east wing housed the most immobile residents.
The smoke was blinding, choking. It burned her eyes, clawed at her throat. Heat radiated through the floorboards. Flames licked hungrily at the far end of the corridor, devouring old draperies, greedily climbing the dry wooden walls. The crackle was deafening.
Room by room. She dragged Mr. Henderson from his bed, his protests lost in the roar. She half-carried, half-pulled Mrs. Petrovsky, who babbled in Russian, tears cutting tracks through the soot on her cheeks. She helped a disoriented orderly wrestle a heavy wheelchair-bound man towards the stairwell that was rapidly becoming impassable.
Her right leg screamed. The old silver wound, aggravated by the cold, the smoke, the frantic exertion, sent bolts of fiery agony up her nerve endings with every step. She gritted her teeth, tasting blood and ash. Just one more. Just one more.
She stumbled into the room at the very end of the hall – Elara's room. The witch was sitting serenely on her bed, humming a tuneless song amidst the encroaching chaos, oblivious to the flames visible now in the corridor outside her door. Eli's picture book about wolves lay open on the floor.
"Elara! We have to go! NOW!" Serena yelled, grabbing the frail woman's arm.
Elara blinked, her green eyes foggy. "The moon… it's calling the pups…" she murmured.
A deafening CRACK sounded above them. Part of the ceiling in the corridor collapsed in a shower of sparks and burning debris, blocking the door. Flames roared higher, greedily claiming the new fuel. The heat was unbearable. The only way out was the window. But it was old, painted shut, and three stories up.
Serena dragged Elara towards it, coughing violently. She grabbed a heavy candlestick, smashing it against the windowpane. Glass shattered outward. Frigid winter air rushed in, momentarily battling the suffocating heat and smoke.
"HELP! HERE! THIRD FLOOR, EAST WING!" Serena screamed hoarsely into the void, waving her arms. Below, she could see figures running, hear the distant wail of approaching sirens, see the terrifyingly small ladders being raised. Too slow. Far too slow.
She turned back to Elara, ready to try and maneuver the confused woman out the window, praying for a miracle. That's when she saw him.
Crouched under Elara's bed, hidden by the falling dust and smoke, were two huge, terrified eyes. Billy. The groundskeeper's grandson, visiting his grandfather in the adjacent staff quarters. He must have gotten separated in the panic.
Serena's heart stopped. The flames were licking the doorframe now. The ceiling groaned ominously. There was no time to get both Elara and Billy to the window safely. The old witch was confused, resistant. Billy was paralyzed with fear.
A primal surge, deeper than thought, deeper than pain, took over. The same instinct that had driven her to drag Aiden Blackwood out of the moonlight ambush. Protect the pup.
"ELARA! WINDOW! NOW!" Serena roared, injecting every ounce of command she could muster. Startled, the old woman stumbled towards the broken window. Serena didn't wait to see if she climbed. She dove under the bed, grabbing Billy. He clung to her, sobbing.
"Look at me, Billy! Look!" Serena coughed, forcing his chin up. Her eyes, streaming from smoke, held his. "See the window? See the sky? You're going to fly out there. Like a wolf jumps! Ready? One… two… THREE!"
She shoved the boy with all her strength towards the open window. He tumbled forward, arms flailing, disappearing over the sill with a cry that was cut short by a collective gasp from below. Caught! She prayed.
The room exploded.
A colossal, burning timber – part of the roof support, wreathed in orange fury – broke free with a sound like the world splitting. It crashed down directly onto the spot where Serena knelt.
Agony. White-hot, universe-ending agony.
It didn't just land near her. It landed on her. Specifically, on her right leg. The impact was monstrous, a crushing, splintering force that drove her into the buckling floorboards. She heard the sickening, wet snap of bone even over the inferno's roar. Then came the searing, all-consuming burn as flames instantly engulfed the trapped limb, consuming fabric, skin, muscle with horrifying speed. The smell of burning hair, then roasting meat, filled her nostrils, mingling with the smoke. It was the smell of her own destruction.
She couldn't scream. The impact had driven the air from her lungs. She could only gasp soundlessly, her vision tunneling, the world reduced to the unbearable, incinerating weight pinning her leg, the relentless fire eating her alive. Aiden's bullet… now this… The cosmic irony was a final, brutal joke.
Through the swirling blackness and agony, through the roar of the fire and the groaning of the dying building, a new sound pierced the chaos. A howl. Not of a beast, but of a soul being ripped apart. Raw, anguished, and terrifyingly close.
"SERENA!!!"
The voice was shredded, unrecognizable in its torment, yet horribly familiar. It echoed with a power that momentarily stilled the crackle of flames – pure Alpha Command laced with unimaginable grief.
She managed to turn her head, her vision blurred by tears of pain and smoke. Through the gaping hole where the window had been, through the billowing black clouds, she saw him.
Aiden Blackwood.
He stood on a partially extended fire ladder below, frozen, his face a mask of utter horror. His silver-grey hair was wild, his expensive coat gone, white shirt torn and soot-stained. His storm-grey eyes, wide with a dawning, catastrophic realization, locked onto hers. They held her trapped, burning form, the beam pinning her leg, the flames consuming her.
And then the wind shifted.
A thick plume of smoke, laden with the unique, horrifying cocktail Serena Holt had become, billowed down towards him. It carried the coppery tang of her blood, the sickly-sweet stench of burning flesh… and beneath it all, cutting through the destruction like a knife through fog, the unmistakable, hauntingly familiar scent of Moon's Balm – the forbidden herb she'd used to save him – intertwined with the sharp, metallic sting of old silver residue. Her scent. The scent of the woman who'd dragged him from death's door. The scent he'd been poisoned into believing was betrayal.
She saw the exact moment the truth detonated within him. His face contorted, not in anger, but in soul-shattering recognition and a guilt so profound it seemed to physically buckle him. He staggered back on the ladder, one hand clawing at his chest as if trying to rip out the lie that had festered there. His mouth opened in a silent scream, his eyes reflecting the inferno consuming her… and the horrifying knowledge that he had lit the match.
"NO! NO! SERENA!" His roar was a guttural, broken thing, a sound of pure animal despair. He lunged forward, heedless of the flames licking the building below him, reaching out as if he could snatch her from the jaws of the fire through sheer will. "I'M COMING! HOLD ON! I WAS WRONG! GODS, I WAS WRONG!"
But it was too late. The floor beneath Serena groaned ominously. The beam pinning her leg flared hotter. The pain reached a crescendo, a white noise that drowned out his desperate cries. The last thing Serena Holt saw before the darkness swallowed her whole was Aiden Blackwood's face, ravaged by a horror deeper than any Hunter's silver, reaching for her across an impossible gulf of fire and his own catastrophic mistake.