Chapter 10: Gasoline

I don't remember getting dressed.

I remember running.

Keir was ahead of me on the creek path, shouting into his phone for his Beta.

The mile felt like ten.

When we broke out of the trees, the whole back half of the cabin was on fire.

Flames came out of the loft window and climbed the roof in long orange sheets.

"Lorne!" I screamed.

Nothing.

The front door was shut.

I grabbed the handle and it burned my hand through my sleeve.

Keir pulled me back and kicked the door so hard it came off one hinge.

Black smoke rolled out.

I pulled my sweater up over my mouth and went in.

The heat was like opening an oven.

The loft ladder was on the left, against the wall, and the top of it was already burning.

"Lorne!"

I heard coughing.

Up in the loft, in the smoke, somebody was coughing.

I went up the ladder.

The rungs were so hot I could smell my palms cooking.

The cut on my left hand split open again.

He was on his stomach at the edge of the loft, trying to crawl, his eyes streaming.

He'd tried the ladder already.

His hands were red and blistered across both palms.

"Come on," I said. "Come on, Lorne, move."

"Lainey?"

"Move."

I got his arm over my shoulder and half dragged, half dropped him down the ladder.

Keir was at the bottom.

He caught Lorne and carried him out the door.

I came out last, coughing so hard I fell to my knees on the grass.

Black Fork wolves were pouring out of the trees.

Somebody had a chain of buckets going from the creek.

They fought that fire for an hour.

By the time it was out, the gray light was coming up over the river.

The loft was gone.

The back wall was black to the beams.

The bedroom with the blue door was a burned shell, but the blue door itself was still standing in its frame, scorched and blistered and still blue.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.