Chapter 427

The pedal sank straight to the floorboard with zero resistance. Ice-cold terror seized my chest in an instant. I pumped the pedal frantically, my heart hammering against my ribs. I tried to downshift to force the engine to brake, but the speed was too immense. The car was a runaway missile.

“Dallas! No brakes! I have no brakes!” I screamed into the comms, my voice cracking with raw panic.

A second later, a sound tore through my earpiece. It wasn’t a word — it was a soul-shattering, agonizing roar of pure Lycan despair that belonged to Ragnar. Dallas was screaming my name, a broken and desperate sound that I had never heard from him before.

The concrete wall of Reaper’s Curve rushed up to meet me. I took my hands off the wheel and crossed my arms over my chest, squeezing my eyes shut.

I was going to die.

Then the deafening roar of a twin-turbo engine eclipsed my own.

Braydon’s black GTR surged up from my blind spot. I opened my eyes just in time to see him violently jerk his steering wheel. He didn’t try to pass me. He threw his heavy car sideways, deliberately wedging the GTR between the nose of my Ferrari and the approaching concrete barrier.

He was using himself as a shield.

The impact was apocalyptic.

The sound of crunching metal and exploding glass drowned out everything else. The sheer force of the collision threw me violently against my harness, the breath knocked from my lungs in a brutal rush. Braydon’s car absorbed the catastrophic kinetic energy, its chassis screaming as it was crushed between my Ferrari and the unforgiving wall. Sparks rained down like hellfire as our entangled cars skidded across the asphalt, finally plowing into the gravel trap in a blinding cloud of smoke and dust.

Then — dead silence.

My ears were ringing. The acrid stench of boiling coolant, burning rubber, and raw fuel choked the air. I coughed, my trembling hands fumbling with the harness release. I was bruised, my head spinning, but I was alive.

I forced my door open and stumbled out into the gravel, my legs feeling like lead.

I looked over at the black GTR. The entire driver’s side was caved in, the metal door wrapped around the seat like crushed tin foil. Through the shattered window, I saw Braydon. His head was slumped against the deployed airbag, his face a mask of crimson blood, his legs pinned at a sickening angle beneath the mangled dashboard.

He hadn’t just stopped my car. He had sacrificed himself to do it.

Dallas

The stench of burning rubber, vaporized coolant, and raw fuel choked the night air, but all I could smell was the sharp, terrified scent of Adella.

I shoved past the track officials, my cane sinking into the loose gravel. Every step sent white-hot agony shooting up my shattered leg, but the physical pain was a dull whisper compared to the primal terror clawing at my chest. Ragnar was thrashing against my ribs, roaring through my mind. I had to see her. I had to know she was breathing.