Ash And Parker’s Rescue

My teeth chattered so hard my jaw hurt, like someone was snapping a bone inside my skull. Cold seeped up through the cardboard beneath me, through the rips in my pants, through the blood already turning tacky on my skin. I lay on my back in the alley with my hands half-curled, fingers stiff from freezing, and every breath scraped-dry, thin, mean-over the cuts Eveline left me with.

Above, the city kept moving like it didn’t know I existed. Car tires hissed on wet pavement. Somewhere a bottle broke. The wind worried at the cardboard flaps, shoving grit into my mouth. I tried to swallow and tasted iron and old bruises. If I moved too much, pain punched through me like a fist. If I didn’t move, I’d stop. That was the math Eveline taught me: either you fight or you fade, and both ways you still bleed.

I kept waiting for the next kick, the next voice, the next moment when someone decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. But the only thing that came was light-white and sharp-sweeping past at the alley mouth. Feet slowed. I didn’t lift my head. I couldn’t. I just listened, counting footsteps the way I used to count seconds before she hit.

“Parker,” a smaller voice said, quick and breathy. “I think someone’s-”

A woman’s voice cut in, smooth like she knew exactly how to make guards obey without raising it. “I see him.”

My throat tightened around nothing. I wanted to pretend I was just another piece of trash, something the world could step over. My body wouldn’t cooperate. My fingers twitched anyway, clawing at the cardboard as if I could drag myself back into hiding.

Then a hand-gloved, warm from being held close to a body-hovered near my face. I flinched so hard my ribs screamed. The cold made everything too sensitive, every touch a threat. I tried to curl away, but my back was locked in place by pain and the weight of my own freezing blood.

“Hey,” the woman said, not loud, not cruel. The word landed like a blanket. “Don’t fight me.”

I stared at her through lashes stuck with sweat and grime. Even half-blind, I could see the sharp line of her jaw, the way her eyes tracked me like she was assessing damage. Nineteen-Parker May Johnson, the name didn’t matter as much as the fact that she looked nothing like the people who threw things at me.

Behind her, guards shifted. Metal murmured. One of them muttered something about calling it in, about liability, about-about whatever people said when they wanted to sound clean.

My stomach twisted. Clean people always had a reason. Dirty ones too, but at least they were honest about it.

Parker crouched lower until her face was level with mine. Her scent hit me-soap and something expensive underneath, not the alley’s rot. She reached toward my cheek, and I snapped my head away on instinct, teeth bared before I could stop them.

Her mouth didn’t harden. Her expression didn’t turn disgusted the way Eveline’s always did when I bled. Parker’s gaze dropped to my hands, the cuts, the dried streaks. Her fingers moved to the edge of my cardboard like she was checking how badly I was stuck, not how badly I was ruined.

“Grab the limo,” she said to her guards. One sentence. No room for argument.

The smaller girl-Parker’s little sister-took a half-step closer, eyes wide, mouth parted. “Is he-?”

Parker’s eyes flicked to her, softening just enough to make my chest ache with something I didn’t trust. “He’s alive. That’s what matters.”

Alive. The word felt wrong in my mouth, like I didn’t deserve it. Like it was a lie someone would revoke.

A guard’s hand slid under my shoulder. I jerked and the cardboard scraped my skin. Pain flared white-hot and my vision wobbled. I heard myself make a sound-half cough, half animal noise-and hated that it gave away fear.

“Easy,” Parker said again, closer now as the guard lifted. The motion jolted my injuries. My stomach turned. I tasted bile and cold air.

The alley blurred into a ribbon of streetlight as they carried me. The world outside it was warmer, but not kind. Warmth is just another surface. You can still drown under it. I clung to that thought like it was armor, like if I expected cruelty fast enough, it couldn’t hurt me when it arrived.

The limo doors opened with a soft thunk. Someone helped me into the seat. Fabric pressed against my bleeding skin and I almost screamed, but Parker’s voice cut through the chaos like a command.

“Hold him still,” she told the guard. Then, to me, quieter: “Look at me.”

I tried. My eyes were gritty. My lashes stuck. But I forced them up, because her tone had weight-because it didn’t sound like a threat.

Parker’s hand came up to my wrist, fingers gentle where mine were raw. She didn’t grip. She just steadied my arm the way you steady something that might break.

“It’s freezing,” she murmured, like she was angry at the weather for touching me. “You’re shaking.”

I couldn’t stop it. My body was a malfunctioning thing, betrayal in muscle form....