The instinct was a steel rod down her spine.
Protect him.
She was still on her knees. Blood was still dripping from her chin. Her cheekbone was screaming. And through all of that, Maddox's anguish poured into her chest with a force that made the punch feel like a handshake. It was a man's entire foundation cracking in real time, every load-bearing wall inside him giving way at once, and the collapse was so total that she could feel his heartbeat stuttering.
She pushed herself up.
Maddox's lungs stopped cooperating. The air that should have been automatic, the kind of breathing a body does without consulting anyone, seized somewhere between his throat and his chest and stayed there. His hands started shaking. Both of them. The tremor began in his fingers and climbed through his wrists and up his forearms and it kept going, multiplying, compounding like interest on a debt he could never repay.
