Can’t Win Me Back

Jasper felt a pain unlike any he had ever known.

It wasn't a physical agony like having flesh torn away, but a slow, excruciating torture akin to being slowly sliced by a blunt blade.

It was a hundred times worse than dying instantly.

His mind raced through a chaotic sequence of images, like a black- and-white movie playing backward.

He saw people retreating and leaving —Javier, Anne, Newton, Landon, Lauren, Jonah, Axel...

He reached out desperately, trying to grasp any of them, but they were slipping away, one by one.

Finally, the image settled on Alyssa's radiant face.

"Lyse...

Don't go..." Tears streaming down his face, he lunged forward, wrapping his arms around her.

But she dissolved into golden dust, vanishing into the frigid air.

"No! iy A beep sounded in his ear as if everything had been reset.

him, and he fell

was

motionless, staring

was dead, but deep down, he was

footsteps approaching from

Remy emerging from the

emotionless look on his face,

Taylors have arrived on the island." Without even a glance

is leaving you

you have no

motionless,

like a man who had been thoroughly used and

been drained of all his worth—now

of the goddess closed back up

scoffed, laughing at himself

life has been

Before he could finish, the deafening roar of a helicopter overhead drowned out

its shadow over the

crash, and with that, the seemingly indestructible glass

down, cutting