“What I need is to help get him out.” My voice breaks, and I don’t even try to hide it anymore. “He saved my life, Viktor. More than once. He brought me back and—”
I stop. Because what I was about to say—he chose me—sounds insane even in my own head.
Except Dragana’s words echo:Dragon fire does not bind itself to just anyone. It chooses carefully.
“He’s important to you,” Viktor says quietly. Not a question.
“Yeah.” The admission comes out raw. “He is.”
The silence that follows is loaded.
Finally: “Fine. But you stay back. Observation only. When we move in, you stay clear. Understood?”
“Deal.”
Elena leans closer to the camera, her expression soft with the kind of concern that makes my throat tight. “Mara. Please be careful.”
“Always am, babe.”
“No, you’re really not.”
Despite everything—the pain, the fear, the bone-deep exhaustion—I smile. A real one. “Fair point.”
“We’ll get him out, Mara. Whatever it takes.” Elena’s voice is gentle.
The call ends with Viktor confirming deployment details. Extraction team mobilizing. Six hours until they arrive.
I check the time. Just past noon.
Six hours might as well be forever.
We settle in to wait.
Nicolae shares food from his pack—dried meat, hard cheese, bread that tastes like sawdust in my mouth. I force myself to eat anyway because passing out from low blood sugar isn’t going to help anyone.
Andrei keeps watch through binoculars, calling out changes in guard rotations, vehicle movements, anything that might matter when Viktor’s team arrives.
And I sit. And think.
Which is dangerous.
Because when I’m not moving, not planning, not actively doing something, my mind fills with memories I’ve been trying not to examine too closely.
K’s hands on my waist, steadying me when the world spun.
The rumble of his voice in the dark, telling me that everything was going to be okay.
The way he’d looked at me in the stream, water running down his chest, his eyes hot with want he was too honorable to act on.
Now he’s locked in that facility, and I might never get the chance to find out what this thing between us is.
The pain flares in my chest—not the physical kind, though that’s there too. This is different. Deeper. Like something vital is being stretched too thin, pulled taut between where I sit and where he’s being held.
I press my hand to my sternum, trying to breathe through it.
“You feel it, yes?” Andrei asks quietly. “The pull.”
I glance at him sharply. “What?”
