Possession. Protection. Something older than memory.
The intensity of it catches me off guard. This need to keep her close, to shield her from threats I barely understand myself.
I have no right to this feeling. No claim on this woman I pulled from fire two days ago.
Yet here it sits, immovable as stone.
“K?”
I realize I’ve stopped walking, hand pressed unconsciously to my chest.
“What is it?” Mara’s watching me, concern clear on her face.
I search for words to describe what I’m feeling. That same pull from earlier—distant now, faded to almost nothing. But still there. Still present at the edge of my awareness.
“The pull,” I say. “From before. I feel it again.”
Her expression shifts. Concern. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” I drop my hand, resume walking. “It feels like… an echo. Of something that happened. Something that—” I struggle to articulate sensation without context. “Something that resolved.”
“Resolved how?”
“I do not know.” The frustration bleeds through despite my effort to contain it. “I know nothing. Only that something reached for me, and I answered. And now it’s—” I gesture vaguely. “Satisfied. Or relieved. Or simply gone.”
She’s quiet for several steps. Then: “Maybe it’s nothing. Just your mind trying to make sense of everything. The crash, the stress, losing your memory.”
Reasonable explanation. Logical dismissal.
But the careful neutrality in her voice tells me she doesn’t believe it any more than I do.
Another lie. Another deflection.
We’ve been walking in silence for twenty minutes when I catch movement below.
I stop, one hand on Mara’s arm. She freezes immediately.
“What—?”
“Quiet.” I pull her down behind an outcropping, scan the valley below.
There.
The operatives. Still searching the lower slopes, but their pattern has shifted. More spread out now. Systematic grid search rather than a focused sweep.
I count them automatically. Nine visible. Tactical spacing. Two on perimeter watch, seven working the grid. Professional. Disciplined.
Not rescue.
Hunt.
“They expand their search,” I murmur.
Mara peers over the rock, and I see her face drain of color.
“We need to go,” she says, voice tight. “K, we need to move. Now.”
The urgency in her voice carries weight beyond simple fear. This is specific terror. Intimate knowledge of what those men represent.
