The tridents kept falling.
The rhythm changed, deepening, turning to hand drums now, rawhide and heartbeat, the sound of the old ways. The men in uniform blurred and became figures in feathers and paint, faces she half knew from stories whispered around firelight. The ocean darkened to river water. Smoke rolled in from sage fires, stinging her eyes.
Someone was chanting her name. Not Bailee.
Thunderhawk.
The voice was her grandmother’s, layered with others older still, the sound vast and hollow. “You were called to heal, and you turned away.”
She looked down and her hands were covered in blood. Bear’s. Hers. She lifted them toward the smoke, but the blood only spread, slick and endless, down her arms.
“You weren’t chosen,” the voices said. “You walked away from the gift.”
She tried to speak, to say I wasn’t called. You wouldn’t speak to me, but her tongue was heavy, full of ash. The elders’ silhouettes surrounded her, forming a circle in the sand. Between them, Bear’s casket waited, half-buried now, the waves dragging at its edge.
One of the ancestors, she couldn’t tell if it was man or woman, reached out, pressed a hand of ash against her chest.
“You couldn’t save him, child. You can’t save what you won’t touch.”
The world tilted.
The drums merged again with the sound of boots striking sand, tridents falling, the waves swallowing the last edge of the coffin as the sea claimed him.
“No!” She stumbled forward, falling to her knees, digging her hands into the wet sand until her fingers bled. “Please. I’ll learn. I’ll listen. I’ll?—”
The water rushed up, black and cold. It took her words, her breath, everything.
Bailee woke gasping, drenched in sweat, the echo of drums still pulsing in her ears. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. Moonlight fractured across the hotel ceiling, the sound of real rain whispering against the glass. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was…Rio or the spirit world, Bear’s grave or his bed.
No. It was Rio.
This was where the trail of her cousin had gone cold.
The thought landed like a blow, scattering the last remnants of sleep. She pushed upright, the sheet sliding away, rain-light washing her bare shoulders in silver. The drums from the dream still echoed faintly in her skull, tridents striking wood, elders chanting her name, and for a heartbeat she couldn’t tell which was more real: the ghosts calling her back to the path she’d abandoned, or the living who needed her now.
Either way, the message was the same. It was time to act.
Breath whispered across her skin, and she turned her head and saw him beside her, alive, breathing, the slow rise and fall of his chest anchoring her to the now.
Bear lay on his back, face turned toward the window. Moonlight pooled across the dark planes of his chest, the sheet slipped low around his hips, one strong thigh bare against white linen. The contrast made her breath hitch—dark skin, pale fabric, moonlight threading through his hair like silvered silk. The sight of him was a benediction and a temptation in one breath.
She dragged a trembling hand through her hair. He’s alive. The nightmare still clung to her like smoke.
For a moment she only watched him breathe, slow and even, the steady rhythm that always calmed her. Damn, he was beautiful. Not for the sculpted lines or the power coiled beneath his skin, but because every inch of that strength had once been between her and death.
The memories of the last month flooded in, his patience, his quiet humor, the way he listened without judgment when she told him about the path that had never chosen her. She had expected distance, maybe disappointment. Instead, he’d offered understanding. Comfort. A stillness that made her ache.
Yet she’d kept him at arm’s length.
She pressed her palms to her face. Why? She’d faced insurgents, interrogations, ambushes, yet one dinner invitation from him had sent her running. She’d taken his strength, his care, his body, and lost her heart. It made no sense.
Why was she jeopardizing her relationship with him? Certainly, the nightmares were a product of her overactive imagination. His job was dangerous, but so was hers. There was no guarantee either of them would survive. To be honest, she’d rather have him in her life than out of it. That was even more unbearable to know that he was in this world, and she’d chosen not to have him.
She closed her eyes. Ancestors, help me. Help me see a way to speak without shame. Let me look at him and know he will never judge me.
The plea felt like prayer. She imagined the faint scent of sage, the ghost beat of a drum far away, the rhythm her grandmother used to hum when she spoke to the spirits. The sound steadied her.
Her mind slipped back to the first Rio, flashes of smoke and shattered glass, the Atlantic Coalition summit gone to hell. Bear crashing through the chaos, Flint a black streak at his side, taking down Alvorada Negra one by one until the hallway was clear. She remembered the moment she texted him, the single word trapped, and how he’d answered with action, not reply. He’d saved her, and they covered each other, retreating to the roof, heroically saving Zorro’s family together and her countless times.
