It made me sick to my stomach. Not because she’d killed, but because she’d been made to.
She caught me watching. Her chin lifted, daring me to say it—daring me to call her what she was afraid of. Hydra’s creation. A weapon.
Gage strode past, muttering curses as he kicked a rifle out of reach of a fallen man. Oliver started calling in coordinates for cleanup. Cyclone was already digging through the crates, eyes bright with data.
But me? I couldn’t move.
“You fight like one of us,” I’d told her in the heat of it, and I’d meant it. But standing here now, the words clawed at me. Because I didn’t know if that made her an ally… or a threat I couldn’t afford to ignore.
She holstered her weapon with smooth precision, shoulders squared, mask flawless again. To anyone else, she looked untouched. But I’d seen the flicker—the moment the blood hit her hands and she froze, just for a heartbeat. A crack in the armor.
And God help me, I wanted to dig into it. To know how much of the fight was her, and how much of it was Hydra still living in her bones.
I forced myself forward, closing the space between us. Dirt crunched under my boots. Her eyes met mine, sharp and steady, but there was a shadow there she couldn’t quite hide.
“You okay?” I asked, voice rougher than I meant.
She gave me the same line she always did, cool and perfect: “I told you. Hydra doesn’t scare me.”
I stared at her for a long beat. Not at the mask. At the woman underneath it, the one who’d looked at me last night like she’d already broken and was just waiting for someone to notice.
And I realized something I didn’t want to admit.
Hydra might have built her. But she wasn’t theirs anymore.
For better or worse—she was mine to guard.
Hell.
21
Beckett
Cleanup was chaos. Gage tagged vehicles for extraction, Oliver barked coordinates into comms, Cyclone tore into Hydra’s drives like a man starving. The desert sun beat down, turning the blood on the ground dark and sticky.
But my focus never shifted. Not once.
Elara stood off to the side, back straight, vest hanging loose where the strap had torn in the fight. She looked untouched to anyone who didn’t know better—controlled, polished, every inch the untouchable mask Hydra had built. But I’d seen her fight. I’d seen her crack. And I wasn’t about to look away now.
“Cole.” Oliver’s voice cut in, sharp. “You gonna stand there staring, or you gonna help me secure the scene?”
I didn’t flinch. “She stays with me.”
Oliver shot me a look. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“Not the point.” My voice came out like gravel. “Hydra’s got eyes everywhere. Convoy was just a piece. They’ll come looking to clean this mess. And when they do, she’s their target. So she doesn’t leave my sight.”
Oliver muttered under his breath, but he didn’t argue. Gage gave me a side-eye that said he didn’t trust her any more than Idid—but he trusted me to keep her locked down. Cyclone didn’t even look up, too deep in his data.
I crossed the distance to her, boots crunching over dirt and glass. She tracked me with those ice-blue eyes, calm and steady, like she’d been expecting me.
“You’re glued to me from now on,” I said, voice low enough for only her. “Where I go, you go. No exceptions.”
Her chin tilted, defiant. “And if I don’t?”
I stepped in closer, close enough that the desert heat wasn’t what made her breath hitch. “Then I make you.”
For a heartbeat, silence stretched between us, tight and sharp as barbed wire. Then her lips curved—no smile, no humor. Just that dangerous edge she wore like perfume.
