Above us, headlights skidded past the ridge, engines screaming as Hydra overshot. They didn’t see where we’d gone. Not yet.
Elara coughed, breath ragged, blood trickling down her temple. But her eyes met mine in the dark, fierce and unbroken.
“We’re not dead,” she rasped.
I managed the ghost of a grin, even as pain licked up my side. “Not yet.”
And for the first time that night, I let myself believe we might actually make it. Together.
29
Elara
The ravine swallowed us completely. Silence settled in, broken only by the ticking of settling rocks and the rasp of our breathing. The air was cooler here, damp with shadows, while the world above was a strip of moonlight and distant engines fading into the desert night.
I leaned against the stone wall, chest heaving, knife still clenched in my fist. My body shook—not from fear, but from the exhaustion clawing at every nerve. Hydra had chased me before. This wasn’t the first time I ran.
The first time, they caught me and locked me in a room with a toilet and nothing else for six months. I pleaded with Roger Grand to let me out. There were conditions. But they didn’t come after me like this time. This time, they wanted me dead.
Beckett crouched a few feet away, rifle balanced across his knees, eyes cutting over the ravine walls like a predator waiting for another strike. Blood was on his temple. His sleeve was torn open, shoulder slick and dark.
“You’re bleeding,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant, like the desert had scraped it raw.
“So are you.” He glanced at me, quick, sharp, then looked away again. “You hit?”
“Not a bullet.” I touched my temple, fingers sticky. “Just rock.”
He grunted—acknowledgment, not dismissal. Then he moved closer, pulling something from the pack slung across his back. A field kit. He snapped it open with hands steady as steel.
“Sit still.”
I wanted to argue, to remind him I’d dressed my own wounds since Hydra first taught me pain was currency. But something in his voice cut through the instinct. Command and care, twined so tight I couldn’t separate them.
I sat.
He cleaned the cut at my temple with efficient strokes, not gentle but careful. His touch burned hotter than the antiseptic, grounding me in a way I hadn’t expected.
“You should’ve left me,” I whispered, hating the truth of it. “You should’ve listened to River and left me behind.”
His jaw flexed. “River’s words don’t mean a damn thing if you’re dead. Every one of my teammates would disown me if I left you behind.”
The words lodged in my chest, too heavy, too dangerous. I searched his face, trying to find the line between soldier and man, between duty and something else. I have never met anyone like Beckett.
“You’ll get yourself killed for me,” I said.
His hand stilled on my skin. For one heartbeat, the world narrowed to his eyes on mine, shadow and fire and something I couldn’t name.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “But Hydra won’t take you. Not while I’m breathing.”
The silence that followed was heavier than gunfire. My pulse pounded so loud I thought he’d hear it. For the first time inyears, I wanted to lean into someone else’s shadow. To rest. To believe.
But belief was a luxury Hydra had stripped from me long ago.
So I nodded once. “Then don’t stop breathing, Cole.”
His mouth curved, not a smile but close. “Wasn’t planning to.”
We sat in the dark, bruised and bleeding, engines fading into nothing above. The war wasn’t over. But for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was fighting it alone.
