"RYNN!"
Her scream tears through the chaos like nothing else has.
I’m on my back. The ceiling swims above me, emergency lights bleeding into each other. Through the haze of pain, I feel her—terror, ice-cold and visceral, slamming through the bond hard enough to steal breath I don’t have to spare.
Then something shifts.
Terror transforms.
Into rage.
Cold. Focused. Lethal.
The bond blazes so hot it almost burns, and I feel her stop thinking, stop planning, stop being careful—
“POLLY—”
She drops from her elevated position like a falling star.
I see it through pain-blurred vision: her rifle switching to full auto, her face twisted into something savage, her whole body arrowing toward the Meridian position like she’s forgotten what self-preservation means.
Through the bond:Shut up! I’m busy saving your life!
She’s not fighting tactically anymore. She’s fightingfurious. Grenades flying, plasma launcher attachment on her rifle spitting fire, curses pouring from her mouth in languages I don’t even recognize.
A Fringe berserker. A human hurricane. A woman who watched the man she loves go down and decided that everyone responsible is going topay.
“Cover her!” I try to shout, but it comes out broken, barely a whisper. “Someone—cover—”
Henrok’s warriors respond, laying down suppression fire, but Polly doesn’t need it. She’s already through their line, her assault so audacious that the Meridian soldiers scramble, unprepared for a solo charge from a woman half their size with twice their fury.
She breaks them.
It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t work. But she’s moving too fast, hitting too hard, and they’re still reeling from the communications chaos, and—
The gap opens.
Henrok lunges for the charges.
And Polly is exposed now, surrounded, taking fire from three directions, and I can’t reach her, I can’t help her—
I will burn this fortress down before I let anything happen to her.
The thought isn’t rational. It isn’t tactical. It’s something deeper, something older, something that doesn’t care about wounds or odds or anything except getting to herright now.
I move.
Pain doesn’t matter. Enhanced biology kicks in—adrenaline, mate-bond, sheer will. I force myself up, stagger, nearly fall, and push through anyway. Three elites converge on her position, and I slam into the first one before he can fire, tear the weapon from his hands, turn it on the second.
The third one falls with a hole in his helmet, and I don’t know if that was me or her, and it doesn’t matter—
I reach her.
We slam together back-to-back, spine to spine, and the solid warmth of her against me is the best thing I’ve felt in hours.
“You’re supposed to be the careful one!” I manage.
“And you’re supposed to not get shot!” She fires over my shoulder, drops someone I couldn’t see. “Guess we’re both terrible at our jobs!”
