I traced my finger across the route he’d pulled, the line cutting through Texas like a scar. “Where?”
Boone tapped the map. “San Marcos. Old processing plant. Shut down two years ago. They’ve got infrastructure, cold storage, and trucks that blend.”
Hawk snorted from the corner, tossing a protein bar wrapper onto the floor. “Figures. College town. Everyone too busy drinking cheap beer to notice screams in the night.”
Blade’s knife glinted as he rolled it across his palm. “How tight’s their security?”
Boone’s lips curved, humorless. “Tight enough I shouldn’t be able to see this much. Which means somebody wants us looking.”
The room went still.
“Trap,” Logan muttered.
“Bigger than Dallas,” Russ added.
I studied the map, the hum of the gulf wind rattling the tin walls. He wasn’t wrong. But traps didn’t stop me. They fueled me.
“We don’t back off,” I said finally, my voice low steel. “We go in, we pull every victim they’ve caged, and we burn their operation to ash.”
Hawk leaned forward then, eyes sharp, grin edged with something dangerous. “About damn time.”
Our gazes locked, and for the first time, I saw more than his swagger. I saw the storm he kept hidden under jokes and smirks—the one that would boil over soon enough.
Raine’s hand slid into mine under the table, grounding me. Her voice was steady when she said, “Then we finish what we started.”
The team nodded, one by one.
The war wasn’t over. But neither were we.
113
Adam
We rolled out before the sun broke full over the gulf. Engines low, lights off, the convoy nothing more than shadows slipping into the road.
The victims we rescued had been taken to the hospital, and Texas Rangers were guarding them. Boone typed away in the passenger seat, feeding intel into channels that still hadn’t been compromised. Hawk and Blade took point, their silhouettes sharp against the dawn's glow, while Logan covered the rear, rifle steady, jaw clenched as usual.
And Raine—she sat beside me, pistol across her lap, gray light catching in her hair.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. Her hand rested over mine on the shifter, steady, certain, hers.
The war wasn’t over. Hell, it was only just beginning. Boone’s intel had painted the next battlefield clear—San Marcos, bigger and dirtier than Corpus, waiting for us to walk into their trap.
But I’d walked into worse. I’d buried worse. And this time, I wasn’t alone.
I glanced at Raine, caught the curve of her mouth when she felt my eyes, and for the first time in a long time, the future didn’t look like fire and ash. It looked likeus.
Whatever San Marcos held, whatever shadows came after, Adam Stoker wasn’t fighting it alone.
Not anymore.
Epilogue
Raine
The sky was just starting to turn gold when Hawk dropped onto the hood of the SUV, tearing open another protein bar like it had personally wronged him.
“San Marcos,” he said around the bite, grin sharp and wolfish. “Looks like they’re lining up for round two.”
