East Berlin — July 22, 1948, Thursday night
I wantedto go after Klaus the moment I left the Spook, but if I didn't show up for duty, Jamison would have no choice but to call the MPs and report me AWOL. It would mean a city-wide search. And once that started, everything unraveled. I'd end up in the brig, maybe worse. Desertion in this powder keg of a city wasn't something they took lightly.
Of course, no cell could hold the dragon. But letting him loose—here, now—would mean exposure. Questions. Hands reaching for things they didn't understand. I couldn't risk that. Not yet. Not when Klaus was still out there.
No. The smart move was to wait. To endure. To wait for the end of my shift and let darkness fall again. It was the hardest order I'd ever followed.
So I stole clothes from a line strung between two half-standing buildings and made it back to the barracks in time for my shift, I wasn’t the first, and I wouldn’t be the last GI to show up like that. A few smirks followed me down the corridor. Raised eyebrows. A chuckle or two.No one asked questions. In Berlin, you learned quickly not to.
I changed back into my uniform, button by button, fingers clumsy, hands still faintly shaking. Not from the shift. From the effort it took to keep the dragon leashed.
Thankfully, no Yaks harassed us that day. I wasn't sure I could have stopped myself from burning them out of the sky if they had. The dragon kept lifting his head at every engine sound, tasting the air, daring me to give him permission.
Soon, I promised him silently. Soon.
He paced under my skin, coils tight, wings scraping the inside of my ribs. He wanted blood. He wanted Klaus. He wanted the man who thought he could reach across borders and histories and take what wasn’t his. Every snap of a button felt like another lock on a cage that was already buckling.
I told myself to breathe. To finish the shift. To keep my head down. But the moment it ended, I didn’t go back to the barracks. I went to see Inga first. I needed to. I needed to tell her that I knew where Klaus was, that he was alive, that I would bring him back. I needed to be the one to tell her about her father, before someone else did it wrong, before fear got there first. I needed to see her face, to hear her voice, to reassure myself that at least this much was still intact.
So I cut west through streets still half-lit, half-ruined, my boots finding the same paths they always did. Rubble andshadow and the echo of my own steps. Elke’s building leaned like it had given up on standing straight, but there was light in the window. That eased something tight and painful in my chest.
Elke opened the door just a crack. Her face told me everything before she spoke. “You’re too late,” she said, and her voice broke on the words, like saying them softly might change what they meant.
The dragon surged in anticipation, sensing blood, sensing loss.
Elke told me about the Russian. About the knock at the door. About the letter. About Inga’s father, a name dragged back from the past like a weapon. She told me how polite the man had been. How calm. How there hadn’t been shouting, just certainty. She said Inga went with him.
The dragon slammed against my ribs, a roar clawing up my throat, hot and feral and desperate to tear the world apart until it gave her back. For a second I thought I might let it happen, that I might tear free right there in Elke’s doorway and damn the consequences.
I swallowed it down until my jaw ached, until my teeth ground together hard enough to hurt.
Inga was gone.
“When?” I asked, though my voice barely sounded like my own.
“Last night,” Elke said. “Only an hour or two after you left.”
The dragon went very still. That was worse.
He paced under my skin, furious, coils tight, wings scraping the inside of my ribs. He wanted blood. He wanted Klaus. He wantedInga.
As much as it tore at me, I told myself they were safe for now. If her father had gone through the trouble of finding them—of taking them—he wouldn't harm them. Not yet. Dragons were good at patience when the hunt required it, even if every instinct screamed otherwise.
I knew where Gerhard Weber lived—the CIA bastard had given me the address. "High-ranking and untouchable, he'd warned. Ridiculous.
Nothing was untouchable to a dragon.
When the last patrol rolled past the alley behind Elke's house I hid in, I stripped and let the shift take me. Bones cracked. Heat flooded my veins. Claws punched through my skin. My spine arched, and wings burst into existence with a rush of air that rattled loose stones.
I rose—silent, heavy, and deadly—into the night sky. Below me, the border gleamed like a scar across the city.
Checkpoint Charlie.
Surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers swarming with men with guns they thought meantsomething. I skimmed above them in the dark, a shadow on a darker sky.
No one looked up.
They never did.
