Did he know? Could he sense what she had dreamed? What she wanted?
The thought made her face burn with shame. And beneath the shame, threaded through it like gold through ore, more than shame. Anticipation.
She kept her eyes open.
She sat and watched the darkness and waited for dawn, her body thrumming with need she refused to acknowledge, her mind replaying the dream on an endless loop she couldn't escape.
The grey light came slowly, filtering through the jungle canopy in pale shafts that crept across the cave floor. By the time the sun rose, she was exhausted, wrecked, wrung out in ways that went deeper than physical exertion.
She had changed in the night.
She couldn't name it yet. Couldn't parse what it meant. But she could feel it in her bones, in her blood, in the way her body still ached with want even as her mind recoiled from the implications.
She was changing. This place was changing her. He was changing her.
She should have been afraid.
The fear had burned away in the night.
She gathered her gear, checked her weapon, and stepped out of the cave into the morning light.
CHAPTER 21
The jungle felt different this morning. Slower. No,shewas faster.
She felt it the moment she stepped out of the cave, the difference in her own body. The armor had fully integrated now, bonded so completely that she couldn't tell where her skin ended and it began. It responded to her movements before she consciously made them, anticipating her weight shifts, her pivots, the flex of her muscles as she climbed over roots and ducked beneath branches.
She flowed through the jungle like water. Like a creature that belonged here.
Her senses had sharpened overnight, honed to a razor's edge. She could smell the moisture in the air, the distant rot of fallen fruit, the sharp green tang of broken stems. She could hear insects moving in the undergrowth twenty meters away, could track the flight of birds by sound alone, could feel the vibration of the earth beneath her feet in ways she couldn't have imagined a week ago.
And beneath it all, threaded through everything like a bass note she couldn't escape: him.
His scent was everywhere. Stronger now. Closer. The armor had made her receptive to it, she knew that now, but the knowledge didn't diminish the effect. Every breath pulled him deeper into her lungs, her blood, her bones. Her body knew where he was before her mind caught up, orienting toward him like a compass needle finding north.
She was changing. Had changed. The woman who landed on this island three days ago was already fading, shedding like dead skin to reveal a leaner, harder version of herself.
She should have been afraid of that.
She wasn't.
The trail was clearer now. Bolder. He had stopped hiding, stopped even pretending to evade her. Claw marks scored into tree trunks at shoulder height. Footprints pressed deep into soft earth, deliberately visible. Branches broken and left hanging like markers, like invitations.
Come and find me, the trail said.If you can.
She followed.
As she moved, her mind drifted to everything she was leaving behind. The cramped apartment in Los Angeles with its stack of overdue bills. The precinct with its fluorescent lights and endless paperwork. The captain who buried inconvenient cases. The system that had failed her mother, failed Aria, failed everyone she had ever tried to protect.
Fourteen years of swallowing rage.
She thought about her mother in that hospital bed, withering away while the insurance company sent denial after denial. Thought about sitting in the hallway outside the administrative office, begging for an exception, for compassion, for basic human decency. The answer had always been no. The answer was always no for people like her.
She thought about Aria in that hospital bed, fighting a disease that shouldn't have gotten as far as it did, because earlytreatment cost money they didn't have. About Angelo skipping his heart medication because he thought no one noticed, because he'd rather risk dying than burden his daughters with another expense.
The anger rose in her chest, familiar and hot, but different now. She had spent years making it small, boxing it up, channeling it into being a good cop, a good sister, a good daughter. Swallowing it so she could function. So she could survive.
Out here, she didn't have to swallow it anymore.
