Chapter Five
Kael let out a slowbreath, Drew’s final words echoing through the hollow space of the warehouse long after the car engine faded into the night.
You’re wrong, you know.About what you told yourself.About us.
The words hit harder than any bullet.Kael hadn’t answered—couldn’t.His throat had locked up, and his heart felt like it had been wrapped in barbed wire.When Drew had said,“You’re the only one who ever had the right to claim me,”something inside him had shifted—fractured.
Now, silence swallowed the room.His men waited in the background, none daring to speak.They all knew what Drew’s reappearance those years ago had meant.They’d all seen Kael’s reaction at the time, the tremor of loss he’d tried to hide beneath command and discipline.
He finally exhaled, a sharp sound that echoed too loud in the cavernous space.“Clear the floor,” he said quietly.“Give me a minute.”
The team moved instantly.Even Mano hesitated only long enough to give Kael a lingering look before leaving.The steel door slammed shut behind them.
Kael dragged a hand through his hair, pacing.His body still felt coiled, his pulse a drumbeat of anger and confusion.Drew.No.Wraith.The man he’d thought long dead.Until tonight, Wraith had been nothing but a name in his reports and an ache in the back of his mind.
The realization that Drew and Wraith were the same man still burned in his chest.He hadn’t known until he saw him in that goddamn apartment—hadn’t recognized the pale, hollow-eyed figure lying in that filthy studio until the man had looked up, and those sharp, impossible blue eyes had locked on his.
Everything inside Kael had stopped.
He could still smell that place.Damp concrete, rust, and stale coffee.Wraith—Drew—had been living like a ghost, the shell of the man he’d once known.Kael and his men had breached the window, not the door, correctly guessing that the entry was trapped.Luca, their tech genius, had been the one to bypass Wraith’s security on the window—a task he called ‘painful but doable.’The man’s digital signature had been smart enough to fool half of the underworld, but not Luca’s steady hands and rolling code cracker.He’d muttered something about admiring the craftsmanship even as he dismantled it, fingers flying over his portable console before giving Kael the nod to breach.It had been difficult, but not impossible, and it told Kael just how careful Wraith had become.Even then, Kael had thought it was just another extraction and interrogation.Until he’d seen that face.His face.
Drew.Alive.
And when Drew had spoken, calm and guarded but unmistakably him, Kael’s world had tilted.
Now, standing in the empty warehouse, Kael could still feel the echo of that moment—the shock, the flood of something between rage and relief, the crushing weight of six lost years slamming into him all at once.
The bastard had been alive all this time.
The echo of Drew’s words circled back, sharp as the bite of salt air.
If I don’t move, people die.
“What danger?”Kael muttered.“What the hell have you walked into, Wraith?”
The sound of footsteps behind him broke the quiet.“You look like you just went ten rounds with your past, and lost,” Tane said softly, stepping back into the room, a mug of black coffee in one hand.“I figured you’d need this.”
Kael took it without a word, fingers brushing the warm ceramic.“Thanks.”
Tane studied him.“You believe what he said?”
Kael hesitated, then nodded once.“Yeah.Whatever he’s caught up in, it’s bad.You saw it in his eyes just as I did.”
