"Bikes down." I reached the transport van, pressed my back against the metal. "Moving to?—"
That was when the desert exploded.
The first RPG round hit the side of Declan's truck. The explosion threw me sideways, heat and shrapnel washing over my position. I hit the ground hard, ears ringing, dust and smoke filling my lungs. Through the chaos, I could hear screaming—someone wounded, definitely Irish, his voice sharp with pain and surprise.
"CONTACT SOUTH!" Axel's voice cut through the static in my earpiece. "Multiple hostiles, fifty yards and closing! It's a fucking ambush!"
I rolled onto my stomach, brought my weapon up, and saw them.
A line of vehicles had materialized from behind a ridge to the south—trucks, SUVs, motorcycles. At least a dozen men were advancing on our position, using the terrain for cover, laying down suppressive fire that chewed up the ground around us. Muzzle flashes sparked in the early morning light like angry fireflies. Bullets whined off rocks, thudded into the transport van's metal sides, cracked through the air inches above my head.
Professional. Coordinated. They'd been waiting for us.
Cross had known we'd come.
"Hawk!" Tyler's voice was sharp with urgency. "We need those reinforcements NOW!"
"Already moving! Thirty seconds!"
Thirty seconds might as well have been thirty years. In a firefight, thirty seconds was an eternity—enough time to die a dozen different ways.
I found cover behind the transport van's wheel well and started returning fire. Most of the advancing Wolves were spray-and-pray shooters—enthusiastic but undisciplined, burning through magazines without hitting anything vital. I dropped two of them in quick succession, center mass shots that punched through their inadequate cover and ended their advance permanently.
A third tried to flank around the van's rear end. Blade was waiting for him—emerged from behind a boulder like a shadow given form and opened the man's throat before he could scream.
To my right, Axel's rifle cracked methodically from the ridge. Each shot found its target. Each target stopped moving. The man was a machine, calm and precise while the rest of us scrambled to survive.
But there were too many of them. For every Wolf we dropped, two more seemed to take his place. They were pushing forward, tightening the noose, trying to overrun our position through sheer numbers.
And one of them was different.
He moved with a fluidity that spoke of real training, real experience. Former federal agent. Former FBI tactical team. Marcus Cross, leading from the front, his shots precise and measured. Every time I tried to reposition, his rounds found the space I'd been occupying half a second before. He wasn't just shooting—he was hunting.
"Tyler!" Cross's voice carried across the battlefield, sharp with something that sounded almost like amusement. "I knew you'd come for her. Predictable as always."
Tyler was pinned behind the SUV, exchanging fire with two Wolves who'd flanked to his position. "Fuck you, Marcus!"
"Such language." Cross was advancing, using his men as cover, working his way toward Tyler's position with the patient precision of a predator. "Is that any way to talk to someone who loved you?"
I saw what was happening before Tyler did.
Cross had stopped returning fire at the rest of us. His attention had narrowed to a single target—Tyler, exposed behind the SUV, too focused on the Wolves in front of him to see the real threat approaching from his flank. Cross raised his weapon, sighting down the barrel with the cold efficiency of a man who'd done this a hundred times before.
Aimed directly at Tyler's head.
I didn't think. Didn't calculate. Didn’t realize I had already been running towards Tyler by the time I saw Cross’s attention rest solely on him.
My body slammed into Tyler's a fraction of a second before Cross's shot cracked through the spacewhere his head had been. We hit the ground hard—Tyler underneath, me on top, the impact driving the air from both our lungs. Another shot sparked off the SUV's bumper, inches from where we'd landed.
"TANK!" Tyler's voice, raw with shock.
I rolled, brought my weapon up, and returned fire. My first shot went wide—adrenaline, bad angle—but the second caught Cross in the shoulder, spinning him sideways. His third shot at us went wild, kicking up dirt three feet to my left.
For one frozen moment, our eyes met across the chaos.
Cross looked from me to Tyler—still on the ground, still tangled together—and something ugly twisted in his expression. Recognition. Understanding. Jealousy so pure it burned.
"You." The word came out like venom. "You're the one who's been watching him. The one he's been—" He laughed, short and sharp, even as blood spread across his shoulder. "Oh, Tyler. Trading down, are we?"
