Darrow froze, then backed away a pace, disdain twisting his features. “Control that devil horse, or I’ll make sure he gets put down.”
Blair stepped away from Jet, her towel dropping to the stall floor. “Go ahead and try to give that order,” she said quietly. “It’ll come back and bite you in the ass. I guarantee it.”
His jaw tightened.
She turned her back on him, picking up a first aid kit and returning to Jet without sparing him another glance. “I’m busy, sir,” she said, voice even, controlled, unshaken. “Don’t you have credit to soak up and Americans to schmooze?”
Jet exhaled in a long, slow huff, ears flicking back in Darrow’s direction.
Blair smiled, just slightly, because Jet always knew exactly who the threats and fools were. Darrow fit neatly into the latter.
She also had to categorize herself in that light. She’d been an utter fool to get involved with him, thought she loved him and he loved her. He’d used her as a steppingstone to his current post. When she was a rookie, he’d seen exactly what an aging, ineffective constable he’d been, who had seen himself remaining in a mediocre job with mediocre prospects.
Blair had changed all that, and every bust she’d been instrumental in had gotten them attention until the biggest bust of their careers elevated them both. Except Darrow had crowed to the higher-ups how he’d come up with that crucial clue, and he got the promotion. She hadn’t contradicted him because he’d threatened her, told her that if she even breathed a word about the lie, he would ruin her. She had loved being a Mountie too much to risk him tainting it, too afraid of losing what she’d finally built for herself after ballet, too aware that every ounce of control she had fought for could be stripped away if he turned that charm and poison in her direction. So she swallowed the truth and gave in to his blackmail.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, like it was his choice, like they were somehow friends. “Nina and I need to get to the tailor’s. She’s buying me a handmade tux for our wedding, and I don’t want to be late. Clean up that paperwork on my desk before you clock out.”
Blair gritted her teeth. He was engaged to a socialite, Nina Strong of Strong Steel, and rubbing elbows with politicians and the rich and famous. He never missed an opportunity to throw that in her face, like she gave even one fuck about him and his life. She did wonder if Nina had any idea who she was marrying.
She could have transferred somewhere else, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of chasing her off. Sometimes it felt as if being under his dubious leadership echoed the worst parts of her short-lived career as a prima ballerina, all control and scrutiny and the threat of failure hanging like a blade over her head. Would she ever get out from under the shadow of that belief, the one he reinforced every chance he got?
4
United States Naval Academy, The Yard, Annapolis, Maryland
Midshipman First Class Flynn “Fly” Gallagher slung his gear bag over one shoulder as they stepped out of the gym, warm spring air settling over them like a soft tide. Magnolia drifted in from somewhere beyond the Yard, mixing with brackish river wind off the Severn.
Annapolis had a way of settling into a man’s bones.
Not the buildings, though the Academy looked carved from duty itself, but the air. Salt-thick, river-cool, edged with polished brass and wet canvas.
Four years had gone in a blink. It felt like yesterday he and Nathaniel Locklear had literally run into their eventual “third wheel” and best friend, Mei-Lin Harada, during Plebe Summer in Tecumseh Court, all three of them wearing pressed whites and carrying more nerves than sense.
He and Than had come a long way since then. Fly from the Australian surf coast and Parker County, Texas, and Than from the quiet prairie of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They hadn’t just survived the Academy. They’d grown under the care and training of Than’s big brother, Dakota “Bear” Locklear, and his entire SEAL team. Four years later, they moved in tandem, brothers forged by trials that lived deep in the marrow.
SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection had only proved what they already knew.
Three weeks in Coronado the previous summer had carved them open and stitched them back together, swim tests, rucks, log PT, leadership evaluations from instructors who saw straight through a man. They’d walked off the grinder bruised, blistered, exhausted…and chosen. Two SEAL officer billets in one graduating class was rare. Two candidates as tight as they were was damn near unheard of.
Out on the Chesapeake Bay, the water moved the way time did here, steady and indifferent to the boys who thought they were becoming men. The river didn’t care about rank or grades or inspections. It cared about skill, instinct, and the difference between hesitation and survival.
Fly loved that. He felt alive here. Tested. Exposed. Responsible. Everyone said Annapolis was about excellence. Fly had learned the truth early. It wasn’t about being the best.
It was about becoming the kind of man others trusted to follow. Even when it hurt. Even when it pushed you. Especially then.
Spring softened the Yard just enough to make a man forget, for half a breath, how hard it worked him. Magnolia petals drifted across Worden Field. Gulls wheeled higher over darkening water. The breeze carried rain and something green and new, wrapping the brick and stone in a promise instead of a threat.
But beneath that renewal, Annapolis still carried its centuries in its bones.
Fly felt it every time he crossed the Yard, the weight of men who’d walked here before him. Halsey. Nimitz. SEALs whose names whispered through halls like half-myths, legends carved into steel and woven into tradition. Annapolis pressed legacy into a spine whether it was wanted or not.
By senior year, everything sharpened. Expectations. Pressure. The grind.
Strangely, he’d found clarity in it.
The Yard that once overwhelmed him now felt earned. Familiar. He knew its rhythms the way he knew the shape of his own hands.
With graduation looming and BUD/S orders in hand, a buzz lived under his skin every time he thought of going back to Coronado. Back to the edge of becoming what he’d been working toward his entire life.
