She holds my gaze. The weight of it lands—fully, finally. Then a single nod.
"Okay. Show me where it comes out."
SEVEN
Kade
The perimeter walk takes an hour.I point out sight lines, natural cover, and the three trail systems radiating from the cabin. She absorbs all of it with the same focused intelligence that got her into this mess, asking questions about distances, terrain, and what lies beyond each ridge.
The boulder sits a quarter-mile uphill—flat-topped granite with a clean view of the approach road. My usual overwatch position. Good cover, excellent fields of fire, multiple escape routes. She's breathing hard when we reach it, the elevation and accumulated stress taking their toll.
"This is where you'd make your stand?" She runs a hand over the sun-warmed stone.
"This is where I buy you time to run." I hoist myself up and offer her a hand. "The trail behind it leads to a fire road. Six miles to the highway."
"Six miles." She settles beside me, legs dangling. "I couldn't make six miles on a good day."
"You could if you had to. Amazing what adrenaline does."
"Speaking from experience?"
"Kandahar. Eleven miles with a bullet in my shoulder and a broken rib." I point to the trail. "The key is to keep moving. Don't stop, don't think. Just move."
She's quiet for a moment, absorbing that. Then: "Why are you helping me? Really. The real reason."
I could lie. Should lie.
"Because when I saw that asshole put his hands on you at the bar, something in me snapped. Because you fought back instead of freezing. Because you trusted me enough to get on my bike." The hardest part sticks for a moment before I push through it. "Because when I woke up next to you, for the first time in three years, I didn't immediately plan my exit."
"Three years. What happened three years ago?"
"I got someone killed." The words come out flat. "Not directly, but close enough. A protection detail. Diplomat's daughter. I followed protocol instead of my instincts. She died because I didn't trust my gut."
Wren goes still. Not the polite stillness of someone waiting for you to finish—the loaded stillness of someone who just received information that changes their map of you.
"That's why you didn't call this in officially."
"Partially." I hold her gaze. "The other part is less noble."
"Tell me."
"I wanted you the moment I saw you dancing. When that asshole grabbed you, I told myself I was intervening as a professional. The truth? I wanted an excuse to get close. To touch you." A short, bitter exhale. "Some protector. Getting you into bed while Black Helix had you in their sights."
"You didn't know?—"
"I knew something was off. The sedan at the bar, the way you were being watched. My gut was screaming danger, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to fuck you."
She doesn't respond immediately. The silence has weight. Miles of forest spread below us, not another soul for hours in any direction. We could scream, and only the birds would answer.
"You broke your rules for a dead woman," she says quietly. "Not for her—after her. You saw something in me that reminded you of what you failed to trust, and you weren't going to walk past it again."
The precision of it hits like a blade. She's not being sympathetic. She's naming the thing accurately, the way she names vulnerabilities in code—finding the exact flaw, calling it what it is.
"Yeah." The word costs something. "That's most of it."
"And the rest?"
I look at her—the blue eyes, the dark hair, the intelligence that sees too much. "The rest is that I would burn every rule I've ever followed to keep you alive. And that has nothing to do with Amara."
