She looks… smaller. Not weak. Never that. But changed. Like something essential was shaved down to the bone. Like survival took a knife to the softer parts and left the edges exposed.
My chest tightens hard enough that I almost stumble.
I don’t say her name.
I don’t look at her.
I walk past like she’s a stranger and keep my pace steady even as every instinct I have screams to stop, to make sure she’s standing on solid ground, to ask if she’s sleeping, if the nightmares have started yet, if she’s still angry, if she knows how close I came to losing my mind while she was gone. If she knows how close I came to putting my mouth on hers instead of telling her to breathe in that med bay bed.
You don’t get to do that, I remind myself sharply. Not anymore.
The doors slide shut behind me, cutting off the antiseptic smell, and I don’t let myself breathe fully again until I’m halfway down the hall. My mind fractures into competing lines of thought, each one demanding priority, each one sharp enough to cut.
Mikhail first.
Always Mikhail.
I replay Moe’s words, the patterns, the timing, the way Delilah’s unconscious brilliance gave us a foothold. I need to move fast, decisively. If he’s consolidating, then he’s vulnerable. Supply lines tighten before they disappear. People get sloppy when they think they’re repositioning unseen. That’s where I strike. That’s where men like him stop being legends and start bleeding.
Then the thought shifts, unwanted but relentless.
Her father.
My best friend.
The lie I’ve been telling for years sits like a live wire in my gut. I imagine the call—his voice warm and unsuspecting, talking about Delilah’s classes in Europe, about how proud he is that she’s “finding herself,” while I sit there knowing she was bleeding out on a concrete floor because I helped hide the truth from him. Because I let her stay. Because I wanted her close and called it protection.
I deserve the ass chewing. Hell, I deserve worse.
I picture myself standing there, taking it, letting him rage, letting him call me every name under the sun because at least then the secret is gone. At least then Delilah doesn’t have to carry it alone anymore. But the moment I imagine his face when he realizes how deep this goes—how long it’s gone on, how many missions, how many lies, how many times I looked him in the eye and said she was fine—I feel something twist violently in my chest.
Because telling him doesn’t just expose the lie.
It exposes her.
And she’s fragile right now in a way she’d never admit. I saw it in the way she held herself, in the way her eyes tracked exits, in the way she flinched at raised voices in the med bay, in the panic that ripped through her hard enough to drag me to her bedside like gravity. She survived, but surviving isn’t the same as being okay. I know that better than most. Hell, I’ve built half my life around pretending I didn’t.
I think of Moe. Of the med bay years ago. Of the machines, the blood, the helplessness I’d buried so deep I convinced myself I’d moved on. Of how seeing him like that cracked something in me that still hasn’t sealed right.
Trauma doesn’t disappear. It waits. It settles into your bones and learns your name and then one day it reaches up and reminds you it never left.
My office door looms ahead, heavy steel, familiar and impersonal. I stop in front of it for half a second longer than necessary, pressing my palm flat against the cool surface as if I can ground myself through it. Through metal. Through routine. Through the one version of myself that still knows how to function.
You can’t save everyone, I tell myself. You can only choose what breaks you.
I step inside and let the door seal shut behind me, cutting myself off from the rest of the base, from Delilah’s quiet exit, from the version of me that wants to follow her and make sure she doesn’t walk this alone. Wants to take the jacket from her arms, put a hand at the small of her back, tell her she never has to prove a goddamn thing to me again.
Instead, I turn toward my desk, toward maps and files and plans of violence, and force my mind back where it belongs. The office smells like stale smoke, paper, and the coffee I forgot to finish hours ago. Her first question in my office all those years ago flashes through my head unwanted and perfect.What’s war like?Christ.
Mikhail is still out there.
And until he’s dealt with, nothing else—no guilt, no truth, no feelings I shouldn’t have—gets to come first.
Chapter 11
Delilah Barrinheart
The door to my quarters seals shut behind me with a hiss that sounds too much like finality.
