“Delilah,” she says sharply. “Office. Now.”
She doesn’t wait for me to answer. Her grip on my arm is firm but controlled as she drags me out of the mess hall, down stark white corridors that feel too narrow, too bright. My chest aches,breath coming too fast, every step echoing with the knowledge that Jon is gone again, chasing Mikhail without telling me, without trusting me.
Without choosing me.
The thought is ugly. Immediate. Impossible to unsay once it lands.
Larkin’s office door slams shut behind us, sealing off the noise of the base. She releases my arm and points sharply to the couch. “Sit. You’re staying here until Jon gets back.”
“When,” I snap, anger flaring through the fear before I can swallow it. “If he gets back.”
Her expression hardens. “Enough. I don’t have time for this. I’m monitoring a live mission, and I will not have you spiraling through my base.”
The fight drains out of me all at once, leaving only exhaustion in its wake. It’s so abrupt it almost makes me dizzy. My limbs go heavy. My anger loses shape. I sink onto the couch because suddenly standing feels like work I can’t afford.
Larkin mutters something under her breath—too low to catch, probably for the best—and turns back to her screens, already focused elsewhere. Blue light from the monitors paints the sharp edges of her face. Radio chatter crackles softly from one speaker. Coordinates blink on one screen, movement patterns on another. Somewhere out there, Jon is in motion, and even now the room bends around him without him needing to be in it.
The office grows quiet except for the hum of equipment, the soft tap of Larkin’s fingers against keys, the occasional clipped voice over comms. My eyelids feel too heavy to keep open, my body finally demanding rest after everything it’s been through. The adrenaline that carried me from the hill to the mess hall to this room is gone now, and all that’s left is the wreckage beneath it.
I curl slightly on the couch, careful of my ribs, staring at the ceiling. The leather smells faintly like dust and old coffee. The blanket thrown over the back scratches against my arm when I shift. I think of Jon in the dark somewhere, boots on metal, jaw clenched, hunting the same man who made me feel small in my own body. I think of Mikhail still breathing. I think of all the things I haven’t said and all the things I can’t undo.
Sleep takes me before I can stop it.
Chapter 14
Captain Jonathan
The hooded head in front of me is bowed, shoulders rising and falling beneath rough fabric, wrists zip-tied to the steel ring bolted into the floor. The room smells like oil and sweat and burnt metal, the kind of scent that settles into your lungs and never really leaves. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, too bright, too clean for the mess that led us here. The concrete is still wet in places from rain tracked in on boots, streaked with mud and blood and the black smear of brake dust from the tarmac outside.
They’re calling it a win already.
I don’t feel it.
The op was wrong from the moment we touched down—too dark, too many bodies moving through the perimeter, shadows where there should’ve been clear lanes. Mikhail doesn’t crowd his operations like that unless he’s hiding something, unless he wants confusion, wants us looking at movement instead of meaning. And he never lets himself be that close to the line. Ever. Men like him don’t get caught in the spillover. They build it.
So no. I don’t let myself breathe yet.
If it isn’t Mikhail under that hood, then it’s at least someone who knows something. Someone who bled for it. Someone worth dragging answers out of.
“Bring him in,” I’d said as they dragged the prisoner across the tarmac, boots skidding, resistance violent enough to draw blood from three of my men.
Now here we are.
I step forward, already pulling a cigar from my pocket, rolling it between my fingers while I scratch at my beard, the motion grounding even as irritation coils tight in my chest. I don’t light it. I just let it sit there, an extension of my mood. Something to bite down on instead of someone’s throat.
“You put up a hell of a fight,” I say evenly, circling him once. “That tells me you either believe in what you’re protecting… or you know exactly what happens if you fail.”
He grunts. Low. Defiant. Familiar in a way that makes something in my gut twist.
I stop walking.
That’s when I know.
“Take it off,” I say sharply.
One of the operatives hesitates just long enough to annoy me before reaching forward and ripping the hood away.
And the world tilts.
