His first step almost sent him sprawling. His balance was fucked. Reflexes still slow. He caught himself on another outcropping. He’d never make it to the top this way, not in his current physical condition.
He dropped to his knees, forced his legs to move, and started climbing. Well, crawling.
The path Emma had taken wasn’t difficult under normal circumstances. Steep, yes. Narrow in places. But manageable.
Now, with his body still fighting off the poison, every step was a negotiation.
His boot slipped on wet stone. He grabbed for a handhold, caught it late, his fingers closing on rock that should have been easy to grip. His other foot found purchase, but his leg trembled with the effort of holding his weight.
Move.
Zach hauled himself up. One step. Another. The wind hit him full force as he cleared the shelter of the overhang, driving rain into his face hard enough to sting. He blinked it away and kept climbing.
This was wrong. All of it.
He was never slow. Never uncoordinated. His body was a weapon he’d honed for two decades, and italwaysobeyed.
Not now.
Now he was climbing like a civilian. Struggling for balance. Compensating for muscles that fired a split-second too late.
If he had to fight—if Marcus was up there and Zach had to engage—he wasn’t sure he could win.
But he was sure as hell going to try.
The thought of Emma facing Marcus alone, with Zach too compromised to protect her?—
No,he couldn’t lose her.
He climbed faster. Pushed through the weakness, the lingering burn in his system, the way his vision still blurred at the edges. Ignored all of it.
She’d saved his life. Made a poultice from island plants she shouldn’t have known about, stayed with him when she could have run, kept him breathing through the worst of it.
The least he could do was make sure she lived through the next ten minutes.
Clean. Rest of the system’s clear.
Zach sighed in relief. Whatever his brothers were facing, they had handled it. They were okay.Nick, can you hear me?
Nothing.Fuck. He still wasn’t sending.
He pulled himself over a rocky ledge and paused, breathing hard. The exertion shouldn’t have winded him. Another reminder of how far from baseline he was.
But he was higher now. Close to where the path leveled out before reaching the overlook.
And something was… different.
He felt it before he could articulate whatitwas. That same pull from before. The one he’d experienced earlier had led him to the cave and Emma. An instinctive awareness that had nothing to do with his training and everything to do with something older.
The artifact. Except this time, the pull wasn’t vague. It was focused. Sharp. Pointing ahead of him like a compass needle. Toward Emma.
It was tugging him forward again.
Emma needed him.
Zach forced himself to move more carefully now. Used the wind and rain as cover, staying low as he approached thetree line that bordered the overlook. The vegetation here was sparse—wind-bent palms and hardy scrub that offered some concealment but not much. The rain beating down would help too.
He reached the edge and stopped.
