Page 84 of Dragon 7

The temperature among the Claws dropped several degrees. The twins stirred. Toma's hand moved to the grip of his rifle and stopped there. Daisuke said nothing, which from Daisuke meant more than anything the others could have said aloud.

Kaede stepped forward. "She is on the island. In a basement. During a war."

"She is surrounded by guards and with Yoichi." I held his masked eyes. "She is the safest person on this island right now."

"She should be off—"

"She should be." I kept my voice flat and even. "She is not. The war arrived before she could leave."

Kaede stepped closer. "Then one of us goes to her. Right now. We fight better knowing—"

"No." I held his masked eyes. "Every one of you is needed at that tree line. Yoichi is with her. My mother’s people who are very strong are on this island watching over her. My Tiger is the most protected person here."

I looked across all of them. "The war ends faster with all of you in it. That is how you protect her. Understood?"

A beat passed. Long enough that I felt the weight of every opinion in that dark circle. They were not happy at all, but they would not fight me on this tonight, not with the war right around us.

The Claws exchanged the wordless language they had built over years of standing beside each other in bad places, and one by one they edged back.

I returned my gaze to Hiro. “Anyone want to wake Hiro for me?”

They backed up some more.

I sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

Slowly, I crouched beside him and gripped his shoulder. "Hiro."

His eyes stayed shut.

I firmly shook him once. "Hiro. Wake up."

My brother moved before the words finished leaving my mouth. And it was pure violence, arriving fully formed, with the economy of a man whose body had learned to kill before his mind woke up to supervise it.

His left leg came off the ground in a tight upward arc, ankle rotating for maximum force, the heel of his boot aimed at the exact point where my jaw met my throat.

A kill shot.

Delivered from a dead sleep.

By a man who still had a fucking lollipop in his left hand.

I was not as fast as I should have been. The ritual had taken something from my legs.

Fuck!

I dropped backward and felt his boot pass so close to my throat that the leather brushed the air from my skin. If I had been half a second slower, my men would have watched Hiro break my neck before he opened his eyes.

Too. Fucking. Close.

Before I could think anything else, his right hand was already moving.

It came low, fingers not curled into a fist but spread and rigid for a deadly strike aimed at my throat. He was not trying to hurt me. His body simply did not know yet that it was me, and his body's default in the dark was to kill whatever it touched.

I rolled my shoulder back and his fingertips grazed my collar and found nothing.

His body was already adjusting, already calculating the miss, already loading the next sequence—I could feel it in the tension of his wrist when I caught it and held it still. “Hiro!!”

He froze, still sleeping, with the leg hung in the air at an angle that should have been uncomfortable. His striking hand sat locked in my grip. His chest rose and fell at the same slow rate of rhythmic sleep.