Page 13 of Specter Bred

"You said each flag represented a different piece of classified intelligence Command needed us to recover. That it was a joint operation."

A few recruits were already beginning to piece it together.

His Southern drawl remained calm.

"That means the mission could only be completed if all thirty-five flags made it to the extraction point."

Silence settled over the field. Then understanding slowly began to spread. One by one, the recruits realized the same thing. The mission had been impossible from the start.

"Well, at least one of you was thinking instead of blindly running through the course," I said with a snort. "Unfortunately Hayes, all that thinking didn't stop you from putting on an absolutely pitiful performance out there."

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

Hayes grinned sheepishly and shrugged.

"No, sir."

"No," I agreed. "It did not."

I let my gaze sweep over the exhausted recruits standing in the rain.

"We will repeat Operator Assessment One before your five-month evaluation. You'll be required to pass it then if you expect to advance to the next phase of training. Understood?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" the recruits shouted in unison.

"Good. You're all dismissed. Shower, get some food, and report to the training hall at zero nine hundred hours."

The formation immediately broke apart. Some recruits groaned. Others limped toward the barracks. A few were still arguing over the assessment, trying to figure out what they should have done differently.

Everyone turned to leave.

Everyone except Archer.

She lingered near the back of the crowd, her hard stare locked on me. The anger was still there, simmering beneath the surface, refusing to die no matter how many times I poked at it. After several long seconds, she turned sharply and stalked away without a word.

Behind me, Cutter laughed.

"Gonna have a hell of a time with that woman, huh, Grizzly?"

"She's tough as nails, mean as a snake, and she has it out for you, Nolan," Alvarez said as he hopped onto the back of the convoy and stretched his arms over his head.

I watched Archer disappear into the rain.

"She doesn't belong here," I muttered.

Neither of them argued. Because they knew I was right.

ASOG wasn't built for women, a fact I learned the most painful way possible. It certainly wasn't built for betas either. Hell, even alpha males didn't cut it most of the time. And if Archer was stubborn enough to stay, then we'd make sure she learned exactly why she didn't belong.

One way or another.

Chapter 3: Maeve Archer

We were only three weeks into Specter training, but it felt like a damn year already.

Major Graves had promised to make Hayes' and my lives miserable. So far, he'd exceeded expectations.

Every day was another test, another punishment disguised as a lesson, but in reality, it was another opportunity for "Grizzly," as his fellow instructors so lovingly called him, to prove his theory that neither of us belonged there.