Page 171 of Specter Bred

Command brought in three specialized interrogators from the northern territories specifically for the job: twin brothers named Silas and Knox Mercer and their mute omega, Lena. Frankly, she scared me more than both brothers combined.

We observed the interrogation from behind glass, and by the time the three of them finished, I’d made a silent promise to every god that might be listening that I would never find myself on the wrong side of a room with any of them.

The commander finally broke.

Most of what he gave us was fragmented, safe houses, couriers, aliases, names of people who might know other people, but buried among it was the first solid lead we’d had on Warren Voss in months. Voss had a mistress living in one of Helix’s largest cities, and every Wednesday night, without fail, he visited her.

Command initially wanted us to grab him there, but we scrapped that idea almost immediately. The apartment sat in the heart of a dense urban territory, inside a secured residential complex surrounded by civilians and within minutes of Helix military response. Hitting it would have meant fighting our way into the building and then fighting our way back out with half the city coming down on us.

So we didn’t go after Voss.

We followed him home.

For three Wednesdays, we tracked pieces of his route. Different vehicles. Different roads. Convoy changes designed to make surveillance difficult. But Voss had made one mistake: no matter how many times he changed the path, eventually every route had to leave the city and cross the same vast stretch of desert.

On the fourth Wednesday, we were waiting.

We picked up his convoy outside the city and followed from a distance, leapfrogging surveillance positions so no single vehicle stayed on him long enough to draw attention. Mile by mile, the lights of civilization disappeared behind us. Paved roads became dirt, dirt became open desert, and eventually Voss’s convoy turned toward a stretch of barren terrain that reconnaissance had dismissed as empty.

It wasn’t.

Hidden among the rock formations was a fortified compound.

After nearly two years of chasing ghosts, Warren Voss finally had an address.

The night before we hit the compound, I could feel tension rolling off Graves. I rarely saw him like this. He was usually so sure of himself and of the mission, of his plan, and most of all, of us. Even when everything went to shit, Nolan Graves always seemed to know exactly what came next.

Sammy had fallen asleep beside me hours ago, snoring like a damn chainsaw, completely oblivious to the tension filling our cramped desert tent. Nolan lay awake on my other side, perfectly still. His breathing sounded slow and controlled, but his heart hammered hard enough that I could feel it.

I rested my hand against his chest, rubbing slow circles over the steady rise and fall of his breathing. Then I tucked my face into the scarred side of his neck and breathed him in, letting a soft alpha purr rumble from my throat, low and soothing, meant for him alone.

It worked.

Nolan drew a deep breath, some of the tension finally leaving his body. Beneath my palm, the frantic pounding of his heart gradually slowed until it settled into a steadier rhythm.

“I can’t lose you,” he murmured into the darkness. His eyes flicked toward Sammy’s sleeping form before returning to mine. “Either of you.”

“You won’t,” I said, keeping my palm against his chest.

His jaw tightened. “That’s what I thought last time.”

I lifted my head from his neck. “What happened, Nolan? You never talk about it.”

For a long moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then his chest expanded beneath my hand with a slow breath.

“An ambush. They masked their heat signatures and let us walk straight into the camp before we realized there were three times as many men as our intel said.” His gaze fixed somewhere beyond me, no longer seeing the tent. “Then the shooting started. Bullets coming from every fucking direction. Two of my men were dead within minutes.”

I stayed quiet, letting him continue at his own pace. Except he didn’t. Nolan went still beneath me, and I watched the memory begin to pull him somewhere I couldn’t follow. His eyes remained open, but that sharp awareness I knew so well slowly disappeared beneath a distant, glassy look. His breathing changed. The man lying beside me was still here, but some part of him was slipping back into that desert, surrounded by gunfire and men he couldn’t save.

“Nolan.”

Nothing.

A cold knot formed in my stomach.

I found his hand beneath the blankets and wrapped mine around it, squeezing hard enough to give him something real to hold on to.

“Stay with me, Nolan.” I squeezed again. “I’m here. Stay with me.”