He grins, lips cracked. “Did I?”
“No. You failed.”
He spits blood at my boot. I don’t even blink.
A ranger arrives and changes out the zip ties for regulation cuffs before hauling him upright.
As they take him toward the lead engine, I feel Kade step up behind me—heat radiating off him in that way that always feels like gravity.
“You burned clean,” he murmurs.
I exhale. “I didn’t flinch this time.”
“No. You led.” He watches me for a long second. “And Bitterroot wasn’t your fault. You carried more than your share—and you stood back up. That’s what matters.”
The silence between us crackles. The others are too far off to hear. Too busy with hose packs and foam sweeps. The fire’s out, the villain’s down, but the war?
Not even close.
I turn to face him. “Homeland’s coming.”
“I know.”
“I’ll tell them what’s real,” I say, though every part of me knows it’ll cost. Maybe not today, maybe not in front of the brass—but when truth and power mix, there’s always fallout. “But only the human version. If they start digging deeper than that…” I shrug. “I’m not walking away.”
His eyes gleam with quiet pride. “Then I won’t either.”
He doesn’t smile.
He claims me with a look so fierce it steals the breath from my lungs and melts the last of my walls. For a heartbeat, I’m twenty-two again, still believing in forever, still thinking love was something you earned instead of something that chooses you. But this? This is different. This isn’t fragile. It’s elemental—old as the earth beneath our boots and wild as the fire in our veins. No promises, no pretty lies. Just heat, honesty, and the gravity between us that refuses to break. And somehow, after everything—after loss, after shame, after crawling out of ash and wreckage—I find I’m still capable of belonging. To someone. To him.
“They’ll come, Liv. With questions. With orders.”
“Let them,” I say.
He leans in, lips brushing my temple, low voice all gravel and steel. “Then you and I burn together—fierce, loyal, and unbreakable. Not in flame, not in death, but in everything that’s left when the smoke clears."
And I swear the sky holds its breath, just a little. Nothing changes—because nothing can, not yet. Not until the next choice, the next spark. And I know in my bones: it's coming. Like the mountain heard him. Like fate did, too.
CHAPTER 18
KADE
The cleanup starts before the fire dies.
Before the last flames exhale their dying breath, the shadows stir. A shimmer at the tree line. A low hum beneath the heat’s receding roar. Blackstrike’s advance team descends in a surgical wave, a silent storm borne on ghost-backs. They move preemptively, erasing details no one has even noticed.
The scent of scorched pine tangles with static and something colder—metal, burn gel, quiet authority. This isn’t cleanup; it’s purification. Evidence and energy vanish into vacuum-sealed crates before the world can blink.
We act without permission, striking before anyone thinks to ask questions. Blackstrike flows through the dark as drifting smoke—silent, thorough, unseen. Matte-black fire gear swallows every glint; each step leaves no trace. I catch fragments: red-lit goggles, packs humming with scan tech, gloves that never touch bare earth. One of us seeds sensor scramblers among the trees. Another positions nano-thermite canisters that burn cold, scrubbing away every residual signature we’ve left behind. To the casual observer it looks like an ordinary haz-mat crew;I know better. These operators erase truth before dawn can expose it.
By the time the Prescott rigs rumble off the ridge and the last ember gutters into ash, heat clings to my skin in a stubborn second layer. The air hangs thick with scorched pine, ionized dust, and the metallic bite of nano-thermite. My lungs feel raw, each breath scraping from the inside. Ash drifts in lazy spirals, settling on shoulders, boots, thoughts. Warmth radiates from the ground beneath my feet—more warning than comfort. It’s over yet not gone.
Silent drones already ring the site, barely discernible against low smoke and rising ash, their presence a whisper in charged air. They hover over scorched earth, scanning for anomalies while others sweep low with dispersal charges. Blast signatures lie buried beneath thin sheets of nano-thermite.
Official reports will frame this as a military-grade smuggling bust gone sideways—Dax Fane’s narrative for every federal ear. Stolen pyrotechnics, eco-extremist fallout. He even ties Greer to a flagged Ignis sympathizer, delivering Homeland Security a headline and a tidy villain.
No one says dragon. Not even once. Not in the silence that follows my statement, not in the sidelong glances traded across the debrief table, not even in the encrypted texts I know are already being drafted to higher clearance levels. The word stays buried, smothered under layers of protocol and plausible deniability. Because to say it aloud is to invite a truth none of them are ready to face—a truth that breathes fire and walks in human skin.
