The sigils glow faintly, intertwined. Steady. The warmth presses against my skin—subtle, alive—a second heartbeat syncing to hers, steady and undeniable. For a moment, everything quiets. The weight of the mission, the fallout, the smoke still hanging in the air—it all drops away, and it's just this. Her. Me. Bound not by duty or battle, but by choice. By fire. Seeing our sigils locked together like this isn’t just symbolic—it’s real. Final. My instincts settle, the dragon in me going stillfor the first time in days. Because now she carries us too. Not as mine. As equal. As mate.
“I’m not done fighting,” she says.
“I didn’t ask you to. Tactical advisor. Embedded consultant. Call it what you want—but the next time Blackstrike moves, you move with us.”
She smiles—slow and dangerous.
“Then you’d better keep up.”
We don’t kiss. Not yet. Not here. Because if I do, I’ll want more than the moment can carry. Because restraint is the only thing keeping me from dragging her into my arms and marking her in fire and breath and vow. This isn’t about control—it’s about reverence. She’s not something to claim. She’s someone to stand beside. And when it happens—when she finally turns her face to mine and lets it—it's going to matter more than anything we’ve survived.
Three hours later, just as we’re wrapping up the last of the debriefs, Vale’s burner buzzes with a priority ping—encrypted, anonymous, timestamped for only moments ago. He frowns, thumbs it open, and his face goes still.
“Eyes up,” he says, passing the device into the center of the group.
We all lean in. The footage is grainy, handheld, but unmistakable—a ripple goes through the group. Dax swears under his breath. Vale mutters something clipped and sharp. Draven exhales through his nose, jaw tightening, muscles drawn taut beneath his skin. A vertical column of silver-gold fire erupts skyward, punching through the treetops in a blinding surge—sharp, violent, and otherworldly, as if the earth itself had driven it into the sky. No audible cue, no discernible source.
Just that one, perfect angle.
Dax mutters, “Shit.”
Draven stays silent, mouth a flat line. He doesn’t blink.
Liv’s hand curls tighter around mine. “That’s you,” she says, quiet but certain. She means the footage—the vertical fire column searing skyward through the treetops. The same silver-gold blaze that marked my entry, flame-wrapped and instant, when I dropped into the shelter to pull her out. Only she would recognize it for what it truly is—not a flare, not a trick of light, but me. The dragon, revealed for a blink too long, caught on someone else’s lens.
I nod. “And that’s the problem.”
Nobody moves. The air thickens like storm pressure. We all know what this means.
Vale looks to Dax. “We lock it down?”
Dax’s eyes stay on the screen. “We can try. But this genie’s already out of the bottle.” He looks to Draven. “Start sweeps. Takedown soft mirrors. Kill rumors where you can.”
Liv moves beside me. “And when that doesn’t work?”
I answer for all of us. “Then we stay ready. Because next time, someone might not miss the wings.”
Her transition is complete; she’s a dragon-shifter. She’s shifted, wielded fire, and has come through smoke and ruin to be reborn. Someone’s watching—and they’re starting to ask the right questions. The kind that don’t settle for weather balloons or busted fireworks as explanations. The kind that peel back the lies and stumble close to the truth. And if they dig deep enough, they won’t just hit something molten—they’ll unearth the myth that breathes inside all of us.
The caption crawls across the bottom of the screen in bold red font:
WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DROP ON PRESCOTT RIDGE?
We don’t need the burner to confirm what we’ve already seen. The feed Vale showed us earlier plays again later that night, mirrored by another obscure channel, same grainy fire column lighting up conspiracy boards. We gather around a second time, not for clarity, but to count the spread. To see how far it’s traveled, how many comments and speculative captions it's triggered. The footage is the same—white-gold flame, blurry scale, no sound. But its presence confirms the worst: someone else is watching, and they’re not letting go of the narrative.
CHAPTER 19
LIV
The air still smells like burned pine and redemption. The kind of scent that lingers, thick in the back of your throat, earthy and acrid and strangely comforting. My chest tightens with it, the memory of heat licking at my skin, smoke curling through my lungs, and the way survival rewrites everything you thought you knew about fear—and about grace.
Three days after the blast, the base thrums with barely contained energy. Fresh recruits shuffle into formation, boots scuffing against sun-warmed pavement, their movements stiff with tension and sweat.
The late summer heat radiates up from the asphalt, baking through their gear, while the tang of scorched brush and engine oil clings to the breeze. Nervous chatter flickers like static—half-laughs, clipped phrases, the clink of buckles adjusted one last time. Some smell faintly of coffee and metal polish. Others still wear the smoke of drills that ran too long. Every one of them turns when I step forward. Their chatter dims the second I step onto the field.
Then, just as fast, it swells into cheers. Loud. Raw. Fierce. A sound I never thought I'd hear again. The last time I stood beforea crew like this, it was under a cloud of suspicion and failure, not triumph. Bitterroot had left a burn mark across my record—and my pride. Now, those same scars feel like medals. I let the noise crash over me, bracing against the surge, remembering the silence that came after Bitterroot. The looks. The doubt. That silence made me question everything. This noise? This is proof I made it through.
"Monroe!" someone yells.
