Page 5

Lechuza came from fierce people too. Warriors. Her ancestors had trained to blend with stone, with wind, with shadow. That blood flowed in her veins. Shadowguard training carved the rest. Herrera would learn what that meant before he fell.
She stayed still, amber gaze steady. Owls didn’t flinch. They didn’t blink.
Herrera sat in a high-backed chair, cigar smoke curling around him like a second skin. Watching her with lazy amusement. Like a god surveying his ruined creation. She had known men like him before. Men who believed silence was weakness. That women existed to kneel. They had all died.
The brute behind her, the one chosen to violate her, had left bruises blooming across her hips and thighs. He had used her body as a tool for Herrera’s twisted entertainment. Disgust rippled through her. She let it show.
Herrera thought he could break her. Shame her. Humiliate her. But the mind was the Shadowguard’s true weapon. She and O-voo had taken the oath. They had bonded. During training, she had told him how she handled pain. What to watch for. What never to ask.
Her body belonged to her. Every inch. This was just a physical attack. Her mind was untouched. Always would be. The shadowed way didn’t end with death. It carried memory. It carried mission. We walk the shadowed way. As one. Always, O-voo, as one.
The brute’s breath ghosted over her neck.
Her arms were cuffed in front of her. Her face pressed to the wall. Her captors had stripped her of gear and dignity. That was their mistake.
The second? Letting her listen.
She had learned the rhythms of this place. The guard rotations. Their weapons. The way fear moved through the halls. How even his loyal men never held Herrera’s gaze too long. Fear could be turned.
Herrera tapped ash from his cigar, still talking, spinning his own myth aloud. She let him. A man like that needed to hear himself more than he needed results. "You think you are strong because you’ve given me nothing," he said, watching her like an insect pinned to glass. "You are mistaken." He tilted his head. The signal. The brute moved. His hand skimmed her shoulder.
She had memorized his footfalls. The rasp of his breath. Now she counted them. Waited. A shift. A twist. She brought her knee up, braced against the cuffs, and snapped them. Before he could react, her arm snaked around his neck. Her grip tightened. She looked at Herrera. Her eyes were steady. Unblinking. A second. Two. Snap. The man dropped. The room fell silent. She turned toward Herrera. hey swarmed.
She dropped low, took one man’s wrist and broke it. Elbowed another in the throat. Flipped a third onto the floor. Then boots struck her ribs. Arms wrenched hers back. Zip ties bit in. It took four of them to hold her down. Herrera watched, cigar paused midair. Then he laughed. Low. Appreciative. "Perhaps I miscalculated," he said. "Maybe you are different."
She lifted her head. Her pulse steady. "I told you," she said. "Owls don’t break."
He smiled. "We shall see."
He wasn’t finished. Not yet. He thought silence meant surrender. He would learn.
Owls did not surrender to the night. They owned it.
Somewhere over theVenezuelan jungle
The C-130 Hercules rumbled through the night, the steady drone of turboprops rattling through steel and bone. Inside the cargo hold, red jump lights glowed overhead. Machine oil, sweat, and gunmetal filled the air.
Kade “Dagger” Hollis sat in silence, rifle between his knees, eyes locked on nothing. The others talked, grumbled, but he stayed quiet. His confrontation with Quinn gave him hope. But it also filled him with dread. When she recovered, he would be gone. So would his nephews.
“Caracas,” Christian "Brawler" Beckett muttered. “Back to the land of bad decisions.”
Jae "Flash" Shaw, their resident comedian, snorted as he checked his magazine before slamming it home. “We’ve made plenty of those. Just try to pull the ripcord this time, yeah? Otherwise, it’s a real sharp stop on the way down.”
Matthew "Easy" Hitchcock let out a dark chuckle. “Some of us got more history with this place than others.”
Dagger felt it then, the way the energy around him shifted, and his grip tightened on his rifle. A few quick glances subtle but there. The team knew what Caracas meant to him. To Easy. “History?” Shane "Twister" Reeves asked. “You mean the part where Caracas tried to kill you and Astraea? Or the part where Ramos tried to make her his sex slave?”
Silence.
Easy’s hands curled into fists over his rifle, his voice colder now. “Both.”
Dagger swallowed hard, his chest tightening at the nameRamos.
Ernesto Ramos.
The man who had ruled Caracas’s underground with a fist wrapped in barbed wire.
The man who had hunted Easy and Astraea across the country, refusing to let her go.