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Schlick.
A flash of silver.
The mosquito, cleanly bisected midair, drifted to the jungle floor, its death so swift it hadn't even twitched.
Bagh hadn't moved. Or at least, it seemed like he hadn’t. His kukri was back across his knee, his fingers still curled over the hilt like he’d never drawn it at all. Only the barest gleam of moisture along the edge, mosquito blood, no more than a pinprick, proved otherwise.
Ryu gave a slow, appreciative nod. "Show-off."
"Gurkha," Bagh murmured, his voice amused but low. "We don’t waste movement."
Lechuza snorted. "You're an artist with that blade, I'll give you that."
"High praise from the owl," Bagh murmured, flashing her a grin that was far too easy for a man so lethal.
Ryu exhaled, stretching slightly, his patience steady as the rest of him. "We leave it to Emma."
Bagh frowned. "She’ll choose the drone."
Lechuza’s stomach tightened. "She wouldn’t."
But she already knew. Emma didn’t take unnecessary risks. Unlike them, she had the power to override personal vendettas in favor of survival.
A moment later, the confirmation came through the comms.
"Negative on insertion," Emma’s voice crackled softly in their ears. "Proceed with the drone strike."
Lechuza bit down her frustration, forcing her pulse into submission.
Emma continued, "We’ve kept this hunt silent, but Herrera caught us off guard before. I won’t risk another ambush. Not after last time. Not after what happened to Ndhlovu. I won’t lose any of you."
Bagh exhaled sharply, shaking his head. His voice was quiet but firm. "We're trained and built for killing. It’s in our blood and on our hands. We fight for what is right. We're expendable, Emma, so coddling is unlike you."
For the first time, Emma’s voice wavered, emotion threading through it. "Shut up, Bagh, and give me the coordinates."
Lechuza closed her eyes briefly, rage curling hot beneath her ribs.
Herrera had underestimated her. Had tortured her. Had left her to bleed in the dark because he thought she was nothing more than another ghost the jungle would swallow.
Now she had to let a missile do what her own hands should. The jungle breathed around them, thick, humid, restless. The wind rustled the canopy, a whisper of movement above their crouched forms, and somewhere in the distance, a howler monkey let out a guttural, echoing call. Herrera's compound was less than two hundred meters ahead, a squat, fortified structure tucked into the dense green, barely visible through the foliage. She could be in and out before Emma ordered her drone strike.
Ryu stretched slightly, rolling a kink from his neck. "Don’t even think about it, Lechuza. I’ll tie you down, little owl."
Bagh muttered something dark under his breath in Nepali.
Lechuza’s fingers flexed over her grip. Ryu was so damn observant, and he anticipated everything in such a tactical way. Butfucktactical. She was burning with the fire of retribution. Her body had been violated, the pain she ignored, but even though she knew it didn’t change her, the memory of Herrera watching like a sick bastard would haunt her. But if he were dead by her hand, that memory would be obscured by his blood. Then, another memory intruded—one that shouldn’t matter but did. A hand outstretched, offering her something simple. Warm fabric, still carrying the faint scent of him, of something solid. She had tucked it under her mattress like buried treasure, a secret she didn’t understand.
Flash.His fine, large eyes crowded out everything.She should be thinking about Herrera. But her mind, stubborn and infuriating, kept returning to gray eyes, calloused hands, and the way her own name would taste when Flash finally spoke it.
She set her jaw, hating that she couldn’t just dismiss him.
Hating that he’d gotten into her head.
That was a problem for another day.
For now, she would watch from the trees, silent and still as the owl whose name she carried and wait for the jungle to speak.
A hard pulsedragged Dagger from sleep, the unmistakable throb between his legs a visceral, instinctive ache. Hunger so intense shifted through him, not sexual, but a hunger that knew no bounds, that had grown from his self-inflicted starvation.