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Dagger stood there, the weight of it all pressing down, Quinn in his arms, Langford at his feet, verdict hanging in the air like smoke. All he could think was:Samuraijustice. With a shiver, remembering that hallucination, the smoke, the bright scale shimmer, the shape that wasn’t quite a man,Dragonjudgment.
Dagger turned just as the last scream died in the compound. He tightened his arms around her, holding her trembling body to him. His love surged hot and fierce.
A gurgling rasp broke the silence, wet and savage.
His eyes locked on Herrera, stumbling, hands flying to his throat. Blood poured between his fingers in thick, hot rivers, soaking his uniform in red.
Lechuza stood before him, blade steady in her grip, breathing hard. Tendrils of her dark hair clung to her cheeks, her golden eyes glowing with unblinking calm.
She didn’t speak right away. She didn’t need to.
Dagger felt the chill move through the room like the jungle itself was watching, a presence older and wilder than man.
Herrera fell to his knees, power bleeding out of him, arrogance slipping away with every heartbeat.
Lechuza tilted her head, her assassin gaze, watching him descend, silent and precise, just like she’d always been.
Her voice cut through the quiet, low and deliberate. “You should’ve been more careful.”
Dagger could feel the weight in her words,not fury, not vengeance. Somethingtruer.Final. Herrera’s wide, disbelieving eyes searched the room like he still expected someone to save him.
“The jungle has eyes,” Lechuza whispered. “Tonight, it saw you.”
He collapsed, dead, sprawling in his own hubris.
Dagger watched her linger, his hold on Quinn tightening, gaze fixed on the body. He looked at Lechuza. There was no triumph in her eyes.
Only clarity.
Only justice.
18
Herrera fadedfrom Lechuza’s vision. There was only one man she needed to see. She turned away, and that’s when she saw him.
Flash slumped against the stone wall, half-hidden in the hacienda’s shifting shadow, one hand slack. Blood slicked the other, thick and dark, seeping through his fingers and soaking into the earth beneath him like a sacrifice offered to the gods. The jungle called out to her, urging her toward something just as primal.
Her breath caught sharp and jagged.
The jungle fell away. The rustling leaves, the scent of wet stone, the distant echo of its hushed breath, all of it dulled into a deafening silence as her gaze locked on the man bleeding before her.
He was ghost-pale beneath the grime and sweat, the sharp angles of his face made harsher by the shadow of pain etched into every line. But even wounded,bleeding,he was striking.
Dangerous. Beautiful.
That unruly dark hair, soaked and matted to his temples. The defined cut of his jaw, smeared with dirt and blood. His mouth,God, that mouth, split in that familiar, crooked grin that made her pulse skip for reasons she still didn’t dare name.
But it was his eyes that undid her.
Those big, expressive eyes, gunmetal gray, fierce and unflinching, cut through the chaos like they’d been born to find her. Eyes that belonged to a man trained for war, sharpened by pain, and built to protect with brutal precision. When they landed on her?Only her.They were lethal, metallic, loaded. Alive, storm-wracked, magnificent, and burning with a thousand unspoken promises. Somehow… he made her believe they weren’t empty after all. She shivered, a breath catching in her throat, that deep, uncontrollable pull twisting through her.Safety is an illusion,she’d told him once.Promises are empty until fulfilled.But his eyes said otherwise. His eyes saidstay. His eyes saidmine. She wanted to heal him with her hands.
Wanted to move into the jungle and take what had always been hers.
He was a man carved by war. Hardened, haunted. But in this moment, even broken and bleeding, he looked like somethingeternal. A warrior eagle god, cast in flesh and sky. He didn’t move. He didn’t need to. The air bowed around him. She… sheshookwith the need to touch him.
Her heart surged when he smiled. That same crooked, cocky grin, defiant and reckless andhim. And again, that freaking, gorgeous mouth.
“What, worried about me, little owl?” he rasped, voice a cracked whisper that somehow still held its usual teasing lilt. The sound of it scraped down her spine, hit every frayed nerve. Not because he was mocking death, but becausehe still had the audacity to flirt with it.