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Her legs moved on instinct, unzipping her catsuit as she rushed toward him, shrugging out of it. Ryu and Bagh eyed the guy on the ground. Speculation flickering between them as Baghfrowned. Ryu murmured, “She was never yours, my friend.” Bagh sighed, turning away.
I’m going to check the perimeter,” he said, regret shadowing his eyes, rivalry etched into each breath, his body rigid with a loss she didn’t understand. She couldn’t worry about that.
She ripped off her T-shirt beneath her catsuit armor, wadded it up, and dropped to her knees beside him, pressing it to his wound hard enough to make him grunt. Applying pressure with calm, trained movements, her body trembled beneath the surface, panic flaring.
“At least the shirt I gave you wasn’t blood soaked,” he said, his fine eyes going glassy.
His blood was hot against her skin. Too hot.
Yet it grounded her. That heat, that proof of life, was all she could focus on.
Because even as she fought to stop the bleeding, she couldn’t stop watching him.
The thick lashes that framed his eyes. The way his breath hitched when her fingers brushed too close to the injury. The faint twitch of his lips as he tried to be brave, even now.
She was furious.
Furious at the blood, the fragility of his skin, the jungle, the violence, the timing.Furious at how much he mattered.
“No,” she murmured, voice lower now, intimate. “Jae.” His first name was like a kiss on her lips. His smile faltered, just a flicker, but it hit her like a punch. A flicker of softness. Of something unspoken. “Even wounded predators never quit the battle.”
“That’s right. We’re never out of the fucking fight,” he muttered, his humor thinning with pain.
She pressed the bandage tighter, her hands shaking now, not from fear, not from adrenaline, but from the truth threading itself into her marrow.
Shefelt himin her chest. His heartbeat in her palms. His presence soaking into her blood like wildfire. Every inch of him called to something ancient and aching inside her.
His fingers brushed her wrist, barely a touch, but it shattered something inside her.
A silent thank you. A silentdon’t leave. She didn’t want to. Not now. Not ever.
“I need to know,” he whispered, voice raw and fading. “You drove me crazy with your enigmatic tease…moonfire… and stone. Tell me before I bleed out because it’s not the damn knife killing me, it’s the not knowing. The wanting. The goddamnpull of you.”
She exhaled, a soft smile trembling at the edges of her lips. Something broke free in her chest.
“Killa Saqra Rumi.”
“Slower,” he rasped, eyes locked on hers, the only thing still burning in his fading world. “So, I can hold it in my breath.”
“Kee-yah… Sahk-rah… Roo-mee.”
He repeated it under his breath, reverent.
“Even your name cuts.” Then softer, hoarse, the words slipped out, “Sonqoyta apachunki.”
Her breath hitched. “Where did you learn that?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured, his breathing labored. “I think the jungle told me.”
She trembled, the words translated to:You have taken my heart.
Hislifeblood pulsedin her chest.
The jungle pressed closer, oppressive and humid, thick with the scent of earth and copper and fear. But beneath it, there was something deeper, something ancient, electric. As if the land itself felt the thread now humming between them.
This man… this maddening, gorgeous warrior… she wasn’t ready to lose him.
Her grandmother’s voice echoed unbidden from memory, words once spoken by firelight, wrapped in tradition:“If the gods allow, you will always find your soul again, somewhere in another life, another path.”