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The jungle pressed in on them, thick with damp heat, the scent of loamy earth and rain-soaked leaves heavy in the air. Every breath tasted of moss and something faintly metallic, like the promise of a coming storm. The compound lay ahead, a squat, reinforced structure carved into the landscape like a tumor that nature hadn’t yet reclaimed.

Lechuza crouched behind a tangle of roots, her night vision sweeping over the perimeter. Herrera was inside.

So close.

Her grip on her suppressed rifle tightened. It would be so easy to slip through the shadows, find him in whatever gilded hole he thought kept him safe, and slit his throat.

Next to her, Bagh’s fingers twitched over the grip of his kukri, his signature blade, a Gurkha’s weapon of choice. He was coiled, ready, as if he could already feel the resistance of flesh beneath his edge. His shaggy black hair was damp with sweat, curling over his forehead, and when he exhaled, it came out slow and deep, like a war drum building in his chest.

Across from them, Ryū shifted slightly, calm, still, measured, like a blade held in reserve. His profile was sharp, his samurai ancestry etched into the high cheekbones and dark, assessing eyes. Even in the oppressive heat, he was composed. The only movement was the slow, rhythmic flex of his fingers against his MP7’s foregrip.

"Blow him up," Ryū said quietly, breaking the silence. "Cleaner. No risk. No mess."

Bagh scoffed, adjusting the kukri across his knee. "If he’s not inside? If he gets clear?" His voice, deep and edged with Nepalese grit, dropped lower. "I want his blood, not debris."

"Spoken like a man who lets his emotions lead," Ryū murmured. "That’s how people die."

Lechuza rolled her shoulders, eyes still locked on the compound. "The drone strike is unreliable. If it kills him, we won’t know for sure. If we don’t confirm the kill, it means we’ll never stop hunting him. No body, no end."

Bagh tipped his head, that killer smile flashing. "Exactly. We go in."

Ryū exhaled, his patience as slow and deliberate as the rest of him. "You’re both predictable. One of you because he fights like an avalanche, reckless, impossible to stop once he starts moving. The other?" He flicked his gaze to Lechuza, a glint of something amused there. "Because she’s got a personal grudge. Warriors with grudges are dangerous." Lechuza shot him a look, but Ryū wasn’t finished. "Still, I can’t blame Bagh. I’d follow that pretty little owl into hell, too."

She turned her head so slowly it should have been warning enough.

"Never," she murmured, voice lethal, "call me pretty again."

Ryū’s smirk was almost lazy, dark eyes unreadable. "Or what?"

She tilted her head. "Or I introduce you to your samurai ancestors sooner than you planned." She held his gaze. “And, Ryū?”

He raised a brow.

“You can shove your Zen shit up your ass.”

Bagh’s low chuckle rumbled in his chest. "You’d deserve it," he told Ryū. Then, to Lechuza, "But let’s not pretend he’s wrong about everything. I may be reckless, but Herrera deserves a knife, not a drone. He deserves to feel it.”

Lechuza’s voice was quiet but edged with steel. "To look one of us in the eyes before he dies." Sorry, guys. It will be by my hand.

"He doesn't deserve shit except a quick end," Ryū countered. "You two are getting sentimental."

"Sentimental?" Lechuza arched a brow. "You're the one who practically writes love poetry to your swords."

Ryū grinned. "Only the finest steel deserves poetry, hime ."

She let the jab slide, shifting her weight slightly to keep her legs from going numb. "Bagh's right. The drone strike is unreliable. We have no confirmation without eyes, and the window for intelligence collection closes the moment we turn this place into a crater. If we go in, we get the kill, and we confirm it."

"We get caught in a firefight, potentially end up as mangled corpses feeding the ants," Ryū pointed out. "Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good bloodbath, but I'd rather be the one watching it from a safe distance."

Ryū snorted, and Bagh rolled his eyes, but his gaze lingered on her a second longer than necessary. That gaze, steady, intent, had followed her for months now, though he never said anything outright. Bagh was attractive. That couldn’t be denied. The sharp angles of his face softened by that shaggy, infuriatingly charming hair, the way his smile, dangerous as it was, seemed so effortlessly easy. Too easy. Too impulsive. Too willing to throw himself into the fire because he trusted he’d come out on the other side. Attraction was a liability. She ignored it.

She sighed, refocusing on the compound.

It should be Herrera on her mind. The hunt, the kill, the justice owed for what he had done. But instead, Jae Shaw’s name rolled through her thoughts, slow and steady, like the taste of something dark and rich lingering on the tongue.

A warrior’s… what?

Whiskey, maybe. Burnt sugar. Something that should be smooth but instead burned its way down and settled in the chest, leaving warmth and regret in its wake.

Lechuza hated it.

Hated the memory of his steady hands, the way his gray eyes held hers in the dim light of the chopper, seeing her, not as a victim, not as a woman who needed saving, but as a warrior.

As an equal.

Flash, Jae Shaw, was all sharp angles and quiet strength, the kind of man who looked like he’d been carved from granite, all strong jawlines, broad shoulders, and a frame built for endurance. The scar along his cheek added to the danger, but it was his eyes, that storm-gray gaze, always watching, always assessing, that unsettled her most. His humor got her, too, the way he twirled a phrase, sharp, witty, and disarming.

He’d asked for her name.

A breath of a whisper, warm against her ear, the moment before exhaustion had taken her under.

She had given him a riddle.

It still rattled her. She had spent years as a ghost, a shadow moving through the world without identity. The Incas had believed that names were sacred, tied to the soul, never to be given lightly. A true name was power, a piece of oneself given away. To speak it was to trust. To be known.

She had given its meaning away, unthinking. Had she offered up her soul?

Why? Because for the first time in years, she had felt solid. She shivered. No man ever made her shiver.

Her scowl deepened. Lechuza inhaled sharply, forcing herself back into the present. The jungle around them was thick with tension, the scent of damp earth and vegetation mixing with the faint, metallic tang of their gear. A few meters away, a jaguar slinked through the trees, its golden eyes reflecting the faintest hint of moonlight before it disappeared into the underbrush. Silent. Deadly, and completely unaware of them.

Ryū watched her, like he could see the war in her head. He didn’t comment, but something in his gaze shifted, an acknowledgment.

A mosquito whined near her ear. Lechuza ignored it, adjusting her rifle a fraction as the wind shifted. The jungle never truly slept, it breathed, pulsed, watched.

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.

Ryū 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.

Ryū 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.

Ryū 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. Ryū was so damn observant, and he anticipated everything in such a tactical way. But fuck tactical. 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 everythin g. 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 pulse dragged 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.

He shifted slightly and the very air that filtered over his naked body was friction enough, sharpening the awareness. His body stirred before his mind caught up, disoriented, weighted by the heaviness of sleep. He drifted in that place between sleeping and waking, caught up in the kind of dream that was as elusive as fog.

The air smelled of sex and warm skin, a hint of an elusive perfume clinging to the sheets, to him, to the space between them. A place where control was overshadowed by connection, and just a taste of it had him hungering for more, that hunger was loneliness that had shadowed him for a long damn time, affecting everything between him and his heart, Brian, the team, the boys…and…her.

His internal clock ticked in warning, zero six hundred was fast approaching, and duty, as always, was waiting. Yet for the first time, he decided that duty could wait just a second. The act of possessing her again was nothing more than a roll, bodies touching, fusing, meshing.

Her touch jolted him like a charge, everything from last night slamming into place. Quinn. Her hands. Her mouth. Her surrender. His own. Not just lust. Not just release. It was something deeper, something tangled and dangerous and impossible to ignore. Something that cracked through the armor he’d kept bolted around his heart since the day she’d looked at him like he was the enemy. This was a place of fear…of vulnerability, of taking off armor and being exposed. Of trusting in something that was bigger than himself, something that had such a huge chance of wounding him severely.

Her hand on him. Soft. Slow. Deliberate. It increased the hunger at the same time as it mended something inside him that he’d thought broken beyond repair. Fingertips dragged lightly across his chest, tracing him like a memory he didn’t deserve to keep. He clenched his jaw. That was the guilt talking. It was time for him to assess exactly what he did deserve. What he could live and not live without.

Her caress wasn’t just the touch he craved. It was a revelation.

She no longer hated him.

That touch said it all. She didn’t see him as the enemy anymore. She wasn’t reaching out of obligation or loneliness or need. She was reaching for him of her own free will. His throat contracted. There were times misery dogged him, especially after he’d taken her sons, when he could barely breathe at the memory of her collapse, her pain, and his helplessness. There was that control again, something he thought he could wield, but it wasn’t a sword or a shield…it didn’t hurt anyone but himself.

God, that meant everything.

It cracked something open inside him, a door he hadn’t dared try to unlock. A possibility he’d buried so deep beneath guilt and grief he didn’t recognize the shape of it anymore. But now it was here. Rising. Real.

She’d willingly given herself to him. She’d soothed him with her words, supported him in his spirals, cherished him with her hands, her voice, her sweet, sweet body. Last night hadn’t been about possession. It hadn’t been about comfort or relief or drowning out the pain. It had been something far more intimate.

It had been a claiming.

Not of body, but of space. Heart-space.

Their bodies had fused, meshed, tangled together, but that wasn’t what kept him awake now. It was this—this simple, sacred act of her reaching for him after everything. The gentleness of it. The grace. The kind of grace only Quinn Cole could give, fierce and raw and soul-deep.

She deserves happiness, healing, and her boys back. She deserves to move on ? —

With you? Tex had asked. Dagger had wanted to throw those words back at him. But they'd stuck, lodged under his skin, echoing louder now, rattling around in his chest like a truth he hadn’t wanted to face.

Yes. The answer roared in his mind now, undeniable.

His heart contracted, tight, sharp, then expanded with something like clarity. The question that had clawed at him since the team’s intervention washed over him again. But this time, he didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil into that cold, shadowed place inside him. He didn’t let the monster wave of guilt and fear drag him under.

Instead, he stood in it, let it come, let it batter him. Finally, he looked. Really looked at the wounds he’d been ignoring. Wounds that had festered not just from loss, but from refusal. His refusal to see things as they were.

What did he want?

It was a brutal question. A loaded one. But he met it head-on now, no escape routes left.

He’d spent years disciplining himself not to want her. Trained himself to keep his walls up, to never let her breach his heart. Because she had belonged to Brian. That was a line he never allowed himself to cross, not even in thought.

But the truth was uglier, more painful than that. Brian hadn’t just been his brother, he’d been his compass, the one who taught him what being a man meant when their father couldn’t. Dagger had watched him lose himself in Quinn, be terrified of losing her even while pushing her away. He saw the love turn to fear, the fear to distance, and still he hadn’t stepped in. He hadn’t known how.

Then Brian died, and Quinn was no longer his. Had she ever really been? Another wound, another scar he never tended.

God, he’d been so fucking afraid. Her hatred had gutted him. Her silence had torn him apart. Watching her spiral, helpless to stop it, had been its own form of torture. So, he did what he’d always done. He pulled back, and distance had severed the connection. None of that had protected him.

Those kids…they needed him after he’d taken them from their mother. Lost, bereft, still feeling their father’s death, they were so young without the wisdom to understand any of it. Her touch got bolder, pressing into his skin like she needed something from inside him, and he ached with the pleasure of it. Dagger forced himself to think about those kids, and Tex’s words gnawed at him.

He’d tried to remain in the shadows, but Quinn and the boys wouldn’t let him. He swallowed hard. He’d already acted like a father, and he’d never stopped loving Quinn. He told himself the boys weren’t his. When she recovered, they’d go back to her, and he’d fade from their lives again. Even when she’d said in her office that she wanted him gone, he’d had no idea how hard that would hit.

Losing her was a pattern. When he’d first met her, he’d lost her even before he had a chance to find her. He’d lost her a second time when she blamed him for Brian’s death. He’d lost her again when he was forced to take her children. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Because someone had to protect them, even if it meant becoming the villain in her eyes.

Now…lying here in the echo of her touch, in the scent of her skin, the silence wasn’t hollow anymore. It was full. Full of truths he couldn’t keep pretending didn’t exist.

He wanted her. Fiercely. Not as a possession, but in a way that lived in his bones. She was his, not by claim, not by conquest, but in something older, deeper. Something that felt… inevitable. Those boys, his nephews, first, yes. But now his sons. Biologically, undeniably. They needed a father.

He wanted that role now. He wanted to show up, not just as a protector, but as a presence. Like Tex. Like Bondo. Men who didn’t just fill the space of fatherhood. They earned it every damn day.

Maybe…maybe Brian would’ve wanted that too. Maybe he’d trusted Dagger to be that man. Maybe he’d always known Dagger could love them, Quinn and the boys, in a way he never had the strength to.

The thought made his chest ache.

Would Brian have approved? The question haunted him.

But a deeper one followed. Did it matter anymore?

Because Quinn deserved more than a ghost. She deserved more than the weight of a dead man’s memory. She deserved someone who would fight for her, love her, hold her steady when the world shook and let her soar when she needed it.

God help him, wanted to be that man.

Maybe it wasn’t too late.

Maybe it started right here… with her hand still on his chest, with her body warm beside him, with the doubts and choices waiting for him to overcome, to choose. All he had to do was toss out everything he’d thought he knew. But Brian’s ghost didn’t just haunt Quinn, and they had more baggage to discuss.

She huffed a breath. While he was soul-searching, she was getting turned on. He felt it in the way her hands now moved over him. When she raked her nails down his body to his aching dick, he hissed in a breath, moaning softly when her hand closed around his thickening cock and pumped.

His hips arched off the mattress. “You trying to get my attention, babe?” he growled. “Waking a sleeping giant?”

A laugh, light, teasing, unmistakably female. “Full of yourself, hmmm?”

“I’d rather be full of you,” he murmured, opening his eyes, his voice rumbling with intensity and raw emotion.

She shivered, her breath suspended as she took in his words. In response, her hand pumped him again, and his hips lifted, the shock of pleasure sent his groan into the deeper bass of his voice. She exhaled heavily, her voice barely a whisper. “I’m not one to waste opportunity, and it was right there all ready for me. Were you dreaming about me?”

“Always,” he whispered back, turning his head and capturing her gaze. His dreams were always filled with this woman. “But compared to this…dreams don’t even come close.” The humor drained from her eyes, but the simmering desire flared as she lifted herself up and full-body pressed him to the mattress. Her pelvis replaced her hand, her breasts crushed to his chest.

He didn’t see it coming.

One second, she was just looking at him, that gaze rich with something deeper than warmth, darker than longing. A storm brewing in those whiskey-colored eyes, honeyed and molten, full of things she hadn’t said and maybe never would.

The next, she was on him like a tempest, like she couldn’t bear the space between them a second longer.

Then she kissed him.

Not soft. Not tentative.

It was a claiming, hot, urgent, a collision of mouths and breath and need that sent his blood surging. Her lips parted over his with a kind of reckless surrender, but there was a demand behind it too. A challenge. A command.

Without any warning, she took him deep inside.

Feel this.

In slow, tantalizing increments, surrounding him inch by inch until he was enveloped in her tight, wet heat.

Want this.

Once he was buried to the hilt, she arched into him and moaned as she rode him with a tormenting rhythm. Desperately he locked her hips against his. She fought him.

Want me.

His control shredded beneath it as she settled deeper on him. Hauling in a ragged breath, he dragged his hands up her back, releasing his hold on her hips, and she launched an assault on his senses. She tasted like heat and sin and something sweeter than memory, and God help him, he wanted to drown in it. He deepened the kiss instinctively, angling his mouth over hers, sliding his arm across her back, anchoring her to him.

Her body melted into his, not passively. No, she pressed into him like she wanted to fuse them together, like she needed to feel him with every inch of her skin.

“ Kade .” His name was a plea, as heated a caress of her mouth, her body laying siege, starting a war that he was determined to win. “I’ve always wanted you like this. Forever . Wanted to take you, touch every inch of you, fuck you.” Her fingers dragged up his chest, curling around his neck, nails grazing his jaw as her mouth moved with growing hunger. He experienced a rush of emotion so overwhelming that it left him reeling.

Her words shocked through him, his hips jackknifing. He thought he was going to lose his damn sanity while she mind- and body-fucked him at the same time. Every breath was a gasp. Every sigh, a shiver. He could feel her desire flaring now, igniting under her skin, in the little tremble of her legs against his, the arch of her spine as she leaned in harder, deeper, trying to get closer, every clench and release of her body flaring into a raging inferno. He was caught in her fire, rising with her while they were both being burned to ashes.

She kissed him, fucking him like a woman who wasn’t just giving him her body, but was still fighting a battle she was afraid of losing.

Fuck, he felt every ounce of that decision in the way her mouth pulled at his, hungry, hesitant, fierce. In the way her body demanded all he had to give. Like she was tearing herself open and stitching herself back together, all in the press of her lips to his, the way she thrust against him.

His heart thudded hard behind his ribs. Not just from lust, but from the weight of what this meant. Her hands slipped into his hair, tightened until pain lanced through his scalp. Her nipples scored his chest, her knees bracketed his hips, and the urge to possess her coiled in his dick. Her hands tightened in his hair, tearing a moan from the back of her throat as he grabbed her hips while his pelvis pistoned, his strokes faster, ruthlessly demanding. With each thrust he grew harder, thicker. She sobbed into his mouth as she stiffened against him, the pulse of her climax hitting him like a jolt of electricity.

Because this… all of this …wasn’t just passion.

This was possibility .

Her mind fuck took him over colliding into him body and soul, dragging him into a white-hot heat and an all-consuming pleasure that threatened to demolish him. Lost in her words, in the rush of sensation, lost in her , he moaned in pure ecstasy, and arched into her one last time, so deep. A guttural growl tore from his chest, and his entire body shuddered as he came, harder and stronger than he could ever remember.

His scorching release seemed to go on and on, wringing him dry and leaving him weak and devastated, until he existed in exquisite limbo. He moved slightly, and she cried out again, her pelvis riding the wave of another powerful orgasm. Fuck he hadn’t surrendered, she’d conquered his warrior’s ass, her body a lethal weapon, and her words the sword that pierced him.

If she wasn’t careful, if he wasn’t, he was going to fall so goddamn deep he’d never come back up.

Because in her desperation, Brian’s ghost still hovered, still haunted, still stealing pieces of her, and he was fucking selfish. He wanted all of her pieces, every last molecule.

She sprawled across his body like a banner claiming her right to him. Her breathing was choppy, her hands still in his hair. The stillness of the morning had weight to it, like that specter who had died here in this city, not far from where they now lay. His breath caught at the searing pain of that memory, and he realized that Brian still had pieces of him, too.

“You’re a sexy bastard,” she bit out, then her voice hushed. “The way you move, the shape of you, the combination of your heavy muscles, and your unwavering confidence.” Her voice sounded crushed. “I’ve always thought so.” She pushed herself up, meeting his gaze head-on, and he trembled inside with pride, with hope at this woman who was taking her power back bit by bit. Her breath hitched, her voice breaking. “It feels so good to tell you that to your achingly handsome face with the power of conquistadors in every line. To see what my words do to you…not shredding you with my bitterness but bolstering you with my truth.” She dropped her head. “Kade…”

He rolled, settling his body on top of hers, trying to protect her from all this turmoil, but he knew he couldn’t, that inevitably they would have to deal with it all. Everything was in a fragile state. She stared up at him, her eyes clouded, and she bit her lip and looked away.

“ Don’t, ” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers. Her lashes lifted and she met his eyes. Her gaze was now guarded and her expression tentative, guilty. She looked so damn vulnerable. This woman had the ability to cripple his emotions, even as that love he’d buried pushed up through the dirt his soul had piled on top.

“Don’t what ?” she whispered, struggling with everything.

“Don’t limit your happiness, your feelings for me by overshadowing them with Brian.”

She stiffened, her gaze suddenly flaring with rebellion. “I told you I wasn’t ready to talk—” That quickly her entire demeanor shifted and changed at the mention of his brother’s name. Gone was that tenderness for him, and in its place was a spark of defiance that was as effective as putting a wall between them and shutting him out.

“Don’t fucking do that either,” he said fiercely, cupping her face in both hands. “Don’t shut me out, babe. I can’t—” He closed his eyes.

She made a soft sound. “I don’t want to,” she said as fiercely. “It’s just too much right now.”

“Okay, I’m dropping it.” He looked at his watch, realizing they were going to be late if they didn’t get moving. But even as he tried to shift back into focus, something lodged deep inside him, something uneasy. His heart contracted hard at what they’d just shared, but a part of him couldn’t help but wonder what was still unsaid? What pieces of her were still locked away? When it all eventually surfaced, because it would, what would it dislodge between them? Would it crack open this fragile new thing they'd built… or shatter it beyond repair?