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This chapter includes mature themes related to sexual violence and trauma. Reader discretion is advised.

Hospital San Vicente, Outskirts of Caracas

El Lobo, the Wolf, lounged in the cracked vinyl chair of Hospital San Vicente, the dim fluorescents flickering overhead. The scent of mold barely masked the underlying stench of decay and neglect, the kind that clung to places where poverty thrived. He hated it. Hated the peeling paint, the rust-streaked walls, the way desperation bled into the air. His fingers traced the smooth face of his gold watch, a reminder that he was above this, above them. A man like him wasn’t meant to wade through squalor. He was meant to rule it.

He had a name once, but it no longer mattered.

Men called him El Lobo, whispering it like a warning. He liked it that way. He had no pack. He needed none. The strongest hunted alone.

He’d hunted well, removing political enemies and cartel rivals with surgical brutality. Answering to no one, he thrived by eliminating threats, rejecting alliances. That’s why the government’s pleas meant nothing. He only believed in useful subordinates.

The jungle stretched beyond the open balcony, a black, breathing thing that swallowed men whole. It had taken its share of fools, but not him.

In his ear through his satellite phone, his informant spoke in careful, measured words, feeding him pure gold. The Americans had no idea how deeply he had infiltrated their ranks, how their precious operations were laid bare for the right price. Money talked, and so did men when enough of it was stacked in front of them.

"The CIA miscalculated," the voice on the other end said. "They thought they could eliminate you quietly."

A slow smile spread across El Lobo’s face. "They sent ghosts, and even you couldn’t find a shred of information about either of them," he said. "But I was waiting."

The Shadowguard was good. He would grant them that. But he had been better. Their mistake was believing they could stand against him.

The man was dead. His partner? A woman. Usually easier to break. A sultry beauty with big amber eyes, golden like the legacy of the Inca. Fierce in her own way. All she gave was her code name, Lechuza. It didn’t matter. They all broke eventually. Some wept. Some begged. Some clung to pride until their bodies failed.

She would be no different.

His fingers traced the cigar in his grip, savoring the anticipation. Baxter was already in his grasp. All those American secrets, just a hot battery, a length of rope, a waterboard, and a few broken bones away. They always talked.

He exhaled, smoke drifting upward. The Americans had no power here. Empires fell. Rome. Inca. Spain. America. The ones who thought themselves invincible always fell the hardest.

He would be the one to take their place. He controlled the fuel, the food, the weapons. The routes that fed the black markets. He decided who lived and who starved. The Venezuelan government clung to broken systems. They sat in gilded chairs, blind to the vines creeping toward their doors.

The SEALs had stormed in like peacekeepers. Lapdogs. They erased Ernesto Ramos and thought there would be no consequence.

Patience was the art of letting a man think he was safe. Then gutting him.

Retribution would come. He would pull them apart until they begged.

His informant whispered concerns.

"I will have what I need from the woman," Herrera murmured. "Baxter. When the time is right." His lips curled. "The Americans will choke on my supremacy."

The best kills took time.

Killa Saqra Rumi, callsign: Lechuza, knelt on damp stone, slick with something she didn’t want to name. Blood. Sweat. Fear. None of it was hers. Not yet.

In Spanish, "lechuza" meant owl. The parallel fit her. Like the silent raptor whose vision pierced through night, Lechuza had a preternatural ability to sense and neutralize threats before they saw her coming. A ghost in the field, all meticulous footfalls and coiled strength. Shadowguard protocol ran deep. Extraction wasn’t always an option. Survive. Observe. End the mission. O-voo had trusted her to finish it.

She wasn’t deterred by capture. It wasn’t failure unless she stopped breathing. Unless she ended up like her partner, Ndhlovu. Left for dead a day ago when everything went to hell. This single day felt like ten.

Bhekizizwe Zwide came from a proud Zulu lineage, his code name meaning elephant. He was strong, steady, a protector. But what she remembered most was his laugh. His teeth flashed white when she butchered his name. So she called him O-voo, and he loved it.

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 the Venezuelan 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 name Ramos .

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.

The man who had died at the hands of a SEAL team hellbent on making sure he never hurt another soul.

Dagger exhaled. Compartmentalize .

But ghosts weren’t the only thing clawing at him. Whiskey-colored eyes burned in his mind. Brian’s wife. She had once been dazzling. Fierce. Impossible to ignore.

Bali. That was where Dagger had first realized it.

They had been in Indonesia, protecting a group of divers exploring the wreck of the USS Kittiwake , and he discovered how deep his love went for his brother’s wife. She wasn’t his. She had never been his. Yet, something inside him had shifted, something dangerous.

Guilt stabbed him.

Tex’s voice cut through the cabin, pulling him back. “We hit the ground running. The rendezvous point is two clicks from extraction. Hostiles are probable. We go in quiet and fast.”

Dagger forced himself into the moment. The job. The mission. That’s what mattered. “How many bodies between us and him?” Dagger asked.

Tex’s piercing blue eyes flicked toward him. “Intel says a lot.”

Flash chuckled. “It’s a good thing we have those guys.”

“Intel’s usually optimistic, anyway,” Bale "Shark" Maddox muttered.

“Then we put ‘em down fast,” Brawler added. “All of them. Clean.”

“Simple,” Dagger said.

The affiliation of the hostage they were after had nearly knocked the air from his lungs.

Joseph Baxter, a Diplomatic Security Service agent. Same as Brian.

Same job.

Same city.

Same goddamn risk.

Brian had died protecting people like this. Protecting Astraea. Protecting Easy and Shark, who had gone into the prison to rescue Astraea. Without the distraction, the warden would have been all over his buddies.

Dagger hadn’t been able to save Brian, but he was going to save this guy, and even though Brian was gone, this guy, he was doing that same job, and in a haunting way, he was part of Brian’s legacy. That made him part of his battle family.

The aircraft dipped in turbulence. Cold bit through gloves. They were thirty thousand feet above a world that wanted them dead. Dagger flexed his fingers. Their gear was black, thin, but thermal, non-reflective, built for the cold, designed for war. A helmet. An oxygen mask. Gloves, thick enough for protection, thin enough to pull a trigger.

Flash gave a subtle nod. Ripcord is your friend.

The pack was sixty pounds, and Dagger would have to account for drag and airspeed with the additional weight. But, hell, like almost every SEAL on the teams, night jumping was their bread and butter and a complete head rush. Even Beast, Brawler’s sixty-five-pound Belgian Malinois, was kitted up in his own doggles and oxygen gear. Beast, who was so laid back, was almost asleep. The animal was unshakable, vicious at one word from Brawler, but like a playful pup when there was downtime. Dagger loved the animal like hell. That military working dog had saved them more times than he could count. Especially with Brawler at the helm of that juggernaut ship. If anyone could manhandle Beast in freefall, toting his pack to boot, it was the big muscular dude beside him.

The handler was a motherfucking wall. Nothing got past him, and nothing he loved got left behind. Charming and capable, he was a natural leader but preferred action over authority. He was also too damn nosy, perceptive, and pushy for his own damn good. Dagger thought he should take care of his own needs first, but the man couldn’t seem to find those in the dark with both hands. Fucking Mother Hen.

SEALs didn’t fly their own rides. The Air Force got them close. But it was the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or SOAR Once they jumped, they were on their own. The famed Nightstalker pilots often pulled their asses from the fire.

Tex called out. “HAHO jump, boys.”

“Hoo-yah,” rang through the plane.

“Ten-second intervals. Drop fast. Hit the LZ. No delays.”

High Altitude, High Opening. A hell of a ride with a full load of gear, but nothing new.

The jump light flickered from red to yellow. They all stood, shuffling toward the ramp that was slowly descending, sending gale-force winds through the aircraft. Adrenaline shot into his bloodstream.

Almost time.

The light turned green. Tex saluted the jump master and leapt from a perfectly good plane. The line moved closer to the black gaping maw, his night-vision goggles showing him just a field of eerie green.

The wind howled through the open ramp, biting through his gloves, sharp even through his oxygen mask. With a routine pop of his ears, the night loomed ahead, vast and infinite. His pulse kicked up. Brian’s strong, handsome, and beloved face flickered in his mind. His adorable nephews. Quinn. Then nothing. Dagger stepped into the void.

As the howling wind slammed into him like a freight train, the raw force threatening to tear him apart, he controlled it, adjusted for it, became one with it. The world stretched out below, a vast black abyss, the faint glimmer of civilization far beneath him barely perceptible through his night-vision goggles. His pulse steadied. This was his element.

The A in SEAL meant something. It meant they didn’t just survive in the air. They mastered it.

Above him, the rest of the team poured from the C-130, their black silhouettes stark against the star-spangled sky. Tex was below him, always leading from the front with Bondo second. Flash, Twister, Shark, Easy, and then, last out, Beast and his handler. The big Belgian Malinois barely moved, his body tucked against Brawler’s like they were one damn unit.

Dagger didn’t need to track them. He could feel them all there, perfectly spaced, falling into a tight formation as instinctively as they breathed.

To his right, the city of Caracas was lit up, nothing but a blinding glow in his NVGs.

Yeah, he was already dealing with the ghosts he’d anticipated as he prepared to deploy his chute. That desolate truth that when Quinn recovered, he would lose all three of them, and it hurt as if he was losing his brother all over again.

From up here, the city sprawled beneath him in endless grids of light, the heartbeat of a place that had never meant anything to him until it did. Until his brother died there, on a mission that never should have gone sideways. His brother had been a warrior, giving his life for a woman who had been falsely accused. An American. At first, not a fighter, not a soldier, until Easy busted her out of that prison, and she’d found her special brand of SEAL babe inside her and fought as fiercely as they had. It was no wonder Easy had married her. She had been someone worth saving. Because that was the oath they all had taken.

Every single stranger got the same treatment. Every American caught outside the wire, lost in the world’s darkest corners, could depend on one constant: SEALs would find them and bring them back. No hesitation. No question of worthiness. His brother had known that. Had lived that. Had died for that.

Dagger tightened his jaw. He could not let Brian’s death overwhelm him. Not now.

He flicked his eyes across the grid, picking out the key points of interest, a cluster of government buildings to the north, the labyrinth of shanties and gang territory to the south. The rooftops, some flat and open, others cluttered with satellite dishes and water tanks, would serve as either cover or kill boxes depending on who was watching. El Helicoide loomed like a dark scar in the middle of it all, a place of whispered horrors, where men entered, lost what made them human, turning them into breathing wraiths until that place took them into a dark, final end.

He clenched his jaw and focused on his descent. The mission was everything. The emotions could wait. Caracas was a battlefield like any other, danger in the shadows, threats on every rooftop. The skyline was a mix of modern wealth and decayed infrastructure, towers standing tall beside crumbling facades, glass and concrete disguising a city that could turn predator at any moment.

He let out a slow breath, forcing the tension from his body, and swept his gaze across the team.

Brawler: solid, locked in, a force of nature.

Tex: always in control, always setting the standard.

Then his eyes landed on Easy.

The kid had walked through hell in that jungle, him and his wife both, and come out swinging. Dagger had once questioned whether he belonged here. That had been a mistake.

Easy wasn’t soft. He was light. There was something in him, some rare balance between killer instinct and something cleaner. He’d pull the trigger when needed, no hesitation, but never seemed to lose that grin. Never lost whatever made him human in a world that tried to grind it out of them.

Warrior blood ran through him, but it was the light that set him apart. The kind that reminded Dagger what they were fighting to protect.

Easy adjusted his chute, cutting through the air like a man born for it, his descent effortless.

Which hit home to Dagger that this wasn’t nature’s domain. It was theirs.

Hot, wet air would swallow the sound of their movements, thick vines and tangled undergrowth would slow them down, but it wouldn’t stop them. Nothing would. They would own this terrain like they had owned every battlefield before it. Jungle, desert, ocean. It didn’t matter.

Where they landed, they conquered.