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Fine. I’ll gather what’s left of me, sift through the wreckage and betrayal, and start over.

Not as who I was before—not the girl who trusted the system, or the man she thought would fight beside her—but as someone sharper.

Someone who remembers how easily foundations crack when the fire comes from the inside.

Next time, I won’t be the one caught in the blaze... I'll be the one who lights it.

Fire Base Echo

Mogollon Rim, Arizona

Present Day

The wind turns sharp, laced with smoke and tension.

I’m no longer where I lost my team. I’ve been demoted and moved into a training position, but the memory clings as I stand at the edge of a makeshift fire base carved into the side of a high mountain pass, surrounded by a ragged half-moon of engines, brush rigs, and portable water tanks.

The ground beneath my boots is dry and cracked, blackened with ash from a backburn set just hours ago. A wall of pine looms to the north, charred and still crackling. The sky above it is streaked with orange and gray. Every breath tastes like smoke and warning.

Lightning crackles overhead. I don’t flinch. The static sings across my skin, like the low hum building in my chest. Storms don’t rattle me—they reflect me. Controlled chaos. Quiet fury. And right now, all that intensity is focused on the man twenty feet in front of me.

Kade Veyron.

All cut angles and stillness. A shadow where no shadow should be. He hasn’t said much since the brass dropped him here, just watched me like he’s reading every twitch in my muscles.

“You’re wasting your time,” I say, voice clipped. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No,” he says, calm and quiet. “You need backup.”

“I’ve worked this base before you showed up and showed any interest in using your voice to support me,” I snap.

His lip twitches. An annoyingly sexy, restrained twitch that tells me he’s laughing inside. I want to punch it. Or kiss it. Maybe both.

He lets the silence stretch, thick and heavy and charged. Then his jaw ticks, just slightly—like he’s holding something back. Humor. Heat. Maybe both. “I don’t need to talk to protect you.”

My temper flares. “I don’t need protection.”

“I think you do. The things that went wrong in Montana…”

I flinch, acknowledging that I’ve heard what he said. It’s barely a breath, a flicker in muscle memory I can't suppress—but he sees it. Of course he does.

Because the moment he brings it up, my chest tightens like it's caught in a vise. The air feels heavier, tighter, like the pressure right before something breaks open. My skin prickles with heat, but it’s not the fire line this time—it’s memory.

It’s shame. It’s the raw, electric sting of being seen too clearly when I’ve worked so hard to stay opaque.

“… I don’t believe they were your fault.”

I’m stunned. If he truly believes that, he’s the only one. Even I’ve begun to doubt myself. Kade just stands there, grounded and quiet like the eye of a storm.

The stillness should be unsettling—should make me feel exposed—but instead, it’s steadying. Like he's holding space not just for my reaction, but for me to see the truth as he sees it. Like he’s letting me decide whether I’ll stay in the fire or walk away from it.

And damn it, I feel something stir deep inside me.

Like the first lick of flame catching on dry tinder—quiet, fast, impossible to ignore.

But it is squelched by that same old twisting guilt.

The ghosts of my crew. The questions I haven’t stopped asking myself since the inferno swallowed everything I loved and left me standing.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just holds the space like it belongs to him.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” I ask.

“No.”

“You breathe like you were born in a storm.”

“I was.”

My breath hitches, sharp and involuntary, and I hate that he notices.

His eyes track every detail like he's analyzing a tactical threat, not a woman who's already lost too much. It’s not just cold assessment, though. There’s something else there—an awareness, a calculation laced with a strange kind of respect.

Like he’s already decided I’m dangerous, and he’s ready to deal with the fallout.

That should scare me. Instead, it grounds me in a way I don’t understand. Like maybe being seen isn't always a weapon—it might be armor, too.

“Fine,” I mutter. “You want to watch my back? Try to keep up.”

I turn and stalk toward the rigs, each step deliberate, fists clenched at my sides, jaw locked against words I’ll regret—or worse, truths I’m not ready to say. My hips move with defiance, not performance, and I pretend I don’t feel his eyes on me. But I do.

There’s a tension coiled low in my stomach, buzzing just beneath the surface. It’s not adrenaline. It’s the way he looks at me—like I’m not just forged in fire but made of it.

I feel him behind me like heat against my back—steady, unrelenting. That dark gaze slides over me, sinks into my spine, curls low in my belly. A warning. A dare.

Every step I take away from him feels like defiance… and like distance I don’t want to keep.

I hate how aware I am of his presence, how it hums just beneath my skin as if it was a wire ready to spark. It’s not just heat—it’s gravity. And the worst part? Some treacherous part of me wants to turn around, walk right back into the fire he’s offering, and let it burn.

He doesn’t trust me. But something in the way he watches—too steady, too sure—it makes me wonder what it is he wants with me?