Page 29

She’s sitting cross-legged on the tailgate, quiet in the chaos.

Boots unlaced. A bottle of water dangling loosely from her fingers like she forgot she was holding it.

Her hair’s tangled with ash and dry wind, still carrying the scent of scorched pine and smoke.

Soot clings to the angle of her jaw, and there’s a smudge across one cheek where she must’ve wiped her face without thinking.

The air around her still hums—raw and wired with the charge that follows survival.

Dust drifts over her shoulders like fallout.

Her skin’s flushed from the heat, but there’s something in her eyes now that wasn’t there before—earned, not given.

She looks like she’s been to hell and clawed her way back out.

She looks perfect.

“You’re staring again,” she says, not looking up.

“Can you blame me?”

She snorts. “Pretty sure that was rhetorical.”

I climb up beside her. She gives me a sideways glance—wry, knowing, like she’s already mapped out my next five moves and is daring me to make the sixth. It’s the same look she gave the brass back in Bitterroot when they tried to break her—measured, unshaken, impossible to ignore.

I feel her heat next to me—not wildfire, but that steady, low burn she always carries beneath her skin. She doesn’t lean in, but she doesn’t move away either. She lets the silence stretch—a breath between two people who’ve survived something brutal and come out the other side forged.

Across the fire line, one of the rookies from the evac crew spots her. He pauses, helmet in hand. Then he tips his chin and nods.

Respect. Earned in flame.

He joins us. "Ma’am. What you did—what you pulled off back there—we owe you."

Liv nods, watching him go and mutters, “If I’m a ma’am, I want hazard pay.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll make sure your title gets a field upgrade. I’ve got something for you."

She arches an eyebrow. “If it’s a protein bar, I’m throwing it in your face.”

I pull the chain from my pocket. The pendant gleams dully in the low light, star-iron forged and sealed, not a second token but the final form—mine and hers fused together into one. Her sigil, once gifted alone in promise, is now knotted into mine like they’ve always belonged that way.

Her breath catches. Her eyes soften with a flicker of disbelief, then something deeper—recognition. A flash of that night in the shelter shadows her face, the memory of fire and fear, and the moment she realized she wasn’t alone.

“You had this made.”

Her voice is soft, but there’s a tremor in it—like she knows this isn’t the same piece I first handed her in the forge.

Because it’s not. I took that pendant back after the shelter collapse and reforged it with Dax’s help—star-iron melted down, folded over with mine, sigils intertwined the way they were meant to be. Not just bonded. Unified.

“I made it. With Dax. In the forge. You earned it the night you stood between Greer and a crate of C-4.”

She takes it from my hand slowly. The metal is warm. It always is. Like it remembers the bond before she says yes.

I reach out, let my fingers brush hers. Something flickers behind her eyes—sharp, familiar. Not doubt. Not fear.

Conviction.

She slips the chain over her head. The pendant settles above her collarbone, exactly where the mate-mark flared during the fight.

The sigils glow faintly, intertwined. Steady.

The warmth presses against my skin—subtle, alive—a second heartbeat syncing to hers, steady and undeniable.

For a moment, everything quiets. The weight of the mission, the fallout, the smoke still hanging in the air—it all drops away, and it's just this. Her. Me. Bound not by duty or battle, but by choice. By fire. Seeing our sigils locked together like this isn’t just symbolic—it’s real.

Final. My instincts settle, the dragon in me going still for the first time in days.

Because now she carries us too. Not as mine. As equal. As mate.

“I’m not done fighting,” she says.

“I didn’t ask you to. Tactical advisor. Embedded consultant. Call it what you want—but the next time Blackstrike moves, you move with us.”

She smiles—slow and dangerous.

“Then you’d better keep up.”

We don’t kiss. Not yet. Not here. Because if I do, I’ll want more than the moment can carry.

Because restraint is the only thing keeping me from dragging her into my arms and marking her in fire and breath and vow.

This isn’t about control—it’s about reverence.

She’s not something to claim. She’s someone to stand beside.

And when it happens—when she finally turns her face to mine and lets it—it's going to matter more than anything we’ve survived.

Three hours later, just as we’re wrapping up the last of the debriefs, Vale’s burner buzzes with a priority ping—encrypted, anonymous, timestamped for only moments ago. He frowns, thumbs it open, and his face goes still.

“Eyes up,” he says, passing the device into the center of the group.

We all lean in. The footage is grainy, handheld, but unmistakable—a ripple goes through the group.

Dax swears under his breath. Vale mutters something clipped and sharp.

Draven exhales through his nose, jaw tightening, muscles drawn taut beneath his skin.

A vertical column of silver-gold fire erupts skyward, punching through the treetops in a blinding surge— sharp, violent, and otherworldly, as if the earth itself had driven it into the sky. No audible cue, no discernible source.

Just that one, perfect angle.

Dax mutters, “Shit.”

Draven stays silent, mouth a flat line. He doesn’t blink.

Liv’s hand curls tighter around mine. “That’s you,” she says, quiet but certain.

She means the footage—the vertical fire column searing skyward through the treetops.

The same silver-gold blaze that marked my entry, flame-wrapped and instant, when I dropped into the shelter to pull her out.

Only she would recognize it for what it truly is—not a flare, not a trick of light, but me.

The dragon, revealed for a blink too long, caught on someone else’s lens.

I nod. “And that’s the problem.”

Nobody moves. The air thickens like storm pressure. We all know what this means.

Vale looks to Dax. “We lock it down?”

Dax’s eyes stay on the screen. “We can try. But this genie’s already out of the bottle.” He looks to Draven. “Start sweeps. Takedown soft mirrors. Kill rumors where you can.”

Liv moves beside me. “And when that doesn’t work?”

I answer for all of us. “Then we stay ready. Because next time, someone might not miss the wings.”

Her transition is complete; she’s a dragon-shifter.

She’s shifted, wielded fire, and has come through smoke and ruin to be reborn.

Someone’s watching—and they’re starting to ask the right questions.

The kind that don’t settle for weather balloons or busted fireworks as explanations.

The kind that peel back the lies and stumble close to the truth.

And if they dig deep enough, they won’t just hit something molten—they’ll unearth the myth that breathes inside all of us.

The caption crawls across the bottom of the screen in bold red font:

WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DROP ON PRESCOTT RIDGE?

We don’t need the burner to confirm what we’ve already seen.

The feed Vale showed us earlier plays again later that night, mirrored by another obscure channel, same grainy fire column lighting up conspiracy boards.

We gather around a second time, not for clarity, but to count the spread.

To see how far it’s traveled, how many comments and speculative captions it's triggered. The footage is the same—white-gold flame, blurry scale, no sound. But its presence confirms the worst: someone else is watching, and they’re not letting go of the narrative.