Page 6

She shakes her head, muttering a curse, but the fight dims. “I don’t break easily, dragon-man.”

My breath catches, sharp and sudden, a match striking dry pine.

Dragon-man? A joke, maybe. A jab meant to sting, to tease.

Or something deeper—intuition slithering beneath her skin, brushing against truth without ever seeing the whole of it.

She can’t know. Not really. And yet the word curls beneath my ribs, a spark buried in kindling, heat spreading outward, slow and undeniable. Dangerous. Intoxicating. Fated.

“Good,” I rasp. “Easy things rarely survive wildfire.”

Footsteps clatter in the corridor—Charlie Diaz and two rookies hauling linens. Liv slips sideways, breaking the tension.

“Get your protocol done, Safety Officer,” she tosses over her shoulder, sarcasm coating the title like soot. “Audit is at sunrise.”

She disappears toward the trailers that serve as sleeping quarters for the crew, leaving the hallway smelling of sweat, ash, and her unique ember-and-honey scent that singes my restraint.

I head for the camp’s infirmary—a prefab rectangle lit by a single emergency bulb.

Cabinets line the far wall, stocked with saline, gauze, and antibiotics.

I scan the shelves, cross-checking supplies against the mental inventory I memorized during intake.

One trauma kit sits slightly ajar, the latch not fully clicked.

I ease it open, pretending to reorganize, and brush my fingers over the compact Blackstrike sensor tiles hidden beneath the gauze packs—right where they should be. Still undetected. Still active.

The tiles are already cycling—sweeping for RFID activity, logging chemical traces, queuing data to uplink once the satellite modem kicks in at dawn. I close the kit, quiet and precise. No one needs to know what else this infirmary is monitoring.

I’m zipping the med bag when the door creaks open with a slow, aching groan.

Liv steps inside—shoulders squared, eyes alert, posture loose enough to pass for casual.

Her hair’s a tousled knot slipping free, freckles darkened by smoke and exhaustion.

She’s barefoot, the curve of her hip silhouetted in the faint infirmary glow.

Vulnerability clings to her like heat haze—soft, disarming—but it’s a lie.

There’s iron beneath. She’s not delicate.

She’s fire banked low, waiting for the right spark.

“Didn’t expect you here,” I say.

“Insomnia,” she replies, but her gaze drops to my hands in the open kit. “That supposed to be standard issue?”

Think. Fast. “Inventory cross-check.” I lift a half-empty morphine vial. “Expiration labels don’t match the manifest.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever you say. You’re a walking catalogue of ready answers, you know that?”

“It’s a burden.”

A laugh escapes her—sharp and surprised, like she didn’t mean to give it up.

It scrapes past the tension between us and slips under my armor before I can stop it, curling warm around the hollow spaces I thought long closed.

It lingers, dangerous and disarming, and part of me wants to hear it again—wants to earn it.

I zip the kit, place it back. “You're going to need to get some sleep. Come sunrise, the Feds will pick your brain apart. It'll go better if you’re coherent.”

“I’m always coherent.”

“I’ve noticed.”

I step closer, slow and deliberate, like I’m approaching a live wire.

My fingers lift, brushing an errant curl behind her ear, and the touch sparks more than static—it shoots lightning through every nerve ending.

My knuckles graze her jaw, and her skin is warm, velvet-soft, trembling beneath the contact.

Her breath catches, tiny and involuntary, but full of meaning.

It’s the kind of reaction you don’t fake.

The kind that says she feels it too. The dragon inside me rumbles, low and possessive, satisfied in a way that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with fate.

“You shouldn’t touch me like that,” she whispers.

“No?” My thumb strokes once, slow, just below her lower lip. It trembles. “Tell me to stop.”

She doesn’t. Instead, she lifts onto her toes, lips hovering a breath from mine. “I don’t take orders off the fire line.”

I capture her mouth before the last syllable fades, and the world narrows to heat and hunger.

No testing. No hesitation. Just raw, blistering ignition.

Her lips part with a soft gasp that fans the flames already roaring beneath my skin.

She tastes of scorched coffee and wildfire, of sleepless nights and everything I never let myself want.

Her fingers twist in my shirt, yanking me closer with a desperation that mirrors my own.

My hand slides to the back of her neck, anchoring her, and I devour her like I’ve gone too long without air.

Her body arches into mine, every curve a brand against my control.

The mate-shimmer detonates behind my eyes—gold and scarlet, molten spirals that threaten to burn through the seams of the human world.

A kind of magic surges through me, the dragon rising fast and feral.

I shove it down—barely. Not here. Not yet.

Liv breaks first, gasping, eyes wide like she’s seen the stars I keep caged. “Kade…”

The infirmary radio squawks, killing the moment. "Base to Safety. Audit team forty-five minutes out—repeat, forty-five minutes.”

Shit. Too soon. I press my forehead to hers, drawing air through my teeth. “Go. Shower. Change shirts. Get a little rest. They’ll want clean optics.”

She disappears into the dim corridor, her scent still clinging to the air like heat after a blaze—sweet, sharp, unforgettable.

I exhale slowly, force my hands to steady.

The trauma bag rests on the exam table. I adjust the nodes inside one last time, fingers brushing over the zipper with precision I don’t feel.

If I’m lucky, the Feds won’t so much as glance at that trauma bag.

It’ll stay shut, silent, harmless. But if I’m not—if timing turns on me and eyes go where they shouldn’t—then Liv might discover I’m not really here as a safety officer.

She’ll see me as some kind of spy before I can shape it into anything she might understand. And there won’t be any undoing it.

I lock the infirmary, stepping into night air thick with pre-dawn chill, and turn toward the silent rigs where courier Whiskey-Three is due any minute. Clouds smear the stars; the wind smells of the desert and the impending storm.

Somewhere in the east, the group known as the Ignis Syndicate loads accelerants into rust-stained drums and tucks them against forgotten bunkers—cracked concrete and rotting steel lined with enough explosive residue to wipe out half the mountain if it cooks too hot.

I saw it on the drone maps—tight clusters of thermal spikes.

A trap too precise to be accidental. They think they’re clever, hidden beneath the cloak of fire.

They don’t realize I’ve already caught their scent on the wind.

A rotor thump rolls up from the valley road—courier ahead of schedule. Good. Or very, very bad.

I slip into the shadows and melt toward the sound, every muscle tight with anticipation, every breath shallow and tuned to the rhythm of threat.

The dry air rasps in my lungs, dust mingling with the scent of scorched pine and coming danger.

Dragon heat surges through my system—thick, primal—radiating outward in waves that ripple beneath my skin like magma hunting for fault lines.

My pupils narrow, vision sharpening into infrared as instinct overtakes reason.

This isn’t just a precaution. It’s a countdown.

And something out there has already started the clock.

Today I babysit audits and hide tech. Tomorrow, I start a war.