Page 19 of Forged in Fire

My contract specifies elimination of one target. No additional parameters. No restrictions about collateral damage, though my personal code doesn’t allow civilian casualties.

The smart play: wait for the trap to spring, eliminate the target during the confusion, extract before anyone identifies the shooter. Clean. Efficient. Exactly what the Guild expects from someone with my reputation.

That leaves her to whatever fate the Syndicate has waiting.

I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel right.

Jesus, man, this is fucking ridiculous!

It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t like. I don’t allow personal feelings to compromise professional judgment. Don’t believe in strange compulsions or any other bullshit that gets people killed.

Yet watching her through my scope, seeing her standing among those crates while armed operatives move into positionaround her, I can’t shake the certainty that everything hinges on what I do in the next sixty seconds.

Like Fate. Like my destiny is calling.

Still more bullshit.

Through the scope, I see my target’s head dip slightly. Signal for the ambush to begin. They burst out of hiding.

In moments, she’s surrounded. Shock radiates from her like visible waves.

Fuck!

They’ve got her, and she never expected it for a second.

My rifle sight shifts from the primary target to the closest flanking operative. The weight feels different now—not just a tool for assassination, but protection for something that I don’t understand but can’t let these fuckers destroy.

Time to make some tough decisions.

Chapter 7

Iris

This is a mistake.

The thought circles my mind, desperate and panicky. There’s been some misunderstanding. Some terrible mix-up that will sort itself out once everyone realizes—

But Kieran stands among them. Not captured. Not fighting. Just… standing there. Calm. Controlled. Like he belongs.

With me. He belongs with me!

My dragon stirs beneath my skin, scales threatening to surface as heat builds in my chest. My shadows writhe around my feet, responding to the emotional tsunami building inside me, dark tendrils reaching toward strangers who dare point weapons at me. But I can’t move. Can’t process what my eyes are showing me.

“Your orders, sir?” the lead guard addresses my brother.

Sir? What the hell?

“One minute,” Kieran instructs him. The guard steps back.

He’s giving them orders? Why is he giving them orders?

“What’s going on?” The words scrape out of my throat, foreign and wrong. I search Kieran’s face for the brother I remember—the one who used to sneak me extra dessert when we were kids, who taught me how to throw a proper punch. “Kieran, what is this?”

He looks at me with those familiar eyes, and there’s nothing familiar in them at all. No surprise. No confusion. No desperate scramble to explain why armed soldiers are surrounding his sister.

Just… calculation.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way.” His voice carries that same measured cadence I remember, but underneath it is something cold. Something that makes my skin crawl and my dragon retreat deeper, confused by the scent of family mixed with threat.