Page 5

Even with the rain hammering the canopy, Zorro heard it again.

A wet rasp, barely audible that most people would’ve missed.

Just a breath lost in the downpour. But Zorro’s ears were trained for the wrong kind of quiet—the sound of a person on the edge of his last breath.

Someone trying to be quiet, soft, slow, the lungs giving up.

The kind of exhale that didn’t draw back in.

He knew that sound. Knew it like muscle memory.

Someone was dying. Right now. Nearby. He froze on his stomach, pivoting his head toward the sound as his hand tightened on the stock of his rifle.

He didn't even have to look. His back was covered.

The jungle worked at hiding it, but the sound was close, low to the ground, slipping through the ferns and ground detritus.

He moved without thinking. Toward the pain. Toward the dying, drawn by something he couldn't ever explain. He, like his brothers, were more than hybrids; they were jacks of all trades and honed weapons. His job was to do his best. Not just to fight but to find them before the silence did.

He crawled toward that quiet plea for help, soaked to the skin, keeping his guard fully up. Another sound filtered to him. He stiffened, then he surged forward. He set down his auto, taking in the very pregnant woman.

“LT,” he depressed his comm. “I need help.”

Her eyes followed him, filled with terror, clutching her swollen abdomen with a fierce protective look, blood seeping between her fingers, her breath harsh in her labor.

“I need those bastards off my six. I’ve got a situation here that needs my attention now.” He held up his hands. “American military. May I help you?”

She breathed out a soft, relieved breath, nodding once.

Immediately Gator, Joker and D-Day showed up with weapons bristling. “Fuck me,” Gator said. “What do you need?”

“I need to be upright—now.”

“Got it,” D-Day said in a voice that told Zorro his ancestors had stormed the beach in Normandy.

He and Gator moved off doing what they did best: assault.

He worked faster than he ever had before.

He dressed her wound quickly and efficiently, set up a plasma bag just as quickly.

She was going to need it. This was going to be hairy.

His world narrowed down to three feet. Everything else disappeared.

The woman, the baby whose head was crowning between her legs, were his calling.

He didn’t worry about bullets or tangos or his buddies.

All his focus was here. He was built for war, but his hands were made for healing.

“I know this is going to hurt like hell,” he said in Tagalong, “but you’re going to have to push when I say.

” She was going to cause more bleeding, and he wished like hell she could just not move, but her child was her priority.

It was in her expressive dark eyes. She nodded once.

Ten minutes later, the jungle quiet was broken by a lusty, defiant cry. Zorro wrapped him in his field shirt. It was a miracle that the bullet missed him completely. He was simply perfect. Ten little fingers, ten little toes.

Gator shook his head, looking between Zorro and the baby. But Zorro just looked down at the newborn. “Yeah. We got a warrior in the making.”

“What the fuck did I just hear?” Joker said through the comms. “Was that a baby crying?”

“Yeah,” Gator said, his voice hushed. “He fucking delivered a kid in a firefight. That’s a new one.”

There was so much chatter on the comms, Joker had to yell to settle everyone down. “Jesus. The brass is going to love this one. I’ve got a stretcher coming your way. Martinez, you fucking badass. Get your asses to the chopper.”

Twenty minutes later the chopper lifted off. The little boy fit in one arm, barely the length of his forearm, swaddled in a bundle of camo. This newborn was sleeping. Breathing. Safe. What a chaotic way to take his first breath.

Zorro didn’t look up as the chopper lifted off.

Blood slid down his ribs, but it wasn’t worth attending to right now. The child’s breath ghosted softly across his wrist. Zorro’s eyes never left his tiny face.

The mother lay across from him on the floor of the bird, her skin pale with blood loss, lips parted slightly. One hand pressed weakly to her bandaged abdomen, the other clutching the edge of the stretcher like she needed something solid to anchor her. A plasma line dripped in life-giving fluid.

But her eyes were fixed on him, wide, dark, and shining, like she was staring at a miracle and was afraid it might disappear. Her gaze moved slowly from his bloodied shirt to the baby tucked against his arm, to the steady hand still bracing them both.

She might not know his name, but she would remember his face until the day she died.

The stethoscope still around his neck, he checked the newborn and the mother’s vitals, satisfied they were both doing better than expected. The mom would need surgery, but the little guy was perfect.

There was utter silence in the bird until Gator leaned in. “Z…you are something else.”

D-Day wiped his hand down over his face. “Best op I’ve ever been on.”

Bear sat silently beside Flint, jaw tight. “You are crazy good, kola .”

Zorro didn’t answer. He shifted slightly, wincing, keeping the baby close.

Navarro, recovered but still pale, whispered, “ Ele salvou três vidas. ” He saved three lives.

“Anong pangalan niya?” Zorro asked gently. What’s his name?

The mother smiled, eyes bright with tears, her breath trembling from pain and awe.

“Anong pangalan mo?” she asked in return. What’s your name?

Zorro blinked, throat tight. “Mateo.”

Her gaze didn’t leave his. “Mateo,” she said softly. “Lyan ang pangalan niya.” That is his name. She said it like a vow.

Zorro released a soft chuckle, hoarse from her respect. “That’s a good choice, lady.”

Then Buck snorted. “Damn,” he muttered. “Asshole.”

The entire team laughed, quiet, breathless, the tension breaking.

Zorro grinned without taking his eyes off the baby. “Asshole? Does that rhyme with I love you, man ?”

Even Joker released a quiet and rare chuckle.

Gator scoffed. “Only Zorro could pull off delivering a baby and getting it named after him.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Blitz added. “He’s already impossible.”

Zorro didn’t even look up. Just held the newborn a little closer.“Jealousy’s a bad look on you,” he said.

Joker’s voice cut in, low and steady. “I don’t think the Navy has a high enough medal for you, Martinez. Hoo-yah.” Joker’s shoulder squeeze and the soft hoo-yah from his teammates said the rest.

Professor, quiet as always, murmured, “Doesn’t mean he won’t earn another Navy Cross.”

Zorro’s eyes never left his namesake. “I don’t need any more chest candy.” He tightened his arm around Mateo, a breath easing from his lungs. “This is it. I love my fucking job.”

Fifteen minutes later, Zorro came in last, still cradling the little boy. The mother had been whisked away to be assessed, and her wound repaired, his shirt soaked through with sweat and something darker beneath it.

The hallway of Bunawan District Hospital smelled like antiseptic, blood, and jungle sweat.

The power flickered once, then steadied, casting a yellowish hue over the peeling walls and overflowing triage bays.

Gurneys lined both sides of the corridor, makeshift beds for the wounded who couldn’t fit into the trauma wing, their IV bags taped to mop handles or dangling from rusted hooks overhead.

The buzz of Tagalog and English medical shorthand hummed through the space, broken by groans, shouted vitals, and the rhythmic slap of wet boots on tile.

“What do we need to do with this little guy?” he called.

A nurse pointed vaguely down the hall, then vanished behind a curtain.

Zorro cursed under his breath and started walking.

The newborn’s sleepy little eyes looked up at him, a fragile miracle nestled in borrowed fabric made for war.

Zorro’s side throbbed with each breath, but this pain was easy.

What stuck with him were the near misses.

Especially with Buck. That fracture lived inside him now.

Seconds always mattered, but that was time.

Their lives, like this little wonder, mattered more. That’s when he heard her voice.

“Pressure’s dropping. Get another line in, now. We don’t have a transfusion kit, so improvise.” Sharp, clear, commanding.

His hands ached to help, but Everly was all this patient needed. He wondered how she felt about the lives she lost. Every life he saved made the ledger heavier, not lighter. No matter how many lived. He ached for the ones he lost and remembered the ones who almost didn’t.

He turned the corner, and there she was.

Dr. Everly Quinn, a.k.a. Dr. Sunshine, sleeves rolled, gloves slick.

He’d been walking wounded for hours, adrenaline holding him upright, memory trailing like smoke behind him.

But she punched his heart back into overdrive.

She didn’t see him. She was bent over a patient, fingers deep in a wound, her face set in fierce, infuriating calm.

God help him…she hadn’t changed at all. Her blonde hair was up in a messy, haphazard way, the only thing about her that never seemed to be tamed, wisps clinging to her temple from heat and haste.

Her pale skin bore the faintest trace of freckles across her high cheekbones, the kind that always made him think of summer, of innocence none of them had retained.

Her eyes, blue-gray and sharp as a scalpel, cut across the room.

The same fire, the same fury. God, she was beautiful.

He bet she still hadn’t forgiven him for existing.

He pressed his shoulder against the wall, dizzy for a moment.

That disjointed memory from the last time he’d been here drifted over him again, slippery and persistent.

He remembered the post-op morphine drip dulling his edges, the weight of guilt bearing down on his chest. Everly Quinn.

Her name stirred something low and hot in his chest. Her lips had tasted like heat and salt and something he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to want. Not from her. Not then.

He chuckled quietly to himself, shaking his head. Definitely dreaming, he muttered. No way she kissed me.

She couldn’t stand him. Hell, she barely tolerated the sight of him in Niger. Every exchange between them had been flammable. She had no reason to comfort him, especially not like that.

Yet…his fingers flexed against the boy’s tiny body, remembering the shape of her jaw, the brush of her breath. There’d been a tenderness there he hadn’t imagined. Couldn’t have imagined. Could he?

He sighed and turned away. If it had been real, it meant something he wasn’t sure he wanted to look at too closely. If it hadn’t, well, that was almost worse.