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“Fucking Martinez,” Buck growled, but it sounded a lot like love .

Hospital Copa D'Or, Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Everly ran beside the gurney, her hand locked around his, yelling orders through the chaos. She wasn’t a doctor now, she was a woman possessed, and he was hers to save . His blood was everywhere, but his eyes…his eyes never left her.

Tears streaked her face, fury and terror choking her voice.

“Don’t you fucking leave me, Mateo.”

His lips twitched, pain dragging at the corners, but still, still , he managed the echo of a smile. “Your hands are all I need now.” He squeezed her fingers. “You have me. You always have.”

Everlykept up, her bare feet slapping tile. She’d kicked off her heels when they hit the emergency room. She still gripped his hand. The hallway blurred as white coats and trauma staff parted around her voice, sharp, commanding, relentless.

“I need a Type and Cross, two units O-neg, full trauma panel, and someone call radiology now!” she barked. “His abdomen’s hot. Get a FAST scan ready. I want him in OR One. Now.”

Everything in her body screamed fear , but it didn’t get to win. She knew fear. Had operated under fire in Syria, in Afghanistan, in the Philippines, with mortar shells shaking the walls. Fear had tried to crawl inside her then, too.

But she’d learned from the toughest men on the planet. You don’t freeze. You fight .

No one, no one , was taking Mateo Martinez from her tonight.

Her gaze dropped to him, bare chest soaked in blood, skin pale, jaw clenched. But his eyes? God, his eyes hadn’t left her. Even now. Even like this.

“Stay with me, babe,” she demanded, her voice cracking. “Who’s going to make me laugh and shoot whatever I’m drinking out of my nose?”

“I never quit, querida.” His voice was broken silk. “Never.”

Her breath hitched. That was what he’d said the first time she touched him like she meant it. When they were tangled in sweat and heat and truth.

Now he was saying it again, but it had nothing to do with body seduction. This was all about the heart.

He owned hers.

His lips lifted in that faint, impossibly cocky smile, the one he’d given her in bed, in the jungle, in the worst and most beautiful moments of her life.

“We have something to build, querida.” His voice was barely audible, but it slid straight into her soul.

She nearly lost it.

But she didn’t.

Inside these sterile white walls, this was her domain. Her battlefield. She was a goddamned master of the universe in scrubs.

“BP?” she snapped at the nurse.

“Eighty over fifty, dropping.”

Shit. She could feel it, his pressure slipping through her fingertips like time. Like love.

“Start a wide-bore line and squeeze the bag. Warm fluids. Now. We’re not losing him.”

The wound was likely a through-and-through, but she’d stopped the bleeding. If there was active arterial bleed, she’d clamp and resect. If it was liver…she'd need to pack fast, stabilize.

But she could do this . This was why she’d spent years letting war zones mold her hands into instruments of precision.

This was why she’d held pressure under gunfire in Syria.

Why she’d whispered vitals through quake dust in Haiti.

Why she’d bled with Marines in Kandahar. Why she was here now with him.

This man. This heart. This moment.

They turned into the OR suite. The doors burst open.

“I want double gloves and a trauma tray now. Prep the field. Full sedation. Get him under yesterday.”

She looked down at him, Mateo, her Zorro , the man who had let her hurt him, heal him, and love him all in one breathless blur.

Tears slipped down her cheeks, hot and fast, but they didn’t slow her.

She was about to fix the damage.

She was about to save his fucking life . Not because she saved lives as a surgeon. But for her. Selfishly . For fucking her sake.

She leaned in, kissed him hard, salt and blood and desperation. He tasted like everything she hadn’t known she wanted until he gave it to her.

His voice was a rasp at her lips. “I’ll see you when I wake up.”

Another breath. Another whisper. “I love you, Everly. This body, this heart? They’re yours. You’ve made me see so much in the last few days, I’ll never be the same…but fix me, babe. So I can love you for the rest of our lives.”

She swallowed a sob, turned her head to the anesthesiologist, and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Cover that damn beautiful mouth and get him under.”

The mask came down.

Her eyes fused with his as he blinked, slowly, then slower still, closing and opening like he needed one more glimpse of her. His love. His heart. His faith in her, written in that final look. She bent down, kissed his forehead, whispered her promise…then turned, bloody, breathless, and determined.

“I need ten seconds. Get him prepped.”

A trauma nurse was already moving, tossing her a clean set of scrubs. She ripped off the blood-soaked top as she crossed to the scrub sink. Hot water. Soap. A ritual she’d done a thousand times, but never with her heart this loud.

Gloves. Gown. Cap. Mask.

Her armor. Her battlefield. Her love, her very lifeblood, on the table.

She stepped back into the OR.

Everly Quinn, doctor, woman, warrior, a woman forged in the crucible that was Mateo Martinez, picked up the scalpel.

This was what she’d been forged for, and he wasn’t going to die on her table.

Hours later, the doors to the OR swung shut behind her, the final echo of Everly’s steps swallowed by the antiseptic hush of the corridor.

She exhaled, long, slow, as if she could breathe the weight of the last two surgeries from her bones.

Her gloves were gone. Her scrub top clung to her spine with sweat.

But there was no blood on her now. Just the echo of hands that had gripped two lives and refused to let them go.

She turned the corner.

They were there.

All of them.

Not just the team, though they filled the waiting room like caged predators with no one left to kill, but the women, too.

Pippa sat beside Joker’s abandoned chair, her fingers laced tightly in her lap.

Julia leaned against Professor’s shoulder, silent and steady.

Izzy stood behind Gator, one hand on his neck, the other resting protectively on her hip like she was ready to take the next fight herself.

Maritza had her arms wrapped around Buck from behind, her cheek pressed to the top of his shoulder.

Bree was perched on the arm of Blitz’s chair, one foot tucked under her, eyes locked on the hallway like she could will good news into being.

Helen sat close to D-Day, her arm across his shoulders, her fingers playing with the golden strands on his neck.

Joker stood the moment he saw Everly. No one else moved.

Zorro had been first. She’d transitioned mid-op to assist Jules on Bear. Both men had come through. Fighters, the both of them.

Everly didn’t need to speak. She met Joker’s eyes and gave a single, measured nod.

That was enough.

His shoulders dropped like someone had unstrapped the battlefield from his back. The breath he exhaled pulled the tension out of the room like a pressure valve finally released.

The others watched her, Professor with those calculating eyes, Buck and Blitz exchanging the kind of glance only men who’ve bled together understand, Gator murmuring something low to D-Day that was lost beneath the buzz of fluorescent light.

The women didn’t speak. They just watched her, thanking her, steadying her.

Something in Everly released under their gaze.

These were the women, like her, with steel in them, who supported the men who saved the world.

Joker crossed the room like a man who’d walked through fire and wasn’t above thanking the one who pulled his brothers back out.

He wrapped her in his arms and held on tight.

“Thank you,” he said into her hair, voice hoarse, rough with gratitude. “Thank you for being…you.”

She stood stiffly for a breath, startled by the weight of his presence. This man didn’t touch people casually. Didn’t break easily. But now, here, he did both.

Then she let go.

She let her cheek rest against his chest, her body trembling from adrenaline and bone-deep fatigue.

When he pulled back, his hands lingered on her shoulders like he couldn’t quite bring himself to let go.

“Are they stable?”

“For now,” she whispered. “They’re fighters. But you already knew that.” Pippa rose, sliding next to her husband and wrapping his waist with her arm.

He nodded, throat working. Then he turned to face the others. “They made it,” he said simply.

The team exhaled all at once, a collective breath they hadn’t realized they’d been holding. Warriors and their women unspooling tension the only way they knew how, quietly.

Buck muttered a curse and dropped his head into his hands. Maritza pulled him in tighter.

Blitz sat down hard and let his head thud back against the wall, eyes closed, Bree’s hand rubbing a slow circle on his chest.

Professor didn’t move. But Julia gripped his hand like she was anchoring them both.

Everly glanced toward Bear’s name on the intake board, her voice so low it was almost lost. “Jules said…he asked for you.”

Heads turned.

Joker looked back at her, his brow lifting slightly. She met his gaze. This time steadier. More sure. “Zorro, too.”

D-Day crossed himself. Helen moved closer without a word.

Professor leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, murmuring just above the hum of the air vent, “Then we’re going to be okay.”

The doors at the far end of the corridor swung open again. Dr. Jules Marchand emerged, stripping off his mask as he walked. His tan scrub top was stained across the chest. His brow was damp. But his posture held easy grace, the kind that only came from years spent earning it.

He spotted Everly and crossed to them, his expression carved from something sharp and real.