Chapter 17
Finn
The trees blurred past in streaks of green and shadow, branches clawing at my sleeves, my pack snagging on undergrowth I couldn’t afford to slow down for. My lungs burned with each inhale, but I barely felt it.
Ahead of me, Saoirse moved like the devil was on her heels—which, for all we knew, wasn’t far off. I could hear her breathing: tight, fast, but steady. No panic yet. Good.
Ajax cut ahead of her, then back, circling like a satellite. He moved with a silent, deadly, controlled urgency that said everything I needed to know.
We weren’t outrunning a four-legged predator. We were running from men.
Men with rifles and gear that didn’t belong in these woods. Men whose camp looked too ordered, too permanent, too calculated to be anything casual. Men who hadn’t flinched when caught on camera.
I glanced back, once. No visual yet. But I didn’t need one. I’d heard the voice. That confident call—some command barked out to someone else. It was all the confirmation I needed that they’d seen us, and they were coming.
I caught Saoirse’s eye as we crested a small rise. “Left,” I breathed.
She veered with me without question.
Good. She was tracking terrain and threat as fast as I was.
We pushed downhill into thicker cover, roots slick and half-hidden beneath pine duff. I gritted my teeth as my right knee twinged—old injury, old reminder—but I didn’t slow. Couldn’t. Not when I had her to protect. Not when Ajax was flanking us. The last good thing I’d been entrusted with.
I wasn’t losing either of them.
The trail narrowed, choked by brambles. Ajax shouldered through without hesitation, Saoirse right behind, and I took up the rear, resisting the urge to look back again.
If we stopped, we were done.
If we slowed, we were vulnerable.
My whole body was humming, electric, waiting for that first shot to crack the silence. For the hunter who didn’t want to be seen to prove how far he’d go to stay invisible.
But for now—we ran.
And I knew, deep in my gut, it wouldn’t be enough.
We were almost clear of the ridge, the terrain beginning to tilt downward again into a dense cradle of bracken and shadow, when Ajax’s pace changed.
He stopped, hackles lifted, muscles coiled.
“Down,” I barked—too late.
The man stepped out from behind a tree less than twenty feet ahead, like a fucking ghost conjured from bark and shade.
Mid-forties, lean build, face half-obscured by a beard that was too neat for someone living rough. Weatherproof jacket. Heavy cargo pants. One gloved hand rested casually near the grip of a holstered pistol.
But it was the blade he drew that set every nerve in my body on fire.
Curved. Broad. Not a hunting knife.
He didn’t shout. Didn’t raise the gun. He was there to block us, not bluff. To show control without saying a word.
And then Ajax moved.
The flash of teeth and muscle was so fast I barely registered it before impact. Ajax launched from the ground like a missile, hitting the man square in the chest, driving him back into a tree.
The hunter staggered but didn’t fall.
The knife arced up.
“No!”
The blade punched down in a tight, brutal angle. Not deep. Not clean. But it struck.
Ajax yelped—sharp, shocked—and twisted away.
Something in me fractured.
I didn’t think. There was no time to think. My body was already moving.
I hit the bastard a second later with everything I had.
We went down hard, me on top, my knees pinning his hips, one hand already closing around his knife wrist. He bucked. Grunted. Tried to punch upward, but I shoved my forearm across his throat, crushing his airway, jamming the heel of my palm into his nose.
He tried to reach for the sidearm. Bad fucking move.
I grabbed his wrist, twisted. Heard something pop.
He screamed, but I didn’t stop.
I swept the knife away with one hand, drove my elbow into his jaw with the other. He sagged beneath me, stunned—but not out.
“Dinna. Touch. My. Dog.” Each growled word was punctuated by a punch.
He came at me again, slower now, sloppy. That was all I needed.
One knee to the gut. Another blow to the throat. Then I flipped him, slamming his head sideways into the base of the tree with just enough control to avoid killing him.
Not enough to be gentle.
He crumpled; out cold.
Blood smeared my knuckles. My own chest heaved. But I didn’t look at him again.
I turned, dropping to my knees beside Ajax so fast I barely remembered hitting the ground.
“Jesus, no.” My voice broke.
Blood soaked into his fur along his left flank, glistening dark and thick against the lighter guard hairs. Not a puncture—too shallow. A slash. Still bleeding, but not gushing. Not arterial.
Okay. Okay.
He was breathing. Too fast, but steady.
“Hey,” I whispered, one hand hovering an inch above the wound before I dared to touch. “Hey, mate. I’ve got you.”
Ajax blinked slowly. Dazed, but conscious. His ears twitched at the sound of my voice. He didn’t try to rise.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I pressed my palm gently to his ribs, feeling for breath, watching the rise and fall. His pupils weren’t blown. His gums were pale but not gray. He flinched when I touched his side—good. That meant the pain hadn’t taken him under.
“You stay with me, mate.” My voice cracked on the last word. “You hear me? You stay.”
The blood was already soaking into my shirt, warm and awful. I tried to breathe around the knot in my throat. This was too familiar—too fucking close. It was Kandahar all over again, blood on the ground and the split-second between life and?—
“Finn!”
Saoirse’s voice cut through, sharp and breathless.
I turned toward her. She’d scrambled halfway back up the trail, eyes wide and locked on us.
“We have to move,” she said. “There could be more.”
I nodded, but couldn’t make my body let go.
Not yet.
Ajax groaned—low and exhausted—but he shifted. Alive. Still here.
I closed my eyes for a second. Just one second. Then I pressed my hand flat over the wound to slow the bleeding and looked up.
“Help me get him up.”
We weren’t safe yet. But we were still together, and I wasn’t leaving anyone behind.
I didn’t feel the weight until I stood.
Ajax wasn’t heavy—not for a Malinois—but he was dense, all muscle and tension and blood-soaked fur. My arms locked around his chest and hind legs, pressing him tight against me. I felt his ribs flutter against mine. Too fast. Too shallow.
It didn’t matter.
I turned toward Saoirse. “Go,” I rasped. “Find cover. I’ve got him.”
She hesitated for half a heartbeat—only long enough to look me over, eyes catching on the blood across my chest, the wild edge I could feel in my own breathing.
Then she nodded once before pivoting on her heel to run.
I followed.
Every step jarred something loose in my back. I was off-balance, favoring my bad knee, and Ajax wasn’t helping—he shifted slightly with every stride, a low groan vibrating through his body.
But I didn’t let go.
The forest blurred around us, branches lashing at my arms, my face, the exposed skin of my neck. I could taste iron—maybe from my split lip, maybe from fear.
Saoirse wove ahead of me, ducking under low-hanging limbs, her voice low and fast. “This way. There’s a blind. It’s not far.”
My legs were cramping. I adjusted Ajax in my arms, gritting my teeth. I could feel his blood soaking through my shirt, hot and steady.
“Keep talking,” I gasped. “Please keep talking.”
“I think it’s off the ridge. Northwest face. I saw it last year on a survey hike with Isla. It’s not far, I swear.”
“Good.”
I didn’t have the breath to say more.
We stumbled down a gully, sliding sideways through the bracken, and finally—finally—I saw it.
A weathered structure tucked against the curve of the hill, half-collapsed on one side but still mostly intact.
A hunting blind or old poacher’s shelter, walls reinforced with stone and timber, roof barely holding up.
Saoirse shoved the warped door open. I staggered in behind her, dropped to my knees, and laid Ajax down with all the care I had left in my body.
His flank rose and fell.
Still alive.
Still with me.
I braced my hands on my thighs, head hanging. My breath came ragged and useless. The world tilted around the edges.
But we’d made it.
For now.
The second Ajax was down, I crouched beside him.
But that was all I did.
I didn’t reach for my kit. Didn’t peel back his harness. Didn’t check the bleeding or clean the wound.
I just… stared.
His eyes were open. Cloudy. Pain-bright. He was panting, ribs fluttering too fast under blood-matted fur. The wound along his flank seeped crimson, dark and steady, and I knew—knew—what I was supposed to do next.
But I couldn’t move.
My hands hovered uselessly above him, fists clenched too tight to function. I’d carried him through half a mile of brush and broken terrain. I’d fought off a man with a knife. I’d run on a knee that hadn’t been quite right in years. But now?
Now I was paralyzed.
Because this wasn’t merely a cut.
This was Charlie’s blood again.
This was the woman I’d tried to save.
This was failure.
Ajax shifted slightly and let out a low, pained whine, and that noise cut deeper than the blade had.
“Stay with me,” I whispered, voice shredded and raw. “You stay with me, mate.”
I reached out, finally, to touch his side, but my hand was shaking so hard I didn’t trust it. Couldn’t trust it. My pulse thundered in my ears, drowning out everything but the voice in my head, the one that said you let him down, just like the last one, just like always.
A hand touched my shoulder. Steady. Grounding.
Saoirse.
She crouched beside me, her breath still coming quick from the run, but her hands didn’t shake. Her voice didn’t break.
“You have to move, Finn.”
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
She looked at me—really looked—and said, soft but firm, “Let me help him.”
That was enough to break the paralysis. I nodded once, barely able to manage it, and shifted out of the way.
She was already reaching for her kit.
And I sat there, useless in the corner of that shelter, hands still stained with blood, watching the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about save the dog I couldn’t afford to lose.
The crack in the mask didn’t split all the way open.
But I felt it.
And for the first time in years, I didn’t try to patch it back up.