Chapter 21
Finn
We’d been moving for hours already.
The kind of hours that sank into your muscles.
Ajax limped a little on the downhill, but he was focused, nose low and ears twitching with every faint shift in the air.
He’d found something. I wasn’t sure what yet—but it was enough to keep him pushing forward without needing my command.
I was watching for any falter. Any hesitation.
Any sign that I’d pushed him too far. I didn’t see it. But that didn’t stop me from looking.
Saoirse stayed behind me, close enough that I could hear the soft scuff of her boots and the quiet, measured pace of her breath.
And that damned kiss.
I hadn’t let myself replay it. Not really. But my brain kept pulling me back to the shape of her mouth, the way she’d looked at me like she meant it. I didn’t have space for that right now. And still, it kept carving one.
It hadn’t been mentioned. Not even in passing. But it sat under my skin like a live wire, humming every time I looked at her. Every time I remembered how she’d looked at me before she leaned in. Like she was making a choice instead of a mistake.
That was the part that undid me.
Ajax slowed near a fork in the path. His tail flicked, then stilled. I gave a quick whistle, and he adjusted course, curving us northwest through a thicket of gorse.
I didn’t let myself look back at her.
Because if I did—if I saw that look on her face again—I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pretend like we hadn’t crossed a line in that blind. And I wasn’t sure pretending was the right call anymore.
We were in it now.
No backup. No sat phone. No plan but the next step forward.
And her. Always a half-step behind me, sharp as glass and as likely to cut if handled wrong.
I didn’t know what we were walking toward. But if Ajax had his nose on the right trail, we weren’t wandering anymore. We were hunting. And it was on me to make certain we didn’t become the hunted.
We hit a narrow gully choked with slick mud and loose rock—half-scree, half swampy runoff that made every step a gamble.
Ajax navigated it with his usual effortless calculation, adjusting for his injured flank like it was only one more variable.
I, on the other hand, nearly went sprawling when my boot caught on a half-buried root.
My weight pitched forward. I caught myself hard, one palm in the muck, the other clutching a tree like it owed me money.
Under my breath, I muttered, “If I face plant and break my nose, promise to tell my team it was in hand-to-hand combat with a mountain lion.”
Behind me, Saoirse huffed out a short, sharp laugh, clearly caught off guard.
Instead of pointing out that there were no mountain lions in Scotland, she declared, “I’ll commission the statue myself.”
I looked back, and there it was—that smile again. Barely there, but real.
It hit me sideways, like getting knocked in the sternum by something warm and ridiculous.
It had been a long time since someone smiled at me like that.
My chest did that traitorous thing where it fluttered like I hadn’t seen war zones, hadn’t buried people, hadn’t spent the last twenty-four hours held together by duct tape and fury.
God help me, I liked making her laugh.
The trail narrowed as we climbed, a steep bend curling around a moss-slicked rock face. The trees thinned here, branches low and grasping, like the forest didn’t want to give us up easily.
Saoirse ducked beneath a twisted pine limb, her balance hitching on a patch of uneven ground. Her hand shot out and landed on my forearm. A reflex more than request.
It was only the bare pressure of fingers, but my whole body stilled. I almost reached to keep her there. Stupid. Instinctive. I stopped myself before I did something I couldn’t walk back. Again.
Her grip tightened for a beat, grounding herself. Then it loosened, and she stepped past without a word.
I exhaled only after she did.
She didn’t look back. And I didn’t move right away, because the way she’d reached for me without hesitation, like I was something solid in all this chaos, left a warmth that lingered under my skin longer than I’d ever admit.
Ajax froze.
One second, he was moving with that same steady pace he’d held all morning. The next, he went statue-still. Head up. Ears alert. Nose twitching.
I felt it like a pulse under my skin.
“Hold.” I lifted a hand. Saoirse stilled without needing to be told twice.
Ajax pivoted, low and silent, veering slightly off trail. I followed, every step measured now. Controlled.
We emerged into a clearing maybe twenty feet wide. Bordered by thickets on three sides and a natural windbreak of stone along the fourth. Perfectly tucked. Perfectly hidden.
And littered with signs.
Fresh bootprints in the mossy earth—deep enough to mark weight, splayed slightly at the toes. A broken branch at thigh height. Flattened grass. And near the stone outcrop, gleaming like a neon sign to anyone who knew how to look—an unburned cigarette filter, white and clean.
Too clean.
I crouched low, fingers brushing over the tracks. Still damp underneath. Hours old, not days. Something in my gut twisted. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong people. A reminder that this wasn’t some amateur poacher’s mess.
“Heavy tread,” I murmured. “Loaded packs. Or body armor.” I hadn’t seen evidence of the latter, but I wasn’t discounting anything.
Saoirse stepped up beside me, voice quiet but steady. “Could they have merely passed through?”
I shook my head once. “Not with this much ground disturbance. They stayed. Long enough to watch something. Or someone.”
She didn’t ask what.
She already knew.
As we backed out of the clearing, I checked my watch again without thinking, instinctively marking the time as part of the silent inventory that was a habit from service and would probably never quite leave me. The need to know where you were, what time it was, how long since the last check-in.
Two missed calls.
That meant protocol was kicking in back at base. Or should be.
Saoirse must’ve been watching me, because after a while she asked softly, “You think they’re looking for us?”
“They will be.” My voice was rougher than I intended. “But right now, they’re guessing. We missed two check-ins. Best-case, they think the communicator’s dead.”
“And worst-case?”
“They’re spinning up to organize a search and don’t know where to start.”
She was quiet for a moment. “You trust them to come?”
I nodded. “With my life.”
A breath passed. My eyes swept the tree line again, then found hers. “But they’re not here. You are.”
Her gaze held mine.
“You’ve kept pace through everything,” I added, quieter now. “Most wouldn’t have.”
That earned me a sharper look than the others. As if she was turning the words over before deciding where to set them.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t need to.
Ajax’s head jerked to the left, ears pricked sharp as his body went still. One beat, two. Then he let out a single, low, purposeful bark and began to move. Not fast, not reckless. But with certainty.
Even limping, he had command in his stride. Like a switch had flipped.
I was already following before I even registered the thought. Eyes sweeping the terrain, pack shifting against my back as my boots found the narrow rise he was tracking along.
Saoirse fell in beside me without a word. No need for discussion. We both knew that bark. It wasn’t confusion or distraction.
It was direction.
And suddenly, the air around us tightened. The quiet wasn’t uneasy anymore. It was waiting.
Something had shifted. In the woods. In the rhythm of our steps. In us.
A part of me wanted to slow him. To ask— what are you chasing, lad? Instead, I followed.
We weren’t hoping anymore.
Whatever we were closing in on, it wasn’t far.