Chapter 29
Finn
I didn’t know how far I ran. Only that it wasn’t far enough.
Branches clawed at my arms, roots snagged at my boots, and still I moved, as if forward motion might somehow erase the sound of her being taken. Of her voice crying out before it was swallowed whole by the dark.
Ajax kept pace beside me, low and silent. His ears pinned back, head down, gaze flicking constantly toward me. He knew something was wrong. Knew this wasn’t a drill or a mission or a game. But he didn’t know how to fix it.
Neither did I.
When the forest thickened and the slope leveled out, I dropped hard to my knees.
Dirt bit into bone. My palms hit the earth like I was bracing for an impact that had already landed.
I stayed like that, doubled over, forehead nearly to the ground, trying to breathe through a storm that didn’t have air.
Because she was gone.
And I had let her go.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t had a choice. Didn’t matter that going after her right then would’ve been suicide. That I’d be bleeding out beside her by now, or worse, dragging Ajax into the crosshairs too.
Because the outcome was the same. She was gone. They had her. And I hadn’t stopped it.
My fists clenched against the mossy ground, dirt grinding into my palms like penance. My body locked tight, every breath a fight not to explode. Not with rage—though that was there, too—but with grief. With failure.
She’d been right there. I’d told her to stay hidden. I told her I had it under control.
And now she was behind enemy lines—alone. Except she wasn’t alone. Because Isla was in there, too. Two women. One mission. One fuckup.
Mine.
I slammed my fist into the ground, bone to stone. Something split. Maybe the skin. Maybe something deeper. It didn’t help.
Ajax didn’t come in close at first. He held a few feet back, shifting from paw to paw, ears half-cocked like he wasn’t sure what to do with me this way.
Cracked open and breathing like I’d been gut-punched.
We hadn’t had long enough together to build routines for this kind of moment. No training for comfort. No protocol.
But eventually, he took a step forward. Then another.
And then he sat right beside me, close enough to touch.
I reached for him like a man drowning. Fisted my hand in the thick fur of his ruff and held on. Not because it helped, not because I thought it would fix anything, but because he was something tangible. Something solid and alive.
He didn’t flinch away as my forehead came to rest against his shoulder.
“I know, lad.” My voice came out low, broken. “It’s no’ your job to fix this.”
It wasn’t his job. It was mine.
And I was going to fix it, even if I had to burn the whole fucking world down to do it.
I sat back on my heels, hands scraped raw from the forest floor, the stink of pine and sweat clogging my nose. My pulse was still jack hammering in my ears like it hadn’t figured out the danger had passed. Or maybe it knew better. Maybe it knew it hadn’t.
I didn’t take stock of gear. Not my knife. Not the terrain. That wasn’t the inventory that mattered.
No, what I cataloged were failures.
Every breath too slow. Every decision that hadn’t been enough. The half-second I’d waited when Ajax gave the warning. The time it took me to circle that last tent. The idiotic hope I’d clung to that if we were quiet, if we were smart , we could pull this off clean.
Like a fucking amateur.
I’d let my guard down. Let myself want. Let myself believe for a second too long that maybe this could be more than survival. And now they had her.
My voice came out low, shredded. “You dinna get to want things.”
Ajax pricked his ears, as if the words were meant for him.
I swallowed hard. Shook my head. “You want things, people get hurt.”
And God help me, I wanted Saoirse.
I started pacing. A tight loop at first, to keep the panic from rooting too deep. Ajax stayed where he was, eyes tracking me without judgment. Just maintaining presence and bearing witness as I tried not to lose it completely.
Fall back on the training. Take inventory.
I crouched beside a fallen log and unsheathed my knife. The blade caught no light, because there wasn’t any, but I didn’t need to see the edge to know it was sharp. Reliable. Not enough.
My multi-tool came out next. Not much more than a glorified paperweight in a fight. I set both beside me in the dirt and scrubbed a hand through my hair, breathing hard.
What did I have?
Me. Ajax, who, despite all his heart, wasn’t at a hundred percent. Two blades. A few rations stashed back at our fallback point. Rope. Duct tape. No comms. No backup. No time.
A distraction? Maybe. But it’d need to be big enough to pull the guards off-center, and subtle enough not to alert the entire fucking compound.
Could I ambush one? Knife to the throat, drag them into the trees, take their radio?
Possible, but sloppy. Risky. One wrong step, and they’d move the women. Or worse.
I could feel the plan fraying before I even finished sketching it in my head.
But one truth remained solid. I wasn’t leaving her in there. Not for a second longer than I had to. Not even if it killed me.
I sat down again, slower this time. Not collapsing. Centering. Trying to force clarity through the fog still pressing behind my eyes.
The forest around me held its breath, thick and waiting. Overhead, the sky was beginning to thin slightly at the edges—more slate than black. Not full light. Not yet. Maybe four hours, give or take, until the compound began to stir in earnest. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Ajax shifted beside me, his body tense, alert. I reached out and rested a hand along his uninjured flank, grounding myself.
“We get one shot,” I murmured. “One.”
His only response was to watch me, as if waiting for me to be the man he believed I still was.
I grabbed my knife and dragged the point through the dirt, carving rough lines—tent placements from memory, the sloped edge of the treeline. Marks where I’d seen the guards drift without any real formation or strategy. Just motion for the sake of intimidation.
I scratched out a possible route. A pocket of cover. A soft edge in the noise.
It wasn’t solid. Hell, it wasn’t even smart. But it was something.
If I could trigger some kind of distraction, it might shift the focus. Even for thirty seconds. A crack in their attention. That’s all I’d need.
There were still supplies stashed back at the hollow. Not much. A bit of accelerant. A flare. Fishing line. Enough to make something that looked like a threat. Fire was a certain attention grabber.
If I could bait the far side of camp enough to pull eyes in the wrong direction, get someone shouting, moving, I might be able to cut through.
Thin. Too thin. But I didn’t have the luxury of waiting on perfect. She didn’t have the time.
I looked down at Ajax, my voice low and rough. “I’m going for her.”
Not because she needed saving.
Because I did, and because she was mine.
I was done letting the world take from me.
I’d get Saoirse back. Isla too.
Whatever it cost.