Chapter 32
Saoirse
The barked order jolted me out of my anxious rumination. I jerked my head toward the sound. Boots hit the ground outside. Crunching gravel. Purposeful. Voices low and clipped. No more of the lazy, drawling disdain from yesterday. These men were alert and focused. Something was happening.
Before Isla or I could speak, the tent flap jerked open, and two figures stepped inside, flashlights flicking over me and Isla.
My eyes adjusted fast in the dimness, registering the same two thick-necked, bored-looking guards from the night before.
They were tenser now, their silence heavier than noise.
One of them moved to the post and began untying the rope from my torso, movements brisk and efficient. The zipties around my wrists remained in place, biting into already abraded skin. Behind me, Isla stirred groggily as her own ropes were unfastened.
“Let’s get it done before the rain hits,” one muttered, voice flat.
The other grunted in agreement.
Outside, the air had shifted to something denser, more expectant. I could feel it through the canvas walls, thick with the promise of coming weather. Low clouds pressing down on the forest like a hand. The kind of gray that made everything feel like it was holding its breath.
I turned my head and caught Isla’s eyes. She looked pale, pupils wide in the dimness, but lucid. Her jaw clenched when the guards hauled her to her feet, and I knew. We both knew. This wasn’t a relocation. This wasn’t containment.
This was removal.
The air hit like a slap when they dragged us out of the tent.
Damp and close, thick with the weight of cloud-heavy sky.
The world had gone silver at the edges—muted and colorless under the late-day gloom, the kind of midsummer dusk where the light sort of dulled rather than faded.
Wind rustled the treetops above us, stirring needles and leaves in uneasy murmurs.
I caught the scent of wet pine and something acrid underneath.
The camp was quieter than I expected. No laughter or chatter interrupted the scrape of boots and the low hum of idling engines. Even the guards moved differently. Brisk, tense, their usual smugness stripped down to something leaner. Meaner. No masks of civility now. Things were coming to an end.
They didn’t speak as they marched us forward, one hand fisted in the back of my shirt, the other on Isla’s arm. The ATVs were parked in a neat line along the edge of the camp, beyond the fire pit. Engines ticking under the low sky, headlights dark, like beasts crouched and waiting.
We weren’t being brought to vehicles. We were being brought deeper into the woods. Were they planning to execute and bury us? Or would they simply leave our corpses for the scavengers?
My feet caught on a tree root, and I stumbled forward, barely catching myself. One of the guards jerked me upright again with a grunt. “Watch it.”
Somewhere high overhead, a raven let out a single harsh caw, the sound slicing through the stillness like a warning. My gut coiled.
I didn’t need a map to know we were going somewhere no one was supposed to find us.
The closer we got to the edge of the camp, the more I felt the shift. The wrongness. It wasn’t only fear twisting in my stomach now. It was something else. Tighter. Sharper. Like the air itself had teeth.
The guards weren’t talking. Not even in muttered curses or shitty jokes.
The kind of silence that wasn’t natural in a place like this.
One of them paused mid-step and scanned the tree line, his fingers tightening on the butt of his rifle.
The other followed his gaze, subtle but unmistakable, his jaw ticking once as he reached to adjust the strap across his chest.
They were jumpy.
And they weren’t the only ones.
The wind shifted again, bringing with it the faint sharp, metallic scent of ozone biting at the back of my throat. A low rumble somewhere far off might’ve been distant thunder or might’ve been nothing. But it didn’t matter. The air felt charged, like it was waiting for something to break.
I swallowed hard, forcing breath through my nose, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted to outrun everything.
Something was coming.
No. Someone.
I didn’t have proof. Couldn’t explain it. But I knew with every scraped up, trembling part of me that Finn was out there. Watching. Waiting. Close enough to feel the same pressure crawling under my skin.
I didn’t know what his plan was. I only knew he was about to strike. Because the alternative was too horrific to contemplate.
A sudden burst shattered the quiet. Not a gunshot—more like something exploding low to the ground.
It cracked through the air and sent a rush of white light and smoke blooming across the far end of the clearing.
My ears rang. The men around us flinched, half-blinded, shouting over one another as the haze swallowed their footing.
And then everything broke.
Figures moved through the smoke—fast and deliberate.
One man surged in from the left, swept the legs out from under a guard so hard I felt the impact in my ribs.
Another tackled a second guard from behind, dragging him into the dirt in a controlled, brutal motion.
Fists. Elbows. A sudden, shocking silence as one man crumpled unconscious.
They weren’t shooting.
They were taking the camp apart .
A guard lunged for me—reactive, uncoordinated—and I threw myself sideways, shoulder first, into the one still gripping Isla. He staggered with a curse. She jerked free, half-falling, half-running.
“Go!” I gasped, breath catching.
Isla limped toward the tree line, quickly lost in the smoke.
I turned, only to freeze as I spotted the rifle barrel leveled straight at my chest. The man holding it looked furious. Shaky. Like he might shoot from fear alone.
Time stuttered.
I didn’t scream. Didn’t run. There was nowhere to go. My body froze, knees locked, lungs refusing to work. The man holding the gun looked half-crazed, sweat slick on his brow, arms trembling like even he didn’t trust himself not to pull the trigger.
A blur tore through the shadows, low and fast and utterly silent.
Ajax hit him like a missile, with a snarl I heard even over the chaos around us.
The rifle went skittering across the ground as the man toppled backward, a strangled yell ripping from his throat.
Ajax sank his teeth into the man’s forearm with a sound I’d never heard from him before—deep and guttural and final .
The kind of growl that left no doubt about intent or the kind of lethality he’d been trained for.
The man screamed. Thrashed. Ajax didn’t let go.
I staggered back, gasping, the shock still rippling through my limbs. My wrists throbbed in their restraints. My legs felt loose beneath me. But I was still upright. Still breathing.
Still alive.
Through the rising smoke and scattering bodies, another figure emerged. My heart clenched, and I braced to stand my ground before my brain caught up and registered the familiar tall frame moving fast.
Finn.
His knife was drawn, shoulders squared and eyes locked on me.
One flicker to check me for blood and injury.
Then he was on the man Ajax had dropped, kicking the rifle out of reach and slamming a knee into his ribs with brutal efficiency as he snapped an order I didn’t catch.
Ajax let go, teeth dripping, chest heaving, falling in at Finn’s side like he’d never left it.
Behind us, a voice rang out, clipped and commanding. “Two down, eyes left!”
Ewan. I couldn’t see him through the blur of movement and trees, but the sound of his voice cut through the noise like a blade.
A single rifle crack split the air—tight and fast. My heart lurched.
I didn’t know where the shot came from or who pulled the trigger, but it didn’t sound random. It sounded deliberate. Controlled. Not chaos. Precision. A sniper?
Someone darted past the edge of my vision. Another man in camo moving with silent precision. Alex. I recognized the way he moved even before my brain finished registering his face. He swept along the rear edge of the camp, checking shadows, covering angles. Never stopping.
They weren’t shouting. Weren’t scrambling.
They moved like water. Like they’d done this a thousand times before. Smooth and fast and terrifying in how efficient they were. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t messy. It was effective .
One by one, the guards fell or scattered. Not dead. At least, I didn’t think so. But down. Unconscious. Disarmed. Out of the fight.
And all I could do was stand there, still bound and breathless, watching the man I’d once called insufferable move through a war zone like he’d been born for it.
God help me, it was beautiful. Awful. And beautiful.
It ended faster than I could’ve imagined.
One minute, the camp was a minefield of shouting and stomping boots and snarled orders.
The next, it was still. Quiet in that eerie, post-storm kind of way.
I could hear the wind again, and the rustle of canvas.
Somewhere, a rifle clattered to the ground.
A voice barked, “Secure him,” and another answered, “Got it.”
The guards were down. Not all unconscious, not all injured—but every one of them disarmed. Contained. Tents were being swept, gear ripped open and searched. A man groaned nearby, curled against a tree, arms ziptied behind his back. The tide had turned, and it hadn’t taken hours.
It had taken minutes.
My legs buckled before I realized I was swaying. I sank to my knees in the mud, heart pounding like it still thought we were running. I couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t seem to blink the blur from my eyes.
Then Finn was there, dropping to a crouch in front of me like the world had narrowed to this exact point. His knife flashed once, clean and sure, and the zipties fell away from my wrists. The sting where they’d bitten in barely registered before he pulled me against his chest.
His arms wrapped tight around me, solid and grounding. I let myself sag against him for a single heartbeat, soaking in the reality of him. Alive. Warm. Here. My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt before I could stop them.
“You came.” The words were barely a sound. My throat was raw.
His hand cupped my face before I could finish the breath. His gaze searched mine with the kind of care that unraveled me completely. “Always.”
But it couldn’t last.
He let go slowly, carefully, before stepping back with a reluctant glance over his shoulder. “Stay here.” Then he was gone again, moving back toward the heart of the camp where the others were still working.
I sat down hard on a felled log, my limbs shaking now that the adrenaline was draining away.
“Saoirse!” Isla stumbled over. Had she gotten turned around in the chaos?
She collapsed on the log beside me, every bit as spent. We slumped against each other, the contact the only thing holding us both vertical.
Around us, the camp shifted, from a place of control and cruelty to something being dismantled and logged for evidence. I saw Callum stacking weapons, sweeping for anything missed. Ewan crouched by the fire pit, examining a steel box full of trackers and tags.
Alex returned a moment later, tablet in hand, expression grim but satisfied. “Vehicles are secured. Footage uploaded to cloud storage. Comms logs copied. And the GPS data’s giving us enough to trace this whole operation. Dates, names, buyers, the works.”
He didn’t need to explain what that meant. The poaching ring wouldn’t disappear into shadows. Not this time.
I exhaled slowly, pulse beginning to settle. At least until Alex added, “Only one missing.”
My gaze snapped to his. “Who?”
“Sandhurst.”
My stomach dropped. “What do you mean, missing?”
“We never saw him during the breach. Tent’s still got his gear. But no sign of the man himself. He’s no’ in the compound.”
My jaw clenched. Of course. Of course, the bastard had slipped away—quiet and early, like a man used to walking through locked doors untouched.
“Coward,” I muttered.
Alex nodded once. “Probably. But he willnae get far. Not with this much heat.”
“He’d better not,” I said, low. “Because if he does, I swear—” And then I stopped. I looked around again. Callum, near the tent line. Ewan, by the fire pit. Alex standing right in front of me. But not the one face I needed to see.
“Where’s Finn?” I asked.
The silence that followed wasn’t long.
But it was loud.