Chapter 2 #3
The great white owl from his dream swept through the night beside him, ghost-pale against the void. Wings wide, catching the moonlight. She banked close, close enough that her flight brushed his cheek, a single feather sliding across skin in a soft caress.
Her amber eyes found his, and the world slowed.
It hit him low and hard, like someone had slammed a fist into his chest, knocking the air from his lungs.
His gaze locked on hers, pulse heavy in his ears.
She was every fantasy he’d shoved aside since Venezuela, wrapped in one impossible, breathtaking truth.
Maybe if he didn’t like her so damn much, he could let her go.
But she was the bravest woman he’d ever known, unapologetic, untamed, carved into his bones.
He wanted her in every way a man could want a woman.
Mouth, mind, body. In that split second, he felt robbed of all the time they hadn’t had, cheated out of the fire they might have set if they’d ever been free to touch.
She was quicksilver and flame, sunlight and shadow, and she had him. Completely.
Those thoughts fractured like glass as the force of her hit him again.
In this form, all she had for expression were those deep, unguarded eyes, amber like molten gold with a thread of orange, fierce and afraid all at once, and something else.
He trembled under the weight of it, under the power of her spirit, relentless, mysterious, strong to a fault.
Her gaze cut through every layer of armor he’d ever built, straight into him like a laser.
She looked at him as if he were the only man in any world that mattered.
His chest locked, not from the thin air, but from the ache and sweetness there.
Longing. Regret, a raw feeling that sliced through the haze, stealing his mind.
She was here for him. How, he couldn’t comprehend. But it was as real as the breath suspended in his chest. As real as the sun rising and setting.
His mouth shaped her name. Killa.
“ Woman ? What is going on? How are you here? Like this?” The words tore out of him before he could stop them. In his dazed confusion, he added, “Don’t you see her?”
Brawler’s voice came sharp over the comms. “Flash? Are you all right? Who are you talking to? See who?”
A beat of silence. Then Twister’s voice, lower, urgent. “ Fuck . Hypoxia.”
Easy snapped back in agony, “I checked his rig myself. Goddammit . Did I miss something?”
Then Twister again, tighter now. “Flash, are you having a hard time breathing?”
Tex’s voice broke in, rough and concerned. “We’re at pull threshold. Point of no return.”
Flash glanced at his altimeter. Tex was right, one more second and he was done.
“Let him go!” she cried, fierce and desperate.
Suddenly, air rushed in. Oxygen flooded his lungs, burning and sweet. The haze cleared, but the altimeter screamed and it was too late. He didn’t have the time to pull his chute. Either he was going to hit hard and die, or he’d wake up broken, if he woke up at all.
Then she was beneath him. Her scream of defiance echoed in every nerve ending, tearing at his heart, savage and anguished.
He felt the solid curve of her body even through the rush of wind, the powerful muscles shifting under downy softness.
Feathers brushed against his legs and chest, their heat radiating through his suit.
Her wings moved in a silence so deep it roared in his chest, each downstroke heavy and primal, lifting him against the fall.
The hush was fierce, alive, filled with a single purpose—to keep him breathing.
Her determination wrapped around him as surely as her body did, holding him in that cold void just long enough to live.
“Flash! Chute! Now , brother!” Brawler’s voice slammed into his headset, threaded with fear and dark grief.
“Open your chute!” Her voice, urgent, cutting through everything.
Then she was gone.
His hand yanked the ripcord. The chute snapped open with a whip-crack and a deep, blessed whoomp that punched into his chest and stole what was left of his breath.
Lines went taut, pulling hard on his shoulders, then cradling him, holding him like the arms of someone who refused to let him fall.
Relief surged through him, sharp and aching, so fierce it almost felt like love.
Sound rushed back, the humidity of the jungle was like a wall of moisture.
His plummet slowed as air filled his canopy.
He landed rough, breath ragged, pulse hammering in his throat. Voices filled comms. Brawler demanding a status check, Tex swearing about his LZ but none of it mattered.
She had been here. She had saved him. Not in a dream. Not in a memory. Here.
The massive presence that haunted every jungle he’d ever stepped into? Tonight, it hadn’t just been watching. It was using him against her, and she was fighting. Christ, she was so goddamned beautiful.
Boots pounded through the brush toward him before his canopy had even settled.
Brawler was on him first, snapping buckles and yanking the harness free with quick, brutal efficiency. “Jesus, you’re not dead,” he muttered, voice low but threaded with a sharp edge of relief. “Good thing, because I was going to kill you.”
Twister shouldered in, half-shoving Brawler aside to get a hand on Flash’s mask and check his O? feed. “Hold still, I need to… Dammit, you’re pale as hell. What the fuck happened up there?”
“I’d give you a ten,” Easy called over from where he was dragging in the chute, “but I’m so goddamned ragged out, I feel like my soul left my body.”
“Adrenaline spike’s gonna kill me before the mission does,” Tex said, his tone threaded with concern. “I need your firepower, Flash. Checking out is not an option.”
Flash sat there in the dirt, catching what breath he could, letting their voices wash over him. It was noise, it was life, and it was the only thing keeping him from thinking too hard about what had really just happened.