Chapter 46 Cyrus
CYRUS
Ifeel Keira’s warmth between us, her heartbeat strong against my chest, when I hear it—the faint scrape of a door at the far end of the warehouse. My head snaps up, predator’s instinct cutting through emotion.
“Volkov.” The name tastes like copper in my mouth.
I’m on my feet before I make the conscious decision to move, my body remembering what my mind had forgotten in the relief of finding Keira alive. We’re not finished.
“Stay with her,” I tell Ace, already moving toward the sound, my gun raised.
Blood seeps down my arm from the knife wound, but I barely register the pain. There’s only one thing that matters now—the man who took Keira from us, who dared put his hands on what’s ours.
I track him through the shadows, moving silently despite the tactical gear weighing me down. At the back loading dock, I catch a glimpse of his silhouette slipping through an exit door.
Three strides and I’m through the door after him, the night air hitting my face like a slap. Volkov is fifteen yards ahead, running toward a chain-link fence.
I don’t call out. Don’t warn him. My bullet catches him in the calf, a precision shot dropping him to the gravel with a satisfying thud.
When I reach him, he’s trying to crawl, leaving a dark trail behind him. I press my boot into his wounded leg, grinding down until his scream cuts through the night.
“You touched what’s mine.” My voice is ice. I kneel beside him, pressing the barrel of my gun under his jaw. “You put your hands on her.”
“Business,” he gasps, “just business—”
I slam his head back against the gravel. “Every minute she was afraid, every second she wondered if we’d come for her—you’re going to feel it all.”
I flip him onto his stomach, pinning him with my knee as I holster my gun and draw my knife instead.
“Please,” he begs, the word meaningless against the memory of Keira bound to that chair.
I lean close to his ear. “She said that word too, didn’t she? Did you listen?”
Ace’s voice crackles in my ear, cutting through the red haze of my rage. “We need to get her home. Finish it.”
The words anchor me back to what matters. Not vengeance, but Keira—getting her back to safety, to warmth, away from this place. The slower death I’d been planning for Volkov feels like wasted time.
I holster my knife and draw my gun again, flipping Volkov onto his back. His eyes widen, fear finally registering through his professional facade.
“Wait—” he starts.
Three bullets to the forehead. Professional. Quick.
I stand over his body, watching his blood spread across the gravel, and a realization hits me with physical force. If they’d actually hurt her, I would have made this last for days. Would have peeled him apart layer by layer until there was nothing left but bones.
The depth of that feeling is staggering.
Not because I’m capable of such violence—I’ve always known what lives inside me—but because I’ve never felt that protective rage for anyone except Ace.
Never allowed myself to care enough about anyone else that their pain would trigger this tidal wave of violence within me.
I’m still standing there, processing this revelation, when I hear footsteps behind me. Ace, with Keira cradled against his chest, her arms wrapped around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder.
“She needs to rest,” Ace says quietly, his eyes meeting mine over her head. “At home.”
I look down at Volkov’s corpse one last time, the rage still coursing through my veins. Part of me wants to empty my magazine into his body, to desecrate what remains. The part that’s still that terrified boy from the Architect program, the part that learned pain is power.
But Keira’s soft whimper as Ace shifts her in his arms pulls me back from that edge.
“It’s done. She’s safe. Let’s go home,” Ace presses.
I holster my weapon and nod, my eyes fixed on Keira’s pale face against my brother’s chest. Her eyelids flutter, fighting the remnants of whatever they drugged her with. The bruise blooming on her cheekbone makes my fingers twitch for my knife again, but I push the impulse down.
She needs us more than Volkov deserves our attention.
“The threat’s neutralized,” I say into my comm. “Target eliminated. Extraction required at the north loading dock.”
I move to Ace’s side, my hand reaching for Keira’s face. Her skin is cool to the touch, but she leans into my palm.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I’m not sure if she can hear me. “I’m sorry we weren’t faster.”
The weight of those hours without her—not knowing if she was alive, imagining what they might be doing to her—crashes over me again. My hand trembles against her skin.
Ace shifts Keira, freeing one arm to place his hand flat against my back, steadying.
“I know,” he says. “I felt it too.”
Our eyes meet over Keira’s head, and I see it all reflected there—the hollow terror, the frantic desperation, the bone-deep understanding that somehow, impossibly, we’d both found something we couldn’t bear to lose. Something beyond even our bond with each other.
Extraction arrives in the form of one of Xavier’s sleek black SUVs, headlights cutting through the darkness.
I take Keira from Ace’s arms, allowing him to open the door while I cradle her against my chest. The wound in my shoulder screams in protest, but her weight is nothing compared to the hours we spent not knowing if she’d ever be in our arms again.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur into her hair. “We’ve got you now.”
The driver doesn’t speak as we slide into the backseat, the three of us pressed together in the spacious rear compartment.
Ace positions himself on one side of Keira while I take the other, our bodies creating a protective cocoon around her smaller form.
She’s still trembling slightly, aftershocks of fear and adrenaline rippling through her body.
“Take us home,” Ace tells the driver Felix arranged, his voice leaving no room for questions.
The car pulls away from the warehouse, leaving behind Volkov’s cooling body and the chaos we’ve created. Keira stirs between us, her consciousness returning in waves as the sedatives release their hold. Her eyes flutter open, those violet-blue depths focusing first on my face, then shifting to Ace.
“You came,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “I knew you would.”
“Always,” I promise, my hand cupping her cheek. “We will always come for you.”
Ace leans in, his forehead pressing against her temple. “Nothing could have stopped us. Nothing.”
My lips find hers in a kiss that starts gentle but carries every ounce of terror and relief I’ve experienced in the past twelve hours. When I pull back, Ace takes my place, his mouth covering hers with the same desperate tenderness.
We cradle her between us, taking turns kissing her, each touch an affirmation that she’s here, she’s alive, she’s ours.
Not the frantic claiming of before, but something deeper—reverent, almost. A communion of sorts, mapping her face with our lips, relearning the curves of her jaw, the softness of her mouth.