Chapter Five
Kael let out a slow breath, Drew’s final words echoing through the hollow space of the warehouse long after the car engine faded into the night.
You’re wrong, you know. About what you told yourself. About us.
The words hit harder than any bullet. Kael hadn’t answered—couldn’t. His throat had locked up, and his heart felt like it had been wrapped in barbed wire. When Drew had said, “You’re the only one who ever had the right to claim me,” something inside him had shifted—fractured.
Now, silence swallowed the room. His men waited in the background, none daring to speak. They all knew what Drew’s reappearance those years ago had meant. They’d all seen Kael’s reaction at the time, the tremor of loss he’d tried to hide beneath command and discipline.
He finally exhaled, a sharp sound that echoed too loud in the cavernous space. “Clear the floor,” he said quietly. “Give me a minute.”
The team moved instantly. Even Manō hesitated only long enough to give Kael a lingering look before leaving. The steel door slammed shut behind them.
Kael dragged a hand through his hair, pacing. His body still felt coiled, his pulse a drumbeat of anger and confusion. Drew. No. Wraith. The man he’d thought long dead. Until tonight, Wraith had been nothing but a name in his reports and an ache in the back of his mind.
The realization that Drew and Wraith were the same man still burned in his chest. He hadn’t known until he saw him in that goddamn apartment—hadn’t recognized the pale, hollow-eyed figure lying in that filthy studio until the man had looked up, and those sharp, impossible blue eyes had locked on his.
Everything inside Kael had stopped.
He could still smell that place. Damp concrete, rust, and stale coffee.
Wraith—Drew—had been living like a ghost, the shell of the man he’d once known.
Kael and his men had breached the window, not the door, correctly guessing that the entry was trapped.
Luca, their tech genius, had been the one to bypass Wraith’s security on the window—a task he called ‘painful but doable.’ The man’s digital signature had been smart enough to fool half of the underworld, but not Luca’s steady hands and rolling code cracker.
He’d muttered something about admiring the craftsmanship even as he dismantled it, fingers flying over his portable console before giving Kael the nod to breach.
It had been difficult, but not impossible, and it told Kael just how careful Wraith had become.
Even then, Kael had thought it was just another extraction and interrogation. Until he’d seen that face. His face.
Drew. Alive.
And when Drew had spoken, calm and guarded but unmistakably him, Kael’s world had tilted.
Now, standing in the empty warehouse, Kael could still feel the echo of that moment—the shock, the flood of something between rage and relief, the crushing weight of six lost years slamming into him all at once.
The bastard had been alive all this time.
The echo of Drew’s words circled back, sharp as the bite of salt air.
If I don’t move, people die.
“What danger?” Kael muttered. “What the hell have you walked into, Wraith?”
The sound of footsteps behind him broke the quiet. “You look like you just went ten rounds with your past, and lost,” Tane said softly, stepping back into the room, a mug of black coffee in one hand. “I figured you’d need this.”
Kael took it without a word, fingers brushing the warm ceramic. “Thanks.”
Tane studied him. “You believe what he said?”
Kael hesitated, then nodded once. “Yeah. Whatever he’s caught up in, it’s bad. You saw it in his eyes just as I did.”
Tane leaned against the wall, crossing his tattooed arms. “Then we need to find out what kind of bad it is, and make it disappear. The way he said it, it sounded like a countdown.”
“I know.” Kael rubbed his temples. “I just don’t know where to start.”
“You know people,” Tane said. “Start there.”
Kael lifted his gaze. “Yeah. I do.” He turned toward the desk in the corner, pulling his secure phone from the drawer. His thumb hovered over the encrypted messaging app before he started typing. A single message, copied to two recipients. Dev Roberts and Anton Bateman.
Two men he trusted. Two legends in their own right—the leaders of Sniper Team Bravo and the Pathfinders. If anyone knew what Drew—what Wraith—was hinting at, it would be them.
He sent the message and got a near-instant reply from both. Call in twenty. Secure channel Beta 7.
Kael nodded to himself. “All right, then.”
He made another pot of coffee while the warehouse fell silent again.
The steady drip of rain outside filled the air.
He stared into the black surface of his mug, Drew’s face flashing again in his mind—those impossible blue eyes, the scar along his jaw, the quiet intensity that had always pulled Kael in like a riptide.
He’d never moved on. Not really. He’d never looked at anyone else after Drew and hadn’t wanted to. Once he’d given his heart, even if it had only been forty-eight hours of real time, that was it. Drew had been it. The one. His only.
A man who had left him pacing the floor at night because he couldn’t get their voice out of his head.
“Damn you, Wraith,” Kael muttered. “Even dead, you were under my skin. Just fucking hovering beneath the surface.”
And now alive, he thought, do I have to find a way to truly let you go?
He took a long breath, settling himself before the secure tablet pinged. Connection established.
Two faces appeared in the holo-screen—Devon Roberts and Anton Bateman.
Dev leaned back in his chair, black t-shirt and tactical pants, the smirk of a man who’d stared down death so many times he’d started to find it boring. His dark hair was shorter than Kael remembered, but the edge in his gray eyes hadn’t dulled.
Bateman sat beside him in his office at the Ridge, calm and composed, wearing a dark collar-less shirt with three buttons at the neck that did nothing to hide the power in his frame. His sharp blue eyes narrowed in concern as the screen stabilized.
“Kael,” Bateman greeted him. “This is unexpected. You calling for social hour or are we putting out fires?”
Dev snorted. “With Kael? It’s always fires. He doesn’t do social.”
Kael rolled his eyes. “Good to see you too, Dev. I’m surprised your ego fit in the frame.”
Dev grinned. “It’s a wide-angle lens, brother.”
Bateman shook his head. “Children, can we get to the part where you tell us why you dragged us into an emergency conference call? Black Tide have cut that particular Bratya head off at this stage, as far as I can tell, a little more housekeeping there and we’re good to go, so this has to be something more than that. ”
Kael leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I found someone. Or rather, he found me. Wraith.”
Bateman’s expression sharpened instantly. “You mean the Wraith?”
Kael nodded slowly. “Yeah. Except I didn’t know it was Drew Hawkins until tonight.”
Bateman frowned slightly. “Hawkins? That his real name?”
Kael nodded again. “Yeah. Real name. Wraith is apparently his call sign now.”
Bateman leaned forward. “How do you know him?”
Kael took a slow breath. “Six years ago, we worked together on a joint op in the Pacific. It should have been a month op, but all we got together was two days. He was undercover, I was assigned to extract him at the end. But something clicked between us—fast, hard. We had those forty-eight hours and then all hell broke loose. We barely made it out alive, when the mission went sideways. I was evacuated and he stayed. He disappeared in the chaos that occurred a week later, listed KIA before I could even confirm it myself. I spent months looking for a body. Never found one.”
Bateman’s eyebrow lifted. “And now he just strolls back into your world?”
Dev gave a low whistle. “Well, shit. I’ve seen that before. Man dies, comes back, wrecks your whole damn equilibrium.” He threw a sidelong look at Bateman. “You’ve heard of that story, right, Bateman?”
Bateman glared. “Fuck off, Dev.”
Kael almost smiled. “He said there’s danger coming. Something big. He wouldn’t tell me what. Just that if he didn’t get out of where we put him and go back, people die.”
Dev’s smirk faded, replaced by something colder. “Did he give you a timeline?”
Kael shook his head. “No. Just urgency. Like he was racing a clock I couldn’t see.”
Bateman leaned closer, voice steady. “If Wraith’s down deep, and he’s talking about something that could take out civilians, we can’t ignore that. I’ll get Marsh on it—see if he can trace what Drew’s been embedded in these last six years.”
“Thanks, brother,” Kael said quietly.
Dev lifted his mug in salute. “You ever think maybe fate’s got a sick sense of humor? The man you thought was dead comes back from the grave, drops a doomsday warning, and leaves you staring after him like a kicked puppy.”
“Go to hell, Dev,” Kael muttered, but there was no real heat in it.
Bateman chuckled. “He’s not wrong, though, and yes that hurt like fuck to admit.” Then he sobered. “I’ll contact you in a few hours. We’ll dig into this, see what Marsh turns up. If it’s tied to the Bratya, or worse, we’ll mobilize.”
Kael nodded, jaw tight. “Appreciate it. Hold off on the mobilization piece though. Let’s just see what this is.”
The call ended, and the holo-screen faded to black. The warehouse was silent again, save for the steady rain outside.
Kael sat there for a long time, staring at the empty screen. The ghosts had started to stir again—and this time, one of them had a heartbeat.
He leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. For the first time in years, the darkness behind them wasn’t empty. It was filled with Drew’s voice.
Out of everyone in this world, you’re the only one who ever had the right to claim me.
And damn it all, Kael wished he still had.
****