Chapter 61
LUCIAN
She’s here.
I can feel it with every part of me.
People talk about twin flames like it’s some cosmic pull. But this? This is a burn that starts under my ribs and spreads until breathing feels wrong. This is the kind of tether that drags you through hell to find the person on the other side.
There are no cars in the driveway when we reach the ranch. But that doesn’t mean it’s empty.
The whole place sits in darkness, the kind that eats at the edges of your vision. A few overhead beams cut through the black, slicing the yard into strips of silver and shadow. It’s too still. Too quiet.
The convoy fans out like a deck of cards being laid on the table. Engines cut. Doors open in near silence. Everyone moves without needing to be told, each man a piece of a well-oiled machine built by blood and war. But my head isn’t in the plan. It’s somewhere else.
In the air. In the faint trace of something I can’t mistake. The smell of her. The ghost of her breath caught in the wind. I close my eyes for half a second, and I can almost hear it - that soft, uneven rhythm that could only belong to Nadia.
She’s here.
I can feel it in my bones.
We hit the front door hard. The lock gives with a crack, splinters skidding across the porch. The house exhales dust and silence as we move in.
Scar signals left, Mason right, Jayson behind me - every step rehearsed, every breath timed. The air is thick with the smell of copper and something sharper, a chemical sting that crawls up the back of my throat.
The first hallway is empty. Nothing but stale air and a single chair tipped on its side. We clear each room as we go - a kitchen, stripped bare; a dining space with plates still on the table, dust thick enough it will need to be scraped off. The house looks like it hasn’t be lived in for years.
We move deeper. The second hallway stretches out before us, narrow and endless. The floor groans under our boots, each step echoing too loud in the empty space.
The smell hits harder here - antiseptic and copper, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. It clings to the walls, to the ceiling, to my skin. Two gurneys sit abandoned along the far side, sheets stiff with old stains - dark, rusted patches that can only be blood.
This isn’t a home. It’s a place built for cutting. For taking things apart. A cold certainty sinks into me. We’re in the right place. My pulse hammers in my throat, heavy and uneven. Fear curls tight in my gut, choking out every rational thought. What have they done to her?
“Son of a bitch…” Scar mutters.
Mason lifts a hand - a signal to stop. We listen.
There it is. A hum. Faint. Electrical. Coming from below.
Scar motions toward the far end of the hall, where a cupboard sits at an odd angle - too deliberate to be careless. Someone moved it, recently, to hide what’s behind.
Jayson shoves it aside, the scrape of wood slicing through the silence. A door waits there, narrow and unmarked. When we pull it open, a set of stairs yawns beneath us, disappearing into a pit of black.
There are no windows and no light. Just the sound of our breathing and the low, steady hum of machinery drifting up from below - the heartbeat of something living underground.
I go first.
The steps groan under my weight, dust rising in lazy clouds around my boots. The air gets colder the deeper we go. It smells like bleach and blood. My hand tightens around my gun. Each heartbeat feels like it’s dragging me closer to something I’m not ready to see.
The last step gives way to concrete. A corridor stretches out ahead - narrow, low-ceilinged, walls streaked with old water stains. A single light flickers at the far end, a weak pulse in the dark.
Then we hear it.
A sound - soft, unsteady. Some sort of a machine.
I follow the sound to a half-open door, push it wider with the barrel of my gun. The hinges moan, loud in the silence.
And then - there she is.
Nadia.
Strapped to a gurney, pale as marble, her arm punctured and bruised, tubes running from her veins to machines that hum like they’re keeping her tethered to this world by force. Her chest rises in shallow bursts. Her lips move, forming something that might be my name.
The sight knocks the air out of me. The world narrows. My throat closes.
She’s here.
And she’s still breathing.
Kellerman’s there too, back turned, needle in hand.
He doesn’t hear me at first. He’s humming to himself, a low, disgusting tune, until I press the barrel of my gun to the base of his skull.
He freezes.
“Step away,” I growl. “Now.”
He tries to talk. I don’t let him. The first blow takes him in the ribs. The second cracks his jaw. When he hits the ground, I want to keep going - to drag him up and make him feel every second of what she felt. But Nadia’s sound stops me.
A soft, delirious laugh.
I turn.
She’s staring up at the ceiling, dazed, her fingers twitching against the restraints. “Lucian…” she whispers, voice slurred. “You came…”
It’s like being punched and kissed at the same time. I holster the gun and tear at the straps. “Yeah,” I say, my voice rough. “Yeah, I did.”
Her gaze unfocuses. “Lucian?” she murmurs, and for a second - I swear - she looks right through me, into someone else.
But then she blinks again, and her eyes clear just enough to find me. “No,” she whispers. “You’re Jude.”
“I’m here, sweetheart.” I brush the hair off her face, blood and sweat slick against my hands. “You’re okay now. I’ve got you.”
She shakes her head, slow, dreamlike. “You feel like him. Same fire. Same ache,” Nadia breathes, as she falls into my arms.
My chest caves in around her words. I don’t know what to say. All I can do is hold her.
Kellerman groans on the floor, but Scar’s already there - the click of his gun loud, decisive. “Stay down, or I put you down,” he says, his voice like gravel, before he orders Jayson to tie him up.
I scoop Nadia up, careful but quick. She’s weightless, fragile, whispering nonsense against my chest. She smells like blood and morphine, and still so undeniably Nadia.
As I carry her out of the room, she murmurs one last thing, voice thin and trembling:
“You found me.”
“I will always find you,” I whisper back.
And I swear, in that moment, as thunder breaks outside and the night splits wide open - I feel it.
That tether. That invisible, unbreakable bond between us.
She’s not just the woman I love.
She’s the pulse I’ve been chasing my whole life.