Chapter Eleven
“Well,” Jarek said, his voice rough, edged with something that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been dragged through the aftermath of a fight. “That was a little more dramatic than I’d planned.”
Tamsin looked up from where she stood near the central console, one brow lifting. “You planned that?”
He shrugged, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at something that clearly didn’t appreciate being reminded it existed. “I was hoping for less ‘imminent death,’ more ‘clean execution.’”
Aleksy huffed a quiet breath beside him, not quite a laugh, but close enough. “Your expectations were unrealistic.”
“Story of my life.”
The room around them was full, but quieter than it had been before they’d deployed. Not tense—just ... settled. The sharp edge of anticipation had been replaced by something heavier, something earned.
The kind that sat deep in the bones.
Victor stood at the head of the command table, one hand braced against its surface, his presence still steady, still anchoring even now. Ivan was beside him, just as solid, just as immovable, the two of them holding the center of the room as the rest of the E.S.E. filtered in around them.
Bruised and battered but alive.
The Lions looked like they’d taken the brunt of the corridor fight, Caleb’s shirt torn at the shoulder, Jackson rolling his neck like he was trying to work out the stiffness, Wyatt leaning back against the wall with a satisfied sort of exhaustion.
Sienna standing close to them, watching the three of them intently.
The Wolves were quieter, Rafe and Dorian already reviewing the aftermath data with Riley at their side, her focus sharp despite the fatigue she couldn’t quite hide.
Claire, with Kairo and Rylan just behind her, was already back at her station, pulling apart what little Chimera had left behind in their systems, her fingers moving fast, precise, relentless.
And Elara—Elara stood beside Tamsin, her attention fixed on the data Tamsin had pulled from the system, her expression still pale, but steady.
“Walk us through it,” Victor said.
Tamsin exhaled slowly, her arms folding loosely as she leaned one hip against the console.
“It worked,” she said simply.
That was the truth of it. No embellishment needed.
“I got into the core architecture before the sequence hit peak,” she continued. “They’d built redundancy layers into the system to force stability, but they didn’t fix the underlying integration.”
Elara nodded slightly. “They compensated instead of correcting.”
“Exactly,” Tamsin said. “Which gave me an entry point.”
She pushed off the console, stepped closer to the display, and pulled up the schematic she’d reconstructed from memory.
“They anchored the trigger to the output spike,” she said, pointing to the convergence point. “So I broke the sequence just before it hit threshold.”
Kairo leaned forward slightly. “You forced a cascade.”
Tamsin nodded. “The system couldn’t sustain it. It collapsed in on itself.”
Rafe’s gaze sharpened. “And the device?”
“Dead,” Tamsin said. “Completely.”
A quiet breath of relief moved through the room.
“We intercepted at the corridor,” Caleb added, pushing off the table. “They didn’t get close enough to deploy.”
Sienna’s gaze shifted to him. “Casualties?”
“Minimal on our side, but considerable on theirs,” he said. “They were pushing hard, but once the system failed—”
“They pulled back,” Riley finished.
“Like they did at our end,” Aleksy said.
Tamsin nodded. “Yeah. I saw it on the backend. They weren’t just reacting—they were recalled.”
Claire glanced up briefly. “A command override?”
“Has to be,” Tamsin said. “They cut their losses the second the system failed.”
Aleksy’s hand came to rest lightly at the small of her back, grounding, steady. “Which means they knew when it failed.”
“Yes,” she said.
Jarek leaned against the table, his gaze fixed on her. “And they didn’t stay to fight it out.”
“No,” Tamsin replied. “Because this wasn’t the win condition. The weapon was.”
Aleksy’s voice cut through it. “We secured it, right?” he said, glancing toward Victor.
Victor nodded once. “We have the device. It’s contained.”
Tamsin let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was still holding.
“Good,” she said quietly.
Because that mattered. Almost as much as what she’d done. She straightened slightly, her gaze shifting back to the screens.
“I wiped everything I could find,” she said. “The system, the backups, the shadow copies—they’re gone.”
Elara’s attention snapped to her. “All of it?”
“All of it that I could access,” Tamsin clarified. “Every trace of the delivery mechanism. Every trace of my work.” A beat. “And yours.”
Elara’s expression tightened, then steadied.
“But,” Tamsin continued, because she wasn’t going to pretend this was over, “that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good.”
Sienna nodded slowly. “They’ve already proven they can rebuild.”
“Yeah,” Tamsin said. “And now they know what they’re aiming for. But it will take them time.”
Aleksy’s hand tightened slightly at her back. “Then we stay ahead of them.”
“That’s the plan,” she said.
He held her gaze for a moment longer, something unspoken settling there between them.
“Where are Malik and Jamal?” Caleb asked, his attention shifting back to Victor.
Victor’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture eased.
“They’re still at the hospital,” he said. “They called in. They’re holding position.”
Tamsin felt that settle deep. Malik and Jamal. She’d seen them in full form. Seen what they were capable of. The sheer, unstoppable force of them as they tore through hybrids like they were nothing.
And now—they were standing guard over Naomi.
Her lips curved slightly, something warm threading through the exhaustion.
“She’s safe,” she said quietly.
Victor nodded. “She is.”
Caleb pushed off the table again, rolling his shoulders once. “So,” he said, glancing around the room, “we calling this a win?”
Rafe huffed a quiet breath. “Feels like one.”
“It is one,” Ivan said.
But Victor—Victor didn’t move. His gaze moved across all of them, steady, measured.
“It’s a step,” he said. “We disrupted their deployment. We removed their current capability, but Chimera still stands.”
Sienna nodded once. “Which means we go higher.”
“Top down,” Jarek added.
“End it properly,” Aleksy said.
Tamsin didn’t hesitate. “We dismantle them, from the source.”
Victor held silent for a moment, then nodded once.
“Then we prepare,” he said. “But tonight, you stand down.”
That got attention.
“Take time,” he said, his gaze moving across the teams, the couples, the connections that had formed in the middle of war. Before his gaze settled on Elara, his mate. “With your people. Tonight was too close.”
No one argued, because they all knew it.
Ivan straightened, stepping back from the table. “Celebrate the fact that you’re here, that they’re here.”
His gaze flicked briefly to Tamsin, then Aleksy, then Jarek.
“Tomorrow,” he finished, “we go back to war.”
People moved then, toward the ones they chose. The ones they loved. Aleksy’s hand slid from her back to her hand, his fingers threading with hers, grounding, steady.
Jarek stepped in on her other side, close enough that she felt the heat of him without him needing to touch her.
Tamsin looked between them.
Tonight was a win. They had won the battle, but the war was still to come.
But for tonight—that was enough.
****
“You’re staring again.”
Jarek didn’t bother denying it.
“Hard not to,” he said, leaning back against the bedroom wall, arms folded as he watched her move across the room like she owned it.
Because, let’s be honest, she did.
Tamsin glanced over her shoulder at him, that slow, knowing smile curving her mouth. “You’re going to make it weird if you keep looking at me like that.”
“Too late,” he replied. “Way past weird.”
Aleksy huffed a quiet breath from where he sat on the edge of the bed, his gaze just as fixed, just as steady. “He’s not wrong.”
“And if it’s weird,” she continued. “Then we simply cannot walk around the room naked anymore.”
“No!” Both he and Aleksy denied quickly, making their mate laugh out loud.
“We definitely need to implement a rule,” Jarek said as he moved forward, slowly moving Tamsin toward the bed. “Any time we are in this room, we are naked. All those in favor?”
Aleksy raised his hand quickly. Tamsin laughed again as she raised her hand too.
“Looks like the ayes have it,” Jarek said with a laugh.
Tamsin shook her head, but there was no resistance in it. No deflection. Not anymore.
Not after tonight.
She stood before them in all her naked glory, her gaze drifting over the two of them, slow, deliberate, her eyes moving between the two of them like she was taking them in again.
Choosing. And she was choosing them.
That hit Jarek harder than anything else ever had. Because this—this wasn’t fate. This was her. She reached for Aleksy first.
Her hand caught at the back of his neck, pulling him down into a kiss that wasn’t rushed, wasn’t heated for the sake of it.
Jarek felt it settle in his chest as Aleksy rolled with her, pulling her onto him, her body straddling his as the heat rose between them, fast, immediate, familiar now.
He moved onto the bed and shuffled in behind her, one hand settling at her hip, the other sliding up her side, reacquainting himself with the feel of her like he needed to make sure she was still there.
Still real. Because he kinda did. She reached back without looking. Found him already hard and waiting.
And then—she guided him.
Jarek stilled.
“Are you sure, sweetness?” he asked, his voice lower now, steadier than the surge of everything inside him.
Her breath broke, her head tipping back slightly as she met his gaze over her shoulder.
“More than,” she said. “I want you both.”
That did it.
Every doubt.
Every restraint.
Gone.
“And it is our job,” Jarek murmured, his mouth brushing her shoulder, “to give you exactly what you want.”
He didn’t rush and didn’t just take.