Chapter 11 #2
"I'm a journalist with a documented history of legitimate reporting.
My credibility adds weight to any claims we make.
Kane, Mercer, Stryker, everyone at Echo Base who's been targeted by Protocol Seven.
We present a united front. Khalid's testimony opens the door, creates the emotional investment, and then we back it up with our own accounts and the documentary evidence. "
The room is silent. Dylan stares at me with an expression I can't quite read.
"She's right," Mercer says finally. "Multiple witnesses are harder to discredit than one. Especially when they include a former Committee operative willing to testify against his own people."
"Congressional interest would be immediate," Kane adds. "A refugee child, a decorated operator turned whistleblower, a journalist, and an entire team of burned special forces operatives? That story doesn't die quietly."
"And my reporting keeps the pressure on after the initial testimony," I add. "Ongoing coverage. Follow-up stories. We don't let them bury this with one news cycle."
Dylan's hand tightens on my knee. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than before. "You're asking all of us to expose ourselves. To become targets."
"We're already targets," Stryker says from his chair. "Might as well make it count for something."
The conversation continues as they work through details and logistics and contingency plans, but my attention keeps drifting to Khalid.
He hasn't spoken since we arrived. Just sits by the fire with his hands folded, listening to adults debate whether to put him in front of the world and ask him to bleed his trauma for public consumption.
It isn't right. None of this is right.
But maybe that's exactly the point. The Committee has been operating in shadows for years precisely because no one was willing to step into the light and demand accountability. Someone has to go first. Someone has to be brave enough to tell the truth regardless of the cost.
The meeting winds down without a final decision. Kane declares a rest period, arguing that they all need sleep before they can plan effectively. Willa checks Dylan's wound again and threatens dire consequences if he doesn't stay horizontal for at least six hours.
Back in the bedroom, I help Dylan lower himself onto the mattress. He's grayer than before, the exertion having cost him more than he wants to admit. But when I move to sit on the chair, his hand catches my wrist.
"Stay."
The word is simple, but the weight behind it isn't. I hesitate for only a moment before carefully settling onto the bed beside him, mindful of his injured side.
"I'm not going anywhere," I tell him.
"I know." His hand finds mine in the dim light. "That's what scares me."
"Dylan—"
"Everyone I care about ends up dead." The words come out raw, stripped of the careful control he usually maintains. "Lisa. Maya. Every member of my team who trusted me to keep them safe. The Committee doesn't just kill their targets, Reagan. They destroy everything and everyone connected to them."
"I'm not Lisa." I shift closer, careful not to jostle his wound. "I walked into this with my eyes open. I knew the risks."
"Did you? Did you know that loving me might be a death sentence?"
The word hangs between us. Loving. Neither of us has said it before, not directly, and hearing it now, in this context, makes my chest ache.
"I'm not going to pretend I'm not terrified," I admit. "But I'm more terrified of walking away. Of spending the rest of my life wondering what we could have been if I'd been brave enough to stay."
His hand tightens on mine. "This isn't bravery. It's insanity."
"Maybe." I lean in, pressing my forehead against his temple. "But it's my insanity to choose."
He turns his head, and his lips find mine. The kiss is softer than the ones we've shared before, tinged with exhaustion and injury and something deeper. When we break apart, his eyes search my face with an intensity that makes my breath catch.
"I can't do this the way I usually do." His voice is rough. "Can't take control. Can't—"
"Then don't." I brush my fingers along his jaw, feeling the stubble rasp against my skin. "Let me."
His breath stutters. "Reagan—"
"Trust me."
The tension in his shoulders eases. The hard line of his jaw softens.
The constant vigilance that defines him, the need to protect and control and manage every variable, loosens its grip just enough for me to see the man underneath.
The one who's been carrying guilt and grief and responsibility for so long that he's forgotten what it feels like to let someone else share the load.
I kiss him again, slower this time. My hands trace the lines of his face, his neck, careful to avoid the bandaged wound at his side. He makes a sound against my mouth that I feel more than hear, and his fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt like he's afraid I'll disappear if he lets go.
"Tell me if I hurt you," I whisper against his lips.
"You won't."
I take my time undressing him, working around the bandage, peeling away his shirt to reveal the hard planes of his chest. My fingers trace over old scars and new bruises, mapping the evidence of everything he's survived.
When I press my lips to the skin just above his heart, I feel his pulse jump beneath my mouth.
"Reagan." His voice is strained, rough with want.
I pull back just enough to strip off my own shirt, then my bra. His eyes darken as they travel over me, and when his hands come up to cup my breasts, the calluses on his palms rasp against my nipples in a way that makes me shiver.
"I need to see all of you," he says.
I stand long enough to shed the rest of my clothes, watching his face as I reveal myself to him. The hunger in his expression makes heat pool between my thighs. When I reach for his waistband, his hips lift to help me drag his pants down, and then he's bare beneath me, hard and ready.
I straddle his thighs, careful to keep my weight off his injured side, and his palms slide up to grip my hips immediately. The head of his cock presses against my slick folds, and we both groan at the contact.
"I want to taste you," he rasps. "Want my mouth on you."
"Next time." I wrap my hand around his length, stroking slowly, watching his jaw clench with the effort of holding still. "Right now I need you inside me."
I position him at my entrance and sink down slowly, inch by inch, savoring the stretch as he fills me. His fingers dig into my hips hard enough to bruise, and the sound he makes is somewhere between a groan and a prayer.
"God, Reagan. You're so wet. So tight."
I plant my hands on his chest for leverage and start to move, rolling my hips in a slow, deliberate rhythm. Every thrust sends sparks of pleasure radiating through me, and I watch his face as I ride him, drinking in every expression of desperate want.
"Faster," he demands, his voice wrecked.
I obey, rising and falling with increasing urgency. The wet sound of our bodies coming together fills the room, punctuated by gasps and moans neither of us tries to suppress. His hands roam my body restlessly, squeezing my breasts, gripping my ass, pulling me down harder onto his cock.
"Touch yourself," he orders. "I want to feel you come around me."
I slide one hand between us, fingers finding my clit, and the added sensation makes me cry out. The orgasm builds with every thrust, coiling tighter and tighter until I'm balanced on the edge of release.
"That's it," Dylan breathes, watching me work myself closer. "Let me see you fall apart."
His hips buck up to meet mine despite the wound, driving deeper, and I shatter. The orgasm tears through me in waves, and I clench around him so hard that he follows me over the edge moments later, spilling inside me with a groan that sounds like it was ripped from somewhere deep in his chest.
I collapse against his uninjured side, both of us breathing hard. His arm wraps around me with a possessiveness that makes my heart ache. His heartbeat is steady under my ear, slowing as exhaustion pulls him toward sleep.
"This is more than I expected," he murmurs. "More than I thought I could have again."
"Good." I press a kiss to his chest. "You deserve more."
He's quiet for a moment. Then: "If Khalid wants to testify, I won't stop him."
"I know."
"But I'll be right there beside him. Every step. Every question. He won't face it alone."
"None of us will."
His arm tightens around me, and I feel the moment when sleep finally claims him, the tension draining from his body as unconsciousness pulls him under.
I stay awake longer, listening to the quiet sounds of the lodge around us. Footsteps in the hallway as someone keeps watch. The crackle of the fire in the main room. The wind against the windows.
And something else. A soft knock at the door.
I slip out of bed carefully, pulling on enough clothes to be decent, and crack the door open.
Khalid stands in the hallway, his young face serious in the low light.
"Khalid." I keep my voice low. "What is it?"
"I want to do it." His voice is quiet but steady. "The testimony. I want to tell them what happened."
"Khalid—"
"They killed my family." His voice doesn't waver, doesn't break, but his shoulders are rigid with the effort of holding himself together. "My mother. My father. My sisters. Everyone in my village. And no one knows their names. No one remembers they existed."
I open my mouth to respond, but he continues before I can speak.
"I want to say their names where people will hear." His dark eyes meet mine, and I see something in them that looks like determination hardened by grief. "I want the world to know what was done to them. And I want the men who ordered it to answer for it."
Behind me, I hear Dylan shift on the bed as he pulls his pants on. Feel his presence as he moves to stand beside me, one hand braced against the doorframe for support.
"Khalid," he begins, and I hear the protest forming in his voice.
But the boy just looks at him with eyes that have seen too much and says the words that change everything.
"You saved my life, Dylan." His voice is quiet but steady. "Let me do something with it."
Dylan doesn't answer. His grip tightens on the doorframe, knuckles going white, and I watch him struggle against every protective instinct he has.
But Khalid doesn't look away. Doesn't back down.
After a long moment, Dylan exhales slowly and steps aside to let him in.