CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Dax
The world feels stitched together wrong.
Every sound is muffled. Every shadow too sharp. Every breath burns like I’m inhaling glass.
I drift in and out.
White walls. Canvas shadows. The faint hum of machines that keep reminding me I’m not buried yet.
And her.
Always her.
Cassandra’s face swims in and out of focus like she’s caught between dream and reality. Sometimes she’s crying. Sometimes she’s yelling. Sometimes she’s just there, holding my hand like it’s the only thing anchoring me to the earth.
I don’t know what’s real.
The blast still echoes in my skull—sand in my teeth, blood in my mouth, Torres screaming at me to breathe but then I blink, and it’s just her voice.
Soft. Fierce. Breaking open.
I turn my head, slow as death, and she’s there. Close enough I can smell her—antiseptic, sweat, and something that’s still her beneath it all.
“Still here,” she whispers, her fingers squeezing mine. “Still fighting.”
I want to answer. My throat won’t cooperate. The tubes choke the words back down but my eyes find hers and God—those eyes. They undo me. They’re the only thing that’s real in this blur.
She leans closer, like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go. “You don’t get to leave me, Dax. Not again. Not ever.”
The words hit like a round straight through my chest, sharper than any shrapnel.
My lips part. The sound’s broken, raw, barely air.
But I force it out anyway.
“…Butterfly.”
Her breath catches, and she’s shaking her head, whispering like she’s bargaining with God. “Don’t you dare stop saying it.”
I don’t know if I can. My body’s wrecked. Fragile. Every heartbeat feels borrowed but as long as she’s here—I will because I’d rather choke on her name than breathe without it.
Her hand is the only steady thing I’ve got.
Warm. Trembling. Real.
Everything else—blur.
The tent hums. Monitors beep. Diesel burns through the canvas walls. Men cough in beds two rows down. Someone’s screaming for morphine in the far corner. The war doesn’t stop just because I’m flat on my back.
And it’s creeping in.
Already.
The flap of the med tent whips open. Boots pound. Voices sharp, urgent. I try to turn my head, but it’s too heavy. I catch fragments.
“Convoy hit—”
“—three down—”
“—need more hands—”
Cass stiffens beside me. I feel it in the way her fingers twitch against mine. The medic in her wants to move. The woman in her doesn’t. She leans over me, her face tight, eyes flicking to the chaos at the door, then back to me.
“Stay,” I rasp, or maybe I only think it. My voice is shredded glass, but her eyes snap to mine anyway.
“I have to—” she starts, but I squeeze her hand. Weak, but enough. My ribs scream from the effort.
“No.”
It tears out of me, low, guttural.
The monitors jump because I know what it means when she walks out there. It means bullets before breakfast. It means she patches bodies that won’t make it back. It means one of these days she won’t either.
I can’t lose her to the same teeth that chewed me up but the war doesn’t care.
It keeps pressing in.
Voices closer now.
“—need plasma now!”
“—get Cass—”
“—she’s the only one trained for—”
Her name. My chest seizes at it because they’re right.
She’s the only one.
Her eyes flick to the door. Then to me. Torn in half.
“Dax—”
I shake my head, small, jerking. My throat burns. “Don’t.”
She bends low, her forehead brushing mine. I can feel her breath, hot and frantic. “They need me.”
“I need you.”
The words scrape raw out of me. Fragile. Pathetic. True.
For a second, she breaks. Her shoulders shake, her lips press to my temple like she’s trying to fuse me together with the shape of her mouth and then the tent erupts again.
A body dragged past, blood smearing the floor.
A man coughing up pieces of his lungs two cots away. A medic barking her name again.
“Cass!”
The war has already reached in here and it won’t let her stay.
I can feel it.
The desert. The blast. The ghosts. They’re coming for me all over again and this time, they want her too.
I can’t move.
That’s the worst part.
I’m strapped to the cot by tubes, lines, pain. I’ve dragged men through fire with less blood left in me than I’ve got now, but I can’t even sit up. Can’t grab her wrist. Can’t pull her back down into me where she belongs.
So I watch.
Her hand slips from mine. Slow. Like she’s scared I’ll shatter if she lets go too fast. And maybe I will. My fingers twitch uselessly at empty air, trying to catch what’s already gone.
The flap opens, and she’s swallowed. Boots, noise, blood. Her name ripped out of the chaos like a command.
Cass.
The sound echoes in my skull until it’s not her name anymore, it’s mine.
Dax, Dax, Dax—but no one’s calling me. No one’s keeping me here.
The war creeps in fast.
Cots groan. Men howl. The smell of iron and diesel eats the air. I blink, and I swear I’m back on the road, dust in my teeth, bodies twisted in the crater.
No. No.
I dig my nails into the thin mattress. The monitor ticks too loud beside me, matching my heartbeat, frantic, screaming. My chest feels split open. Every beep is a countdown.
“Cass…”
It slips out of me, hoarse, small. A plea, not a call.
But she’s gone.
All I’ve got is the shadow of her mouth on my temple and the memory of her hand burning mine.
The war presses closer.
A man gasps his last three beds down. Someone else coughs blood into a pan. I smell it—raw, hot, metallic—too close to what poured out of me in the sand.
And I can’t block it out.
I can’t stop it.
My mind starts dragging me under. Back to the blast. Back to Mason’s silence. Back to Torres dragging me by the vest while I left a trail of red.
My lips move without sound. Mantras. Names. Hers.
Butterfly. Butterfly. Butterfly.
It’s all I’ve got.
The word that keeps the teeth from closing.
The word that stitches me to the here, even when the war’s prying me apart.
I’m trapped.
Pinned between the ghosts and the beeping machine and the only thing I can do is whisper her name and pray she comes back before I drown in it.
The war fades.
One blink and the tent dissolves—the groans, the blood, the sting of antiseptic. The beeping monitor cuts out like someone yanked the cord, and all that’s left is heat, darkness, and her.
Cass.
She’s standing over me, hair loose, lips swollen like I’ve just kissed her raw. She leans down, her breath brushing my mouth, and my body jerks like it remembers before my mind does.
“Miss me?”
Her voice is silk and razor wire, the one I dream about, the one I’d bleed twice for.
I reach for her—my hand doesn’t shake now, doesn’t fail me. My fingers fist in her shirt, dragging her down. Her body collides with mine, and she’s warm, too warm, straddling my hips like she was made for it.
“You left me,” she whispers, but her eyes burn like she’s daring me to do it again.
“Never again.”
My voice is gravel, but the words are clear. “I’ll chain you to me if I have to.”
Her laugh is soft, broken, sinful. She shifts her hips, presses herself down, and fuck—heat sears through me, sharper than any wound. My cock throbs, alive, desperate, like it’s been waiting just for this.
“You’re hard,” she breathes, and her fingers trail down my stomach, slow, taunting. “Even now. Even bleeding out.”
I groan, head slamming back. “Always for you, Butterfly.”
Her lips crash to mine, savage, wet, claiming. I taste salt, smoke, her tears, her tongue. I bite, she moans, grinding harder, dragging me deeper into the fire I can’t crawl out of.
“I hate you,” she whispers against my mouth.
“Then ride me while you do,” I growl, hands gripping her hips, forcing her down, harder, faster. “Make me pay for it.”
She gasps, head tipping back, throat bared. My mouth finds it instantly, sucking, biting, branding her with every mark. Her nails rake my chest, my stomach, down to my cock—her hand wraps around me, squeezing, stroking, perfect, holy.
I’m gone.
Fucking gone.
“You’ll never leave me again,” I snarl, thrusting up into her hand, my voice wrecked. “Say it.”
She shudders, hips rolling, hair wild around her face. “Never,” she cries, the word breaking. “Never again.”
The tent flickers back—beeping, shouting, blood. But her mouth is still on mine. Her cunt is still squeezing me. Her voice is still screaming my name.
And I don’t know if I’m alive or dead, dreaming or burning.
All I know is her.
My Butterfly.
Her body is fire on top of me.
She’s grinding down like she’s trying to tear the soul out of me, and maybe she is—maybe that’s what I deserve. Her nails dig into my chest, sharp enough to draw blood, and I buck up hard, forcing her cunt to take every inch.
“God, Dax—” her voice splits on my name, half sob, half moan, the sweetest fucking hymn I’ve ever heard.
“You feel that?” My hand fists in her hair, yanking her head back so she can’t look anywhere but me. “That’s me inside you. Owning you. Burning you alive.”
She gasps, legs shaking, but her hips don’t stop. She rides me harder, faster, like she’s starving. Like she’s punishing.
“I hate you,” she pants again, tears sliding hot down her cheeks.
My teeth catch her throat, biting until she cries out. “Then hate me while you cum all over my cock.”
Her walls squeeze, flutter, pulse—my vision whites out, my breath a snarl. I slam my hips up, deeper, harder, pounding into her until the air crackles. Until I can’t tell if it’s her screaming or me.
“Say it,” I snarl against her ear, every thrust brutal. “Say you’re mine. Say this pussy is mine.”
She’s trembling, sobbing, begging without words. My fingers find her clit, rubbing rough, merciless, dragging her closer. “Say it or I’ll keep you here forever.”
Her nails carve into my shoulders. Her head snaps back. And finally—finally—she breaks.
“It’s yours!” she screams. “Fuck, Dax—it’s only yours!”
Her release crashes through her, violent, shaking, soaking me. And I go with her, roaring into her mouth as I spill inside, grinding so deep she can’t breathe without me.