Chapter 5
POV: Colt
The first shot cracked the front window of the main house before I finished telling Ember to stay behind me.
Glass exploded inward. I shoved her to the floor and dropped with her, covering her body with mine as the second and third rounds punched through the wall above our heads. Jax’s rifle answered from the side porch—short, controlled bursts. Someone out there screamed. Good.
“Stay down,” I growled against her hair.
She didn’t. Of course she didn’t. The second I rolled off her she was already moving, low and fast, toward the hallway closet where Dad used to keep the emergency piece. I heard the slide rack. When she came back she had the old Glock in both hands like she’d never put one down.
“Left side of the drive,” she said, voice steady. “Two more behind the feed truck.”
I didn’t ask how she knew. I just believed her.
We moved together like the seven years had never happened.
I took the front door. She took the broken window.
Jax laid down cover from the porch. The night lit up in muzzle flashes and the sharp stink of gunpowder.
One Blackthorn scout tried to flank us through the horse paddock.
Ember dropped him with a clean shot to the thigh before he cleared the fence.
He went down screaming. I finished the one who made it to the porch steps. Close range. No time for neat.
When the last engine finally peeled out toward the county road, the sudden quiet felt louder than the gunfire.
Jax came inside first, rifle still up, blood running from a graze on his upper arm. “Three down. Two ran. They’ll be back with more.”
I nodded once and turned to Ember. She stood in the middle of the wrecked living room, gun still raised, chest rising and falling hard.
A fresh streak of blood cut across her cheek—someone else’s or hers, I couldn’t tell.
The bandage on her temple had come loose.
The Blackthorn ring still sat on her finger like a brand I wanted to cut off.
“You’re hit?” I asked.
“Not mine.” She lowered the Glock slowly. “You?”
“Fine.”
I wasn’t fine. My blood was still singing with the kind of protective rage that made rational thought optional. She was bleeding again. On my land. Because of men who thought they could take what was mine.
Jax cleared his throat. “I’ll check the perimeter. Call the boys in from the south pasture.” He looked between us, read the room, and left without another word.
The kitchen was darker. Only the under-cabinet lights still worked. Ember set the gun on the counter and reached for a dish towel to press against her cheek. I crossed the space in three strides, took the towel out of her hand, and tilted her face up to the light myself.
“Hold still.”
She did. Barely. Her pulse hammered under my fingers where I cupped her jaw.
Up close the bruises looked worse—purple blooming along her cheekbone, the rope burns on her wrists raw and angry.
I cleaned the blood as gently as I could.
My hands still shook. Not from the fight.
From her. From the scent of her skin under the gunpowder and fear—same soap, same heat, same everything that used to short-circuit my brain when we were kids and too stupid to know better.
“You can shoot,” I said. Not a question.
“You taught me.” Her voice was quiet. Defensive. “Some things stick.”
I tossed the towel aside. The counter was at her back. I stepped in until there was nowhere left for her to go. Her breath hitched. Mine did too. Seven years of silence and unanswered texts and whiskey-soaked birthdays collapsed into the two inches of air still left between us.
“Seven years of silence,” I said, low, “and you still taste like mine.”
I didn’t plan the almost-kiss. My mouth was just suddenly there, hovering over hers, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath.
She made a soft sound—half protest, half something hungrier—and shoved at my chest.
Her hands stayed there after the shove, fists curled in my shirt, not pushing anymore. Just holding on.
I crowded closer anyway. Let her feel exactly how hard I was, how little control I had left.
My hands braced on the counter on either side of her hips, caging her in.
The bruises on her wrists brushed my stomach every time she breathed.
My body remembered every curve, every soft place, every way she used to fit against me like she was built for it.
“Colt—”
“The files.” I cut her off. Voice rough. “All of them. Everything you’ve been sitting on for seven years. I want it. Now.”
She shook her head. The movement dragged her mouth across mine for half a second—barely a touch, but it lit every nerve I had left.
“Not yet. Not until I know who’s pulling the strings. The engagement, the barn, the men tonight—they’re all connected. If I hand you everything too early, the wrong people die and the right one walks.”
“I don’t care about the right one.” My forehead dropped to hers.
I was shaking again. Rage and hunger and the bone-deep terror of almost losing her twice in one night.
“I care about you bleeding on my kitchen floor. I care about a Blackthorn ring on your hand. I care about the fact that I just killed men on my own land because someone decided you were leverage.”
Her fingers flexed in my shirt. She still hadn’t let go. “You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to wake up tied to a beam with that ring forced on me?”
“I think you spent seven years deciding for both of us.” I pulled back just enough to see her eyes. “No more. You don’t get to protect me from a distance anymore. You’re here. You’re mine. And you’re going to tell me every damn thing before the next wave shows up.”
She opened her mouth—to argue, to refuse, to throw another sharp truth at me like a blade—but the world chose that second to explode.
The blast came from the east side of the property.
A deep, bone-rattling boom that blew the remaining kitchen windows inward and knocked both of us sideways.
I wrapped myself around her on instinct, turning so my back took the flying glass.
The under-cabinet lights flickered and died.
Alarms started screaming from the barn cameras.
Somewhere out in the dark, fire bloomed orange against the night sky.
The east barn. Hay. Equipment. Everything we needed to keep the ranch running through winter.
Jax’s voice came through the radio on the counter, already moving. “East barn’s gone. Multiple vehicles inbound from the county road. This isn’t a scouting party anymore.”
I looked down at Ember. Glass glittered in her hair. A new cut had opened along her collarbone. Her hands were still fisted in my shirt like she couldn’t make herself let go.
The war had officially started on Voss land.
And the only thing I could think—clearer than the fire, clearer than the incoming engines—was that I still hadn’t kissed her