Chapter 15
Luke
Light hits us instantly, stealing my sight for a second. My eyes water, adjusting too slowly to immediately see what’s in front of me. I shield my face with one arm, blood dripping from my torn palm, and reach for Ember with the other. Pull her behind me on pure instinct.
My vision clears in seconds. Dragon heritage compensating for the assault despite the suppression killing my power.
Fuck.
Syndicate operatives. Eight soldiers minimum, arranged in a perfect semicircle. Full combat gear: body armor, assault weapons, energy dampeners strapped to their thighs. Our only way out of here is blocked by the operatives.
Professional. Efficient. They know exactly what they’re doing.
Were they waiting for us here all along?
From behind them, a commander steps forward. Mid-forties, maybe. Graying at the temples. Confident posture: weight balanced, hands relaxed at his sides, no weapon drawn. The kind of confidence that comes from having overwhelming force at your back.
“Two days we’ve been tracking your heat signatures.” His voice carries across the cave floor without him raising it. Practiced authority. “Every cave-in, every desperate scramble.” A smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Did you really think you could outrun us in our own mountains?”
My hand moves toward my sidearm. Muscle memory. Instinctive response to threat.
Three operatives shift aim instantly: center mass, professional spacing, fingers on triggers. They’ve done this before. They know how fast dragons move even without the shift.
The commander raises one hand. Casual. “Don’t. You’re exhausted, weak, and outnumbered. Be smart.”
My eyes cut back to Ember.
She’s frozen. Face pale in the harsh lights, eyes wide with the kind of fear that comes from recognizing you’ve walked into something you can’t fight your way out of. Her breathing comes too fast; shock setting in, cortisol crash hitting after hours of sustained terror.
I can smell her fear. Sharp and acrid beneath the stone dust coating both of us.
The decision crystallizes.
Get her out. Create an opening. Give her a chance to run.
I already lost Mara. I’m not losing Ember, too.
The thought still has guilt twisting in my gut. Mara died because I had to make a call. Because I knew that I couldn’t save them both, and Ember was the obvious choice.
Was she?
Of course she was, dammit.
If I could’ve gotten both women out of that flaming helicopter, I would have done it. Or died trying. Mara was unconscious, trapped in that twisted metal, and I had microseconds to make a decision.
I did the right thing.
And I’ll do the right thing again now.
The commander gestures. “Restrain them both. Command wants them for interrogation.”
Two soldiers move toward us. Flanking approach: one from each side, weapons lowered but ready. One reaches for Ember’s arm.
I explode into motion.
Not at the commander. Not at the leader of this threat. Straight at the soldiers closing on her.
Training takes over. Centuries of combat experience overriding exhaustion and blood loss and the rational voice screaming that this is suicide.
I tackle the nearest operative. We hit the cavern wall hard enough that I feel something crack; his ribs or mine, doesn’t matter. I grab his weapon. Twist it free with strength I shouldn’t have left. Fire twice.
The first shot drops one soldier. The second forces three others into cover.
Chaos erupts.
Shouts. Energy discharge from tasers sparking blue-white off stone. The smell of ozone and burned air.
I create space between Ember and our attackers. Fighting with everything I have left. Close-quarters knife work. The kind I learned in alleyways across six continents before guns made distance killing easy.
My body is failing. Hip screams where something pulls wrong. Vision tunnels at the edges, blood loss catching up. Breath comes ragged, each inhale not quite filling my lungs. Without dragon strength, I’m just human. Fast. Trained. But human.
A bullet tears through my shoulder.
The vest deflects most of the impact, but not all. Heat blooms across my upper chest, shocking in its intensity. Then wet warmth spreading down to my ribs. Blood, fast and profuse, soaking through fabric. The slug clipped a vein. Hopefully not an artery.
Shit.
Without dragon healing, this could kill me.
I keep moving anyway.
Three soldiers converge. I take the first one down with a strike to the throat; brutal, efficient. The second catches me with a hit to my wounded shoulder.
White explosion of pain. I stagger.
While I fight, two operatives flank Ember from the other side. Moving while I’m distracted. Professional teamwork.
One grabs her wrist.
She jerks back, terrified. The second operative moves to restrain her from behind.
I can’t reach her. Too far. Too many bodies between us.
Ember screams.
Raw. Primal. The sound of someone who’s never been hunted before, facing the moment they become prey.
Fire erupts from her hands.
Not controlled flame. Not the careful magic I’ve seen her practice at the Aurora facilities. A wild burst of gold-white heat that fills the cave with light and the smell of burning.
What the hell?
When did her powers return?
The operative holding her wrist releases with a shout. Stumbles back, clutching his hand. The flame dies as quickly as it came, guttering out.
Ember stands there gasping. Shocked. Looking at her own hands like they belong to someone else.
The chamber goes silent.
Three heartbeats where no one moves. Where everyone processes what just happened.
Then the commander’s eyes sharpen.
I see it happen. See the moment his assessment changes. See recognition dawn. Not just surprise but interest. The kind of interest that makes my stomach drop.
He steps closer to Ember. Studying her with the focus of someone who has just found something valuable they didn’t expect.
“Well.” His voice carries new weight. “That changes things.”
To his squad: “Suppression-cuffs. Now. We have a live witch.”
No!
The word screams through my head, but doesn’t make it to my mouth. Because I’m already moving again, fighting through the soldiers between us, trying to reach her before they—
But I see it happen.
See the shift in their focus. See how every operative’s attention locks on her instead of me. See the greed in the commander’s expression as he realizes what she is.
They wanted me for interrogation. Standard procedure for captured operatives.
But they need her.
For research. For testing. For whatever the fuck Syndicate does with supernatural assets they can’t explain.
I made this worse.
If I’d stayed down—if I’d let them take us without a fight—they might never have known. Might have processed her as a routine capture.
But I forced her hand. Made her panic. Made her reach for power she couldn’t control.
And now they know.
What have I done?
I try to fight my way toward her. Get two steps before multiple soldiers tackle me.
I go down hard. Three, maybe four bodies pinning me to the ground. Weight crushing my wounded shoulder, fresh blood hot against my chest.
Energy restraints snap around my wrists. That distinctive hum of suppression tech; dragon-forged alloy wrapped in dampening fields. It kills what little strength I have left.
I keep fighting anyway.
Twisting. Snarling. Blood on my teeth from a fist I took to my cheek that tore through flesh. Trying to throw them off through pure fury because strategy stopped working the moment they touched her.
Across the cave, an operative clamps silver-infused cuffs around Ember’s wrists.
The dull blue light ignites immediately. I watch it happen, see the faint shimmer of power around her hands die. See her face go pale as the dampening field cuts her off from whatever magic she just tapped into.
Magic that had been suppressed completely until moments ago.
She cries out. Not loud. Just a small sound of loss that guts me more than the bullet in my shoulder.
The commander’s voice, satisfied: “Excellent. Command will be very interested in this one.”
I roar.
The sound tears from my chest, animal and desperate. Not calculated. Pure rage at my own failure.
I surge against my restraints. Make it halfway to my feet through sheer determination before a shock-baton cracks across the base of my skull.
White explosion behind my eyes.
Sound cutting to muffled static, like being underwater, voices distorted and distant.
The world spins. Stone floor rushing up too fast.
“Luke!”
Ember’s voice. Distant. Distorted. But I’d know it anywhere.
My eyes find her across the cave. She’s struggling against the operatives holding her arms. Face terrified but still fighting; eyes fierce even with the cuffs killing whatever power she just accessed.
God, she’s brave.
The thought surfaces through the chaos in my head. Through the pain and the failure and the knowledge that I’ve condemned her to something worse than death.
She shouldn’t be here. Should be back at headquarters learning to control her power. Should be safe within Aurora’s walls instead of facing Syndicate research protocols that will tear her apart piece by piece.
My fault.
I try to speak. Try to tell her— What? That I’m sorry? That I’ll find her? That I’ll tear this mountain apart to get her back?
But my mouth won’t work. Tongue thick and clumsy. Words caught somewhere between brain and throat.
Her face is the last thing I see.
Terrified but still fighting. Eyes locked on mine like I’m the only solid thing in a world that won’t stop spinning.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
The thought echoes as darkness rushes in. As consciousness fractures into pieces I can’t hold together.
They know what you are now. And I made it happen.
My body goes limp between the operatives holding me down. Awareness sliding away.
The commander’s voice from somewhere far away: “We’ll transport them both. The witch goes to the research wing. The dragon can wait in holding.”
Ember screams my name again.
I can’t answer.
Can’t fight.
Can’t do anything except let the darkness take me while the knowledge of what I’ve done burns through my chest worse than any bullet wound.
I failed you.
I’m sorry.
I’m so—
Nothing.