23. Esmerelda
ESMERELDA
The headset weighs almost nothing, but it feels like armor.
I adjust the fit over my ears, testing the microphone, listening to the soft static that connects me to the teams moving toward their targets.
Dawn light filters through the command center's windows, painting everything in shades of gray and gold.
The room is alive with tension, with the weight of what's about to happen.
Around me, screens flicker with tactical feeds, maps marked with team positions, the digital heartbeat of a war that's about to reach its climax.
Kira sits at the main console, her fingers flying across keyboards, coordinating all three teams with the kind of calm efficiency that comes from years of operating alongside Barrett.
Her expression is focused, professional, but I can see the tension in her shoulders.
Barrett is out there. The man she loves is walking into battle, and all she can do is guide him from here.
I understand that feeling now. I understand it completely.
June is beside her, managing logistics and supply coordination, her dark hair pulled back, her expression focused.
She belongs here more than she'll admit, moving through the chaos like someone who's done this before.
Every now and then her eyes cut to a specific screen, the one tracking Team Alpha's position, and I wonder what history she's hiding.
What brought her to this moment, watching men she barely knows fight a war she shouldn't be part of.
"Team Alpha, report status," Kira says into her headset.
"In position. Two minutes to breach." Barrett's voice, steady and commanding.
Which means Stellan is right beside him, waiting to be unleashed. Waiting to become the weapon that will break enemy lines and clear the path for his brothers.
I close my eyes and take a breath. This is what I signed up for. This is why I volunteered. I'm not just waiting anymore, not just sitting here feeling useless while the people I love fight for their lives. I'm his anchor, his voice in the dark, the thread that leads him home.
"Team Beta, status report."
"Moving to secondary entrance. No resistance yet. On schedule."
"Team Gamma, confirm position?"
"Support positions established. Clear sight lines. Standing by for extraction protocol."
Kira glances at me across the command center, her expression steady despite the tension radiating through the room. "You ready for this?"
"Ready." My voice comes out stronger than I feel, steadier than the hammering of my heart would suggest.
"When he releases, he'll still have his earpiece. He might not be able to respond, but he can hear you. Keep talking. Keep calling him back." She pauses, and something softens in her expression. "You're the only one who can, Esme. You're his anchor. He's counting on you."
I nod, the weight of that responsibility settling over me. It should be crushing, but somehow it's grounding instead. This is my purpose. This is where I belong. Not as a fixer, not as a problem solver, but as the voice that calls him home.
The next few minutes stretch into eternity. Static crackles. Voices exchange coded confirmations. And then Barrett's voice cuts through, sharp and commanding.
"Team Alpha, breach. GO."
The sounds that follow are chaos. Explosions. Gunfire. The roar of combat erupting through my headset. I grip the edge of the console, forcing myself to breathe, forcing myself to listen for the voices beneath the violence.
"Heavy resistance at the main gate," someone reports, their voice clipped and professional despite the chaos erupting around them.
"Pushing through." The response is terse, focused.
"Contact left. Multiple hostiles closing fast."
"Engaging now."
And then, different from the others—calmer, more clinical—a voice I don't recognize cuts through the tactical chatter: "The berserker is moving forward. He's—" A pause, heavy with implication, weighted with unspoken meaning. "He's releasing."
My heart stops completely. Then starts again, pounding so hard I can feel each beat hammering in my throat, threatening to choke me.
"Stellan." I press the transmit button with trembling fingers, sending my voice directly to his earpiece, praying he can still hear me through the red haze descending over him. "I'm here. I'm right here with you."
The sounds on his channel change. Less gunfire, more impact. The wet sounds of violence that I try not to imagine too clearly. He's in the red now, I know. Lost in the rage, a passenger in his own body while the beast does what it was born to do.
"Come back to me." I keep my voice steady, the way he needs it. "Remember what you're fighting for. Remember who's waiting."
Silence from his channel. Just the sounds of destruction, of the berserker cutting through enemy lines like a force of nature.
"I love you," I say, and I don't care that everyone in the command center can hear me. "I'm here, and I love you, and you're coming home to me. Do you hear me, Stellan? You're coming home."
More agonizing silence stretches between transmissions, punctuated only by the brutal sounds of violence continuing through the audio feed. The wet impact of flesh meeting bone, the splintering crack of breaking metal, the heavy thud of bodies hitting ground.
Then, rough as gravel scraping over stone and barely recognizable as human, his voice cuts through the carnage: "I hear you."
My breath catches painfully in my chest, sharp and sudden. Tears prick hot at the corners of my eyes, blurring the monitors in front of me, but I blink them back fiercely, refusing to let them fall. Not now. Not when he needs me steady. "Stay with me."
"Always." The word is guttural, dragged up from somewhere deep and primal, forced out through layers of rage and blood-fury, but it's distinctly him. He's still there, still present beneath the beast. Still holding onto that fragile thread connecting us.
"Alpha team advancing," Barrett's voice cuts across the channel with sharp military precision. "The breach is open. Pushing into the main compound now."
"Beta team in position," another voice confirms, crisp and efficient. "Secondary entrance secured and holding."
The battle continues, reported in fragments through the headsets.
I keep one hand on the transmit button, ready to call out to Stellan whenever I hear his channel go quiet.
But the worst seems to be passing. The berserker did what it needed to do, and somewhere in the chaos, he's still listening for my voice.
"Kira." June's voice cuts through, tense with something more than battle focus. "I'm picking up something on Kieran's channel. Can you boost the feed?"
Kira adjusts something on her console, and suddenly Kieran's voice fills the room, harsh with fury.
"—fifteen years since you killed her, and you still think you can justify it?—"
Another voice, one I don't recognize but instinctively recoil from. Deeper. Colder. Filled with a hatred that seems to seep through the speakers.
"She made her choice, Cole. She chose THEM over her own kind. A human carrying half-breed spawn? She was a traitor to everything our people should be."
"Her name was MIRA." Kieran's voice cracks with rage, with grief, with fifteen years of pain he's never let anyone see. "She was my WIFE. She was carrying my CHILD."
"And now they're gone. As all race traitors should be."
The sounds that follow are brutal. Fighting, not with weapons but with fists and tusks and the kind of violence that comes from personal hatred. I watch June's face as she listens, watch the color drain from her skin, watch her hands begin to shake.
"June?" I reach for her shoulder, trying to ground her, but she doesn't seem to register my touch, doesn't even acknowledge my presence.
"They're still fighting," she says, her voice dropping to something barely above a whisper, hollow and distant. "He's going to get himself killed out there."
"He knows what he's doing," I say, trying to inject confidence I don't entirely feel into the words.
"Does he?" She finally tears her gaze from the console to meet my eyes directly, and I see something there I've never witnessed in June Novak before—not in all our missions together, not in all the close calls.
Fear. Real, raw, completely unguarded fear that strips away every careful layer she usually maintains.
"When you've waited fifteen years for revenge, when it's consumed every waking thought, you stop thinking clearly.
You stop weighing the risks. You stop caring whether you survive to see tomorrow. "
Before I can formulate any kind of response, before I can even process what her words might mean, Kira's voice slices through the tension like a blade. "Kieran's down. I repeat, Kieran is down."
The entire command center goes completely, utterly silent.
"He's alive," Barrett's voice follows, strained but clear. "Injured but alive. Dragan retreated. We couldn't—" A burst of static. "We couldn't catch him. He's gone."
June makes a sound that might be relief or might be something else entirely. Her hands are still shaking as she turns back to her console, her expression carefully blank. But I saw the truth before she could hide it. Whatever June Novak is hiding, it involves Kieran Cole.
"Victory confirmed," Kira announces, her voice maintaining its professional edge despite the thick tension that fills every corner of the room. "Bloodtusk stronghold is officially ours. All teams are in the process of securing the perimeter and clearing the remaining structures."
I should feel relief flooding through me, washing away the anxiety that's been coiled tight in my chest. We won. Against the odds, we actually won. The war that's been grinding us down is finally turning in our favor, shifting the balance of power.