10. Feral #2
Nikolai picks up the second kit. “I’ll translate.”
Liberty nods. “I need injury history, dehydration symptoms, possible drugging, and whether anyone has abdominal pain, fever, or head trauma.”
They leave with Cole, and the suite quiets around me in a way I don’t like. Jax stays near the door. Crew is posted in the hall. Jan is on the dining table with a bandage on her side and that stubborn look I know too well.
“You’re staying here,” I say.
“For tonight.”
“For the mission.”
“No.”
“Jan.”
“Steve. Look at me.”
I do, even though it costs.
Her face is pale, but her eyes are steady. “I’m fine. It’s shallow, Liberty confirmed it, and I’ll stay out of the field.”
“You’ll stay out of Greece.”
“Like hell I will.”
The words cut clean through the room.
I step closer, lowering my voice because if I don’t, it’ll turn into something ugly. “I saw blood on you.”
“I was there.”
“You were hit.”
“And I’m still here.”
“That doesn’t make it fine.”
“No,” she says. “It makes it survivable. We have a mission. Solace is still in their hands. Petrakis is still out there. Those women across the hall are alive because we didn’t run when it got dangerous.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you’re scared.”
My jaw locks.
“You’re allowed to be,” she says. “But you don’t get to bench me because you love me.”
I laugh once, rough and humorless. “That’s exactly why I get to bench you.”
“No. That’s why you want to.”
Jax suddenly becomes fascinated by the doorframe. Smart man.
I turn away before I say something I can’t take back, grab the satellite phone from the table, and call Victor.
He answers on the second ring. “Report.”
“Port surveillance turned into a shootout. Payment dispute between Petrakis and the smugglers. Three women extracted by Cole and Jax. Jan’s been hit.”
A pause.
“How bad?”
“Superficial,” Jan says loudly.
I close my eyes briefly. “Ricochet graze. Liberty patched her. She’s stable.”
“And Petrakis?”
“Winged. Alive.”
“Confirmed?”
“I saw him bleeding beside the sedan. He walked afterward.”
“Then he’ll tighten every route by morning.”
“Yes.”
“Extraction remains tomorrow at twenty-one hundred,” Victor says. “Waterfront traffic gives us the best noise cover and moving earlier risks daylight exposure.”
“Fine. Then the rules change.”
Jan watches me. So does Jax.
My voice comes out even, which is better than honest. “Petrakis is hostile. No assumptions. No soft contact. We add overwatch on every approach, double transport, double medical, and no one goes anywhere alone. If he appears near Solace or our route, we take him out of play.”
Victor doesn’t argue. “Agreed.”
“And no more waiting for perfect intelligence.”
“We were never waiting for perfect intelligence.”
“Then tomorrow ends this.”
Another pause. This one carries more than calculation.
“Steve,” Victor says, lower now, “can you command it?”
I look at Jan.
She holds my gaze. Bleeding. Furious. Alive.
“Yes,” I say.
“Then command it. Don’t chase rage. Use it.”
The line goes dead.
Jan reaches for my hand.
I let her take it.
“You’re not going into the field,” I say.
“I know.”
“You’re not running comms on painkillers.”
“I know.”
“You’re not leaving this hotel without me.”
Her thumb moves over my knuckles. “Fine. I won’t leave without you.”
Across the hall, a woman begins crying. Liberty’s voice follows, calm and firm, with Nikolai translating low beneath it.
Jan squeezes my hand. “Tomorrow at nine.”
I nod.
Tomorrow at nine, we go back into the dark.
This time, we’re finishing it.
Elysion Hotel, Holland’s Command Suite, Mytilene, Lesbos, Greece. 0100 hours
By the time the suite finally quiets, Jan is asleep.
Liberty checked her again before leaving, then gave me a look that said wake her if the bleeding changes and don’t wake her because you’re terrified. Army nurses communicate a lot with eyebrows.
Now the room is dim, the curtains drawn against the Mytilene night, the lamp beside the sofa turned low.
Across the hall, Crew and Jax are posted with the rescued women.
Liberty is with them too, checking injuries, asking careful questions, and letting Nikolai translate when words fail. Cole is guarding the stairwell.
Grayson has the floor cameras on a loop. Victor is working from San Francisco, where it’s still afternoon and he’s already making it everyone else’s problem.
And Jan is here.
Beside me.
Alive.
I sit in the chair near the bed, one hand wrapped around hers, watching the white bandage at her side lift and settle with each breath. Slow. Steady. Real.
She looks smaller asleep. I hate that. Jan is never small to me.
She’s force, fire, skill, and stubbornness wrapped in soft skin and impossible patience.
Seeing her quiet under hotel sheets with pain lines around her mouth does something to me I don’t have words for and don’t want to examine too closely.
My thumb moves over her knuckles.
She doesn’t wake.
I’m glad.
She needs rest more than she needs another argument.
The shirt I used to stop the bleeding is sealed in a biohazard bag beside Liberty’s kit. I can still feel it in my hands. Hot. Wet. Wrong. I’ve washed three times and still feel blood between my fingers.
I’ve been afraid before.
Sydney taught me fear. Amanda taught me what helplessness costs, because I’d already watched one woman I loved vanish into a nightmare I couldn’t stop. HAVEN has walked me into rooms where evil had names, addresses, and staff schedules.
None of it felt like seeing Jan’s hand come away red.
None of it.
The rage is easier. Rage gives me direction. Petrakis. The port. The men moving women like cargo while arguing over payment. Those are problems with bodies, routes, and weaknesses. I know what to do with that.
This fear is different. It sits too close.
Jan shifts slightly, and my grip tightens before I can stop it. Her breathing stays even. The bandage rises and falls again.
I lean forward, pressing my mouth to her fingers.
“You scared the hell out of me, darls,” I whisper.
She doesn’t answer.
Probably for the best. She’d tell me I’m being dramatic, then try to brief from bed with half her side taped together and Liberty threatening sedation from the doorway.
I hold her hand and let the quiet do what it can.
Not fix.
Nothing fixes this.
But it sharpens the edges of what comes next.
At twenty-one hundred, we go back to the port. We get Solace. We get every woman we can reach. We cut Petrakis out of whatever hole he crawls into, and we end his part in this.
Jan breathes in.
The bandage lifts.
Jan breathes out.
The bandage settles.
I stay with her until the first gray edge of morning touches the curtains.
I’ve never been this afraid.
And I’ve never been more certain.
Tonight, at nine, we finish this.