Always faithful. The Marine motto. A promise that we’d keep showing up, keep being present, keep proving we were worth the risk she’d have to take if she ever let us close.
I pulled into my driveway and sat there for a minute, thinking about tomorrow’s coffee run. About the routine that had become essential. About ten minutes every morning that made everything else worth it.
Sable was scared. I got that. Hell, I was terrified too.
But she kept showing up. Kept accepting the coffee. Kept carving out time for lunch with Silas and accepting rides from Dane.
She was trying, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
And if she was willing to try, then the least I could do was keep showing up with coffee at six in the morning and proving that some routines were worth the risk.
Chapter 10
Dane
The weather alert came through at fourteen hundred hours on a Tuesday. Severe storm system tracking toward Hollow Haven, flash flood warnings for all low-lying areas, potential for structural damage and power outages across three counties.
I read the notification twice, already running scenarios. Mountain communities like ours were vulnerable during heavy rain. Too many residential areas built near creek beds in the sixties when nobody thought about hundred-year floods. Too many old bridges that couldn’t handle high water. Too many people who thought they could outrun nature.
My phone buzzed with a message from the emergency services group text.
Sable: All hands mobilizing. Command center at fire station. Report by 1600 if you’re on call rotation.
Short. Professional. Exactly what I expected from her.
I checked my gear, grabbed my tactical bag, and headed for the fire station. The sky was already darkening to the west, heavyclouds rolling in faster than the forecast had predicted. This was going to be bad.
The fire station was controlled chaos when I arrived. Beau’s crew was prepping equipment, medical supplies being staged near the ambulances, communication systems being tested and retested. I found Sable in what they’d converted into a command center, standing in front of a bank of monitors displaying weather radar, county maps, and real-time emergency feeds.
She was wearing tactical pants and a fitted jacket, radio clipped to her belt, tablet in one hand, phone pressed to her ear with the other. Her short black curls were slightly disheveled, like she’d been running her hands through them, and there was a line of tension across her shoulders that made my alpha want to go to her immediately.
I stayed where I was. She didn’t need me crowding her when she was working.
“Copy that, dispatch,” she said into the phone. “Priority evacuations for Creek Hollow and Riverside Meadows. Get the buses rolling within thirty minutes. I want status updates every fifteen.” She ended the call and immediately moved to the computer, fingers flying across the keyboard as she pulled up evacuation routes and resource allocation spreadsheets.
“Dane.” She didn’t look up. “You’re here. Good. I need you coordinating security for the evacuation centers. We’re setting up three locations, Red Cross is sending personnel, but I need someone managing crowd control and making sure we don’t have people trying to go back for pets or valuables once we get them out.”
“Understood.” I moved closer, studying the maps over her shoulder. Close enough to catch her scent, cedar smoke and autumn rain with something underneath that made my chest tight. “What’s the projected timeline?”
“Storm hits full force around nineteen hundred. We have three hours to clear the flood zones and get vulnerable populations to safety.” She glanced at me, and I saw the weight of it in her dark amber eyes. The knowledge that she was making decisions that would determine who was safe and who wasn’t. “After that, it’s response mode. Search and rescue, medical emergencies, structural failures. I need all emergency personnel staged and ready.”
“You’ve done this before.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway. “Four times. Different counties, different scenarios. Wildfires, earthquakes, one tornado outbreak.” She pulled up another screen, this one showing personnel assignments. “Never gets easier, knowing you can’t save everyone. Just have to save as many as you can.”
I understood that. Had lived that truth for ten years in combat zones where every decision carried weight, where you learned to calculate acceptable losses and live with the nightmares afterward.
“You’re good at this,” I said quietly.
She looked at me again, really looked at me, and something flickered in her expression. “So are you. I’ve read your training protocols for active shooter scenarios. The way you think about threat assessment and civilian protection. It’s solid work.”
The compliment caught me off guard. Sable didn’t give praise easily, which meant when she did, she meant it.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” She turned back to her screens. “We have three hours before hell breaks loose, and I need everyone functioning at peak capacity. That includes you.”
The next two hours were a blur of coordinated movement. Buses deployed to evacuation zones, elderly residents and families with small children prioritized for transport, emergency shelters activated and staffed. I coordinated with local lawenforcement to manage traffic flow, set up security perimeters at the three shelter locations, and briefed volunteer coordinators on procedures for checking people in.
