But I don’t. Not yet. My hands move to her arms, her ribs, checking for blood that isn’t already dried on her clothes, for any sign she’s been cut, shot, or worse.
When I finally meet her eyes again and realize she’s actually okay, something heavy in my chest finally settles.
“How’d you find me?” I ask, knowing my agency wouldn’t have made tracking us easy. They might be moronic brutes, but they know how to cover their tracks.
“I followed the trail of bodies you left behind,” she says casually, shrugging her shoulders. “Had to revive one of them just long enough to torture the details out of him.”
I glance over my shoulder at the carnage scattered across the warehouse. When I look back at Kiara, she’s smirking. My brow arches with curiosity. “Oh yeah?”
“He cracked in seconds,” she says with a shrug. “So I re-killed him.”
A grin drags across my mouth.
God, I love this woman.
Her gaze moves slowly over the blood running down my arms, the broken chains hanging from my wrists like they never had a chance of holding me. And, for a moment, the fire in her expression fades, replaced by something quieter, something raw that cuts deeper than any blade.
Her hand comes to my chest, her fingers splayed right over my racing heart. “I should kill you myself for scaring me like that,” she mutters.
My arm snakes around her lower back, pulling her in even tighter, bringing her right where she belongs, bringing her home. “You worried about me, Firecracker?”
Her gaze snaps back to mine, and she scoffs, a playful smirk resting on her lips. “No. Don’t be absurd.” There’s no conviction behind the words, and we both know it. The fear is still there in her eyes, clinging stubbornly to the edges of her composure before she finally exhales and lets the truth slip through. “I thought I lost you.”
Something in my chest shifts, heavy and undeniable, and I crush her against me, not giving a shit about the pain that explodes throughout my body. “Fuck,” I breathe. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”
“I know,” she murmurs against my chest. “It’s not your fault yourcombat skills aren’t as exceptional as mine. I mean, I did think that letting yourself get kidnapped was for rookies, but I guess it happens to the best of us. Not to me, but I’m sure there are others.”
A laugh cracks from deep in my lungs, and I pull back just enough to grasp her chin, lifting it until that green stare collides with mine. “God, I love you.”
The corner of her mouth curves, slow and dangerous, the same way it always does when she’s about to say something that should probably offend me, but I welcome it with open arms, knowing anything that comes out of her mouth is exactly what I need to hear.
“Hate you right back.”
“Damn straight you do.”
I pull her back into me before she can say anything else, my arms wrapping around her like letting go is no longer an option. She fits against me like she was always meant to be there, steady and solid in the middle of all the blood and wreckage we left behind.
The world tried to tear us apart, threw everything it had at us, and we’re still standing here anyway. Still breathing. Still together.
The sun inches higher, the orange hues now a soft pale gold shining through the broken windows, washing over the bodies, the chains, and the two of us standing in the middle of it all. And for the first time in a long time, there’s nothing left to fight.
Nothing but the road ahead.
And forever looks a hell of a lot better with her walking it beside me.
EPILOGUE
KIARA
SIX MONTHS LATER
The world thinks we’re dead.
According to both of our agencies, Raiden and I went down on the same night, casualties of a very unfortunate series of events that left a warehouse full of bodies and no survivors worth questioning. The files have been closed, the reports signed, and our names crossed off whatever quiet little lists those people keep in the dark corners of their databases.
Officially, we no longer exist. And honestly? I’ve never been happier.
From what we’ve been able to gather through the occasional whisper on encrypted channels, both agencies are stilloperating, though apparently not very smoothly. There’s been a lot of scrambling behind the scenes—contracts slipping through the cracks, jobs taking longer than they should, entire operations falling apart because the people they’ve tried to replace us with simply can’t do what we did.
