No time to celebrate.
The other man lunged for her stranger with the knife again. He caught the soldier's wrist and then dragged the dazed man in his other arm directly into the blade, skewering his throat. Blood gushed down to the leafy ground. Dying breath wheezing out like the breeze.
Kira's view of the corpse blurred, her mind desperate to block out the image.
No hesitation.
Her stranger retrieved his gun with his hands now free. But instead of firing on the man closest to him, he shot at a distant target, side-stepping the soldier still attacking him. He did too many things at once, too swiftly, for Kira to follow his movements.
In a blur of motion, her stranger evaded the last soldier and shot him twice in the head.
Through the trees ahead of them, the friend stood over a fallen soldier and aimed his weapon at his face. “Clear.”
Her stranger scanned the woods. “Clear.”
The attack felt like it happened in slow motion, but Kira thought only a couple of minutes passed, if that. She kept her eyes on her stranger, forcing herself not to look at the dead.
All the panic was too distant to feel.
For the first time in three years, the man she'd never been able to forget looked at her. The man she was never supposed to see again. His thick chest moved deeply with hard breaths and blood splattered his sleeve from stabbing that soldier. It all froze for those few seconds that he stared at her in the dark. All the danger and death and fighting.
Was this real?
“Are you hurt?” Hearing him speak with that voice changer sent chills dancing down her spine.
“N-no,” she managed, tongue clinging to the roof of her mouth. Her eyes fell to his collarbone, to the space beneath she hadn't been able to touch. Dizziness spun her world.
He clasped her arms and lifted her to her feet, raising the flashlight at his side to scan her body. “You sure?”
Kira nodded. “Are you—”
The light hit her eyes, and she closed them, feeling his gloved hand brush the hair back from her face. Squinting, she saw those dark goggles trained on her. Her head hurt a bit, but she didn't feel blood. His low growl sounded terrifying with the voice changer.
Still moving as fast as during the fight, her stranger stormed toward the only soldier left alive and ripped him up to his feet. The man stumbled while he forced him toward a tree.
Kira followed on numb legs, the cold of the night biting through her jacket. She gasped when he punched the lone attacker in the face so hard that blood sprayed from his mouth, and his limp body crashed against a tree.
But he wasn't finished. Her masked stranger rammed his shoulder into the other man's chest and pinned him against the trunk.
“Give your general this message.” He cracked his head against the attacker's skull with a snap that reverberated through each of her own bones. The man fell limp, but he pressed him back against the tree with his forearms, strong back straining with effort and threat. “Kira Stiles is off limits.”
The soldier's head lulled. Her stranger smacked his face.
“You don't get to pass out, motherfucker. Eyes on me.” Another smack. “Eyes.”
Strands of blood hung from his mouth as he struggled to lift his head. His moan made the back of Kira's arms ache.
“You get nothing now, no information, no deals,” her stranger said. “Touch her again, and you're dead.”
“We… can't… get her out… of the country…” The garbled, broken words barely reached her. A deep groan. “This was… the only way…”
His gloved hand tightened around the soldier's bloodied mouth until a whimper slithered into the night. “If anyone hurts her, there isn't a soul in this entire empire who can save you. Iwillkill you and every person involved.” He dragged the man forward and smashed his head back against the tree with a ghastly thud. “Every last one of you.”
The survivor's body crumbled to the ground, listless.
Those hands felt so safe when they were on Kira, guiding her from ledge to ledge, holding her when she fell, drawing her close to kiss her. Everything about him screamed violence now.
“Any more and you'll kill him,” his friend said.
