Page 36 of Cold Ignition

It was irritating as hell.

“You always this mysterious,” Rangi muttered, voice rough from dust and adrenaline and everything they’d just clawed their way out of, “or is this a special occasion?”

The speaker crackled softly before Ahi answered, voice filtered but unmistakably amused.

“Depends,” he said. “You always this impatient?”

Rangi huffed a quiet laugh. “Only when I’ve been shot at, kidnapped, and then rescued by a ghost in a helmet.”

“Fair,” Ahi replied.

Alexios shifted beside him, a subtle movement that still pulled Rangi’s attention immediately. His hand brushed briefly against Rangi’s thigh—grounding, checking, there and gone again.

Rangi leaned into it without thinking, his own hand coming up to rest against Alexios’s side, careful of the injury.

“Talk to me about Alexios,” Ahi said, tone shifting just enough to signal he wasn’t just making conversation anymore. “What’s the damage?”

Rangi opened his mouth.

Alexios cut in. “I can speak for myself.”

Rangi’s mouth twitched. Of course he could.

Ahi made a low sound that might have been approval. “Good. I prefer it that way.”

Alexios angled slightly, voice steady despite the pain threaded through it.

“Two cracked ribs,” he said. “One fracture—clean, not displaced. Left arm took the worst of it. Soft tissue damage, possible hairline fracture at the wrist. I’ll live.”

Rangi snorted. “He’s being modest.”

Alexios didn’t even look at him. “I’m being accurate.”

“You’re bleeding through the bandage.”

“It’s contained.”

“It’s still bleeding.”

Ahi’s shoulders shifted slightly, like he was suppressing a laugh. “You two always like this?”

Rangi didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah.”

Alexios added, calm as ever, “He thinks too much.”

Rangi shot him a look. “And you talk too much.”

“I talk enough,” Alexios replied.

There was a beat.

Then Ahi—quiet, curious, something else threading through it—“Works for you?”

Rangi glanced at Alexios, their eyes meeting for a second that carried years of history in it. Trust. Heat. Something unbreakable.

“Yeah,” Rangi said simply. “It does.”

Silence settled for a moment—not empty, not awkward. Just ... full.