Page 57 of The Endless Want

I leave the compound with my security detail trailing behind me, the night cold enough that each breath feels sharp. When I reach my apartment, it feels eerily still. I shower, dress in soft pajamas, and crawl into bed long before midnight.

I expect sleep to soothe me. It doesn’t. Instead, the nightmare comes.

In the dream, I’m standing in a dim hallway—one I don’t recognize. The walls look damp, slick like something underground. Declan stands at the end of it.

His back is to me at first, shoulders tense beneath his shirt. When he turns, there’s something hollow in his eyes, something unreadable.

“I need to tell you something,” I whisper. My hands shake. I try to still them, but they tremble harder.

He stares at me, face unreadable. “What is it?”

“I’m pregnant,” I say. “It’s yours.”

His expression stays blank, then shifts into something darker. His jaw tightens. His breath hardens. “Ailish,” he says in a voice that sounds like ice cracking. “You should’ve told me sooner.”

“I tried,” I whisper.

“You lied,” he replies. “After everything we’ve been through, you lied again.” The hallway stretches, elongates, darkens. He starts to walk away.

“Declan,” I cry, reaching out, but he dissolves into the shadows, slipping through the dark like he was never there.

I wake up with a cry lodged in my throat, my chest heaving. My sheets are damp with sweat, tangled around my legs. The room is pitch black except for the dim glow of the city pressing through the blinds.

I press a hand to my belly, small and flat and still entirely mine, and whisper into the silence, “I’m so scared.”

It doesn’t help.

At dawn, my alarm cuts through the quiet, and I force myself out of bed. There’s no time to collapse. Liam assigned me to a recon drop this morning—a quick exchange, simple data pickup, neutral territory. A nothing job.

If I screw this up, his trust in me will actually shatter.

I get ready in a hurry and head to the location provided. It starts with a cold wind slicing through my jacket, rippling across the small dock where I’m supposed to meet our contact. Mackenzie insisted on staying back because she had early negotiations with an Italian contractor, and I didn’t argue. Ronan sent me out with one of the junior guards who waits by the car as I walk toward the water.

It should be enough for this.

The sky is a washed-out gray, the sun barely visible behind thick clouds. Fog slips along the river in low sheets, making each breath taste like iron.

The man is already there—hood up, hands shoved into pockets, pacing like someone running late even though I’m early. He looks familiar in the way most of our neutral operatives do: cautious, lean, ex-military posture.

But something is wrong.

His steps are too uneven. His shoulders too tight. And the angle of his head doesn’t match the posture of someone expecting a routine drop.

“Morning,” I say, forcing my voice steady.

He doesn’t look at me. “You Ailish?”

“Yes.”

He hands me a flash drive, small and innocuous. “Routes,” he mutters. “Times. A list of suspected Russian associates. Use it quickly.”

Something sharp twists in my gut. “Why are you nervous?”

He flinches. Before he can answer, the world erupts behind us. A dark blur crashes into the man’s back—a body, fast and brutal. He stumbles forward, and someone else lunges from the right. I barely drop the flash drive in time to throw myself sideways.

“Run!” the operative screams.

But I don’t. Not yet. Instead, I turn, heart slamming, and see two attackers—the man grappling with one, the other charging straight for me, eyes wild beneath a mask.