Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
“Arrow,” he says, “get us that route. We’ll be outta here within the hour.”
“You got it.”
Dean’s voice softens just a fraction. “You two did well surviving the initial contact,” he says. “But don’t mistake that for momentum. If Serafina is involved, this isn’t going to stay small.”
“Understood,” Knight says.
“Lark,” Dean adds.
“Yeah?”
“Trust your instincts,” he says. “You’re alive because you do.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
The call ends with a clean click.
Knight sets the burner down like it weighs fifty pounds.
For a second we just stand there in this ugly hotel room, breathing the same air, hearing the same hum of the air conditioner, feeling the shape of our world tilt.
“Northstar,” I murmur.
He nods once. “Bigger board,” he says.
“Bigger monsters.”
He turns to me fully, hands sliding to my hips, steadying me. “We’re going to be okay,” he says.
I lift a brow. “That sounded like you trying to convince yourself.”
“Maybe.” His mouth twitches. “But I’m also very good at being right.”
I laugh once, short and shaky. “Do you think Gage knows about… any of this?”
“Gage knows enough to be dangerous,” Knight says. “Not enough to connect this thread yet.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Because if Serafina is hunting Dean—”
“Then everyone connected to Dean is a chess piece,” Knight finishes.
“And Luka just put a price tag on the board.”
He nods. Then his expression shifts—sharpens. He reaches for the duffel again, methodical now. “Okay,” he says. “We’ve got maybe forty minutes before we move. We need a faster exit plan than the front door. We need fresh clothes. We need to kill any pattern.”
I stare. “How do you get so calm so fast?”
He pauses. “Because you’re watching me,” he says simply. “And I refuse to be the man you regret trusting.”
My chest tightens. “Knight—”
He steps closer. His voice drops. “Listen to me, Birdie. Northstar, Serafina, Luka—whatever name they want to wrap around this—none of it changes the core truth.”
“What truth?”
He cups my face with both hands, steady and warm. “That you’re not prey,” he says. “And I’m not done building a future with you.”
I swallow. My throat is too full of feelings for words. So I do the only thing that makes sense.
I kiss him. It’s a kiss that says we’re still here.
He kisses me back with that same desperate certainty, like he can lock us together hard enough to keep the world out.
When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine. “Okay,” he murmurs. “We run smart now.”
“Together,” I say.
“Always.” He grabs the burner again.
I grab the bat.
And the two of us start packing our survival into one bag like this is just another night. Like hit lists and ancient ops and revenge ghosts are problems we can solve. Maybe that’s delusional. Maybe it’s the only reason we’re still breathing.
Either way—
We’re done hiding.
We’re going to end this.
Before Northstar turns our love story into a body count.
NINETEEN
AEGIS
KNIGHT
I tell myself I’m calm.
I tell myself I’m in control.
I tell myself I’m not spiraling into the kind of protective madness that makes men do stupid, heroic, deeply unwise things.
Then Lark yawns in the passenger seat and tucks her hand into my thigh like she belongs there, and my brain immediately starts mapping fifteen different ways to keep her alive even if I have to become the villain in my own story.
Arrow’s drop route came in the way he promised it would—fragmented, clean, annoying.
A street name.
A landmark.
A time window.
A passphrase that makes me resent him and respect him in equal measure.
We ditch the car in a paid lot two blocks away and switch vehicles again. Maddox logistics are a beautiful kind of paranoia. The car waiting for us is nondescript and forgettable, which is exactly what you want when your faces are worth sixty Bitcoin and a man with a grudge has decided to turn your existence into a profit event.
Halo City is a blur of late-night lights and wet pavement.
It’s close enough to our world to feel familiar. Far enough to feel like exile.
The safehouse sits over a quiet corner of downtown—three stories up, above a closed boutique and a coffee place with the kind of minimalist aesthetic that screams “we charge twelve dollars for oat milk.”
The building itself looks boring.
That’s the point.
Arrow called it Aegis.
He didn’t elaborate, but the name does the job.
Aegis: a shield.
A promise.
A threat.
We ride the elevator in silence, both of us tired in that bone-deep way adrenaline leaves behind when it finally drains. Our reflections in the brushed steel look like two people who survived something sharp.
When the doors open, I spot the keypad first. Then the camera angle. Then the discreet lock plate that says Maddox Security without a logo.
Lark notices too.
“Maddox doesn’t do subtle,” she murmurs.
“They do subtle,” I say. “They just also do effective.”
I punch in the code plus the secondary digit string Arrow sent separately. The lock clicks. The door opens.