Page 36 of Shadow's Edge

Noah was barely holdingit together. His eyes were hollow, and his breathing uneven.

He hadn’t spoken since Bo went missing, and no one blamed him. Bo had been inside Demingo’s operation formonths, feeding us intel, risking her life every single day.

And now she was inenemy hands.

But we wouldget her back—no man or woman was ever left behind, and Noah knew that.

We alldid but knowing it andlivingit were two different things.

The waitingroom in the hospital wassilent. In fact, it was toosilent. A whole group of us, trained soldiers, mercenaries, fighters—just sitting there, waiting for word onPiper. Mainly for word that she wasgoing to make it, reassurance that she was going to be okay.

Not a single one of us spoke. Not even abreathwas wasted.

We had scrubbed thecamouflage paintfrom our faces before stepping onto hospital grounds, making sure there wasnothingto tie us to what had gone down. There were already going to beenough questions, we didn’t need to draw more attention to ourselves. If anyone—anyone—linked us to what had happened, the risk of the traffickers hunting us down skyrocketed. And we weren’tstupid. We had made sure thatwouldn’t happen.

Now that we didn’t have that worry hanging over us, we stayed vigilant, but we were focused on Hunter’s woman, the mother of his son. And while we did that, we worked on our phones looking for Bo and for the assholes who were doing this.

Word had come in—Gia,Ava, and Scarlett were safe. Mace had them.

Relief hit like a punch to the gut, but it didn’t erase the tension still coiled in my chest. They were safe now but getting them out hadn’t been easy. Not by a long shot.

A friend of theirs had tracked them down, pinpointing their location just hours before our raid for Piper. Timing had been everything. While we fought our way through hell to get her back, Mace and his crew had made their move. But it hadn’t been clean.

One of the guards had been strapped with a suicide vest. One wrong move, one slip of the trigger, and the bastard would’ve taken everyone with him.

That’s why Mace had taken the sniper position.

High ground. Steady hands. A scope trained on a walking time bomb.

He had tracked him, waited, breath slow, heart steady. The guy hadn’t even known he was being hunted. Then, like some twisted stroke of fate, he had wandered into the woods to take a piss.

That was all it took. One clean shot. One problem down.

But this wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

We had them safe, but we still had a mess to clean up. And I had a feeling the next problems wouldn’t go down as easy as a lone guard in the woods.

The days crawled by,each hour stretching into an eternity.

Every second felt like a goddamn year.

Piper was still in the ICU, clinging to life, her body locked in a battle she hadn’t asked for. She hadn’t just been injured—she had been suffering.

A deep wound, carved into her skin by jagged glass days before her kidnapping, had festered unnoticed. Infection had spread through her system like wildfire, unchecked and relentless. The filth she had been kept in, the lack of care, the sheer cruelty of it all had turned a manageable wound into something life-threatening. Septicemia had sunk its claws into her, dragging her down into fevered nightmares and whispered prayers.

She was so fucking sick, but she was fighting.

For days we watched as Hunter visited her and held her hand, until finally she was turning a corner.

The beeping of machines still filled the room, the rhythmic hiss of the ventilator reminding me with every breath she took just how close he had come to losing her. But today, there was something different in the air. The doctors had hope in their voices. The fever had broken. Her vitals had stabilized. The war inside her body was shifting, and for the first time in what felt like forever, the tide was in her favor.

She was winning.

And God help anyone who tried to take her from Hunter again.

Dukeand I sat at the table, plans sprawled out before us, the weight of the moment pressing heavy on our shoulders. Maps, blueprints, intel reports—every possible scenario was laid out infront of us, and we ran through each one with ruthless precision. There was no room for error. No second chances.

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