Page 47 of Flashover

And I didn’t step in.

Not because I didn’t want to. Hell, I wanted to tear the whole command structure down for her. But Blackstrike had me tethered to protocol, and interference would’ve jeopardized the op. Back then, she was a line in a dossier. A high-risk variable. Off-limits.

But the truth? I wasn’t just following orders. I was afraid.

Afraid that if I got close, I wouldn’t walk away. That the dragon in me would see what I saw—and choose her on instinct.

Maybe he did. Because even then, watching her hold herself upright in the ashes, I knew: Liv Monroe was a force I wasn’t ready for.

Now I’m ready. Now, I’m all in.

The drone’s gone. The thermite threat neutralized. The city's safe—for now. And for the first time since Bitterroot, I get to walk toward her, not away.

She’s sitting cross-legged on the tailgate, quiet in the chaos. Boots unlaced. A bottle of water dangling loosely from her fingers like she forgot she was holding it. Her hair’s tangled with ash and dry wind, still carrying the scent of scorched pine and smoke. Soot clings to the angle of her jaw, and there’s a smudge across one cheek where she must’ve wiped her face without thinking.

The air around her still hums—raw and wired with the charge that follows survival. Dust drifts over her shoulders like fallout. Her skin’s flushed from the heat, but there’s something in her eyes now that wasn’t there before—earned, not given. She looks like she’s been to hell and clawed her way back out.

She looks perfect.

“You’re staring again,” she says, not looking up.

“Can you blame me?”

She snorts. “Pretty sure that was rhetorical.”

I climb up beside her. She gives me a sideways glance—wry, knowing, like she’s already mapped out my next five moves and is daring me to make the sixth. It’s the same look she gave the brass back in Bitterroot when they tried to break her—measured, unshaken, impossible to ignore.

I feel her heat next to me—not wildfire, but that steady, low burn she always carries beneath her skin. She doesn’t lean in, but she doesn’t move away either. She lets the silence stretch—a breath between two people who’ve survived something brutal and come out the other side forged.

Across the fire line, one of the rookies from the evac crew spots her. He pauses, helmet in hand. Then he tips his chin and nods.

Respect. Earned in flame.

He joins us. "Ma’am. What you did—what you pulled off back there—we owe you."

Liv nods, watching him go and mutters, “If I’m a ma’am, I want hazard pay.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll make sure your title gets a field upgrade. I’ve got something for you."

She arches an eyebrow. “If it’s a protein bar, I’m throwing it in your face.”

I pull the chain from my pocket. The pendant gleams dully in the low light, star-iron forged and sealed, not a second tokenbut the final form—mine and hers fused together into one. Her sigil, once gifted alone in promise, is now knotted into mine like they’ve always belonged that way.

Her breath catches. Her eyes soften with a flicker of disbelief, then something deeper—recognition. A flash of that night in the shelter shadows her face, the memory of fire and fear, and the moment she realized she wasn’t alone.

“You had this made.”

Her voice is soft, but there’s a tremor in it—like she knows this isn’t the same piece I first handed her in the forge. Because it’s not. I took that pendant back after the shelter collapse and reforged it with Dax’s help—star-iron melted down, folded over with mine, sigils intertwined the way they were meant to be. Not just bonded. Unified.

“I made it. With Dax. In the forge. You earned it the night you stood between Greer and a crate of C-4.”

She takes it from my hand slowly. The metal is warm. It always is. Like it remembers the bond before she says yes.

I reach out, let my fingers brush hers. Something flickers behind her eyes—sharp, familiar. Not doubt. Not fear.

Conviction.

She slips the chain over her head. The pendant settles above her collarbone, exactly where the mate-mark flared during the fight.

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