Page 184 of Fractured Loyalties
“This will hurt,” she warns.
“Good.”
The sting burns through me like acid. I grit my teeth and let it take something with it. She works fast—pressure, clean gauze, tighter bandage—and the whole time, neither of us says a word. There’s nothing left to explain.
When she finishes, she straightens and meets my eyes.
“Don’t get shot again.”
“I’ll try.”
There’s a beat of something between us. It doesn’t have a name. It just exists.
Then static crackles.
“Visual,” Lydia whispers over the comms. “One near the decoy. Another circling north. Two more just exited the vehicle. The last one’s staying in the van. Driver or overwatch.”
“Shoot to injure,” I say. “Make it loud. Make it messy.”
“Understood.”
I count to five.
The first shot punches through the silence like a gavel. Then the second. A scream follows—high, male, unpracticed in pain. Lydia’s a surgeon when she wants to be. This time, she wants to be a butcher.
Kinley’s voice cuts in, low and taut. “One down. Got eyes on a runner.”
“Let him run,” I say. “We need the rest to scatter.”
I move to the window beside Mara. In the gloom, movement flickers—shadows peeling off trees, one form hobbling away. Another crawling. A third slamming against the trailhead sign and dropping to his knees.
They weren’t ready for this.
That means Volker didn’t send them.
He would’ve sent wolves.
These are dogs.
Mara whispers, “Then who?”
I don’t answer.
Because I already know who might be desperate enough to send men with no training and no backup.
Vale.
And that means he knows.
It means Volker let him know.
And now I have to decide which of them I take down first.
I step away from the window. The weight of it all settles in my bones like old rot—this name that won’t die, this game I’m pulled back into. Eidolon. I left him behind years ago. Thought I buried that ghost in enough blood to keep it still. Volker wants it resurrected.
No. He wants it weaponized.
Mara turns toward me. Her voice is barely audible. “You need to talk to Vale.”
