The Man I Wouldn't Bury

The man everyone had written off as dead was alive in the heart of enemy territory. Once my commanding officer. Once my everything.

The night the operation began, they dropped me into the center of a city the bombs had leveled. The mission was simple: extract Captain Lucas Gray, the special-forces officer who had gone missing on a raid six months ago. Everyone said he was dead. I was the only one who never believed it.

The moment I hit the ground from the chopper, gunfire tore the air apart. Red emergency lights, shattered concrete, air thick with the smell of blood. The commander's order came over the radio. "Thirty minutes. Miss the window and we leave him."

I kicked in the door of the underground bunker. Lucas was inside. Torn fatigues, a blood-soaked neck, a hard arm bared through the rips. Wrecked like a man who'd been tortured for days and still unbroken, like a beast that wouldn't go down. Beneath close-cropped dark hair, hollowed eyes turned to me. Even like that, he was dangerous in a way I had no word for, and that look still went through me the way it always had.

"I'm here to get you out." My voice shook. Lucas seized my wrist. His hand was hot, rough. "Take me with you and you die."