Reign
Reign didn't believe in ghosts.
But Cassian Voss was the closest thing to one she'd ever hunted.
She parked the bike near the canyon turnout, dust kicking up around the wheels as she cut the engine. The desert was colder here, harsher. A good place to hide. A better place to forget what you used to be.
Through her binoculars, the compound looked quiet. Deceptively so.
She keyed her comm link, keeping her voice low.
"Visual on target site. Movement intermittent. No heat signatures aboveground."
The response was static. Typical. Ridgepoint comms were always full of holes this far out.
She slung her pack over one shoulder and started the climb—boots silent on gravel, hands steady. The ridge led to a series of blind rock faces. Old military routes. Some said Ridgepoint built training camps out here before they went underground. Reign knew better.
They never stopped.
She reached the upper plateau and paused behind a dead tree.
Below her, tucked against the rock, was the entrance: a blast door half-obscured by brush and debris.
A low hum vibrated through the air.
Live power.
Still operational.
Reign adjusted the scope of her long-range lens and zoomed in.
A figure appeared in the doorway.
Tall. Black coat. Pale hair slicked back in the wind.
Cassian Voss.
He wasn't even trying to hide.
He stepped out into the open, lit a cigarette, and turned to speak with someone inside. A second man—shorter, wearing fatigues—appeared briefly, then vanished again.
Reign kept her scope steady.
Cassian's body language was loose. Confident. Not like a man afraid of being found.
Like a man waiting.
Her chest tightened.
This is bait.
She backed away from the ridge, her movements slow and controlled.
As soon as she reached the lower path, she tapped her mic.
"Cassian's active. Location confirmed. But he wants us to see him."
No response.
Just more static.
Then—another voice came through.
"You're late, Reign."
Her blood went cold.
It wasn't her handler.
It was him.
Cassian.
"You really should've come earlier. You missed the part where I planned the rest of the story."
She dropped to a crouch, weapon drawn, scanning the ridge.
No one.
"Let me guess… you're still trying to protect him. Still clinging to that failed project you call loyalty."
Her fingers hovered over the disconnect switch.
"Here's what's going to happen, Reign. You're going to back off. Let him fall on his own. Or I'll remind you what it felt like to lose control."
Click.
The channel died.
She sat in the dirt, breath shaking, heart pounding—not from fear. From rage.
Because Cassian wasn't just watching Liam.
He'd been watching her too.
He always knew how to get under her skin.
And now he was one step ahead.
For now.
Later that night, back at her hideout, Reign paced the length of the safehouse floor.
She played Cassian's voice over again through a secure loop. Analyzed the reverb. The trace. Nothing concrete. But the threat underneath it was clear.
If he was making it personal, he was planning something big.
And the moment Liam and Elena realized they'd been studied, not just stalked—it might be too late.
She opened her laptop and tapped a secure message to Liam.
"You're being tracked. Stay low. Watch Miri. Don't trust silence."
Then she closed the screen and leaned her head back against the wall.
She was in this now. Deep.
And Cassian might be the one playing God—
But Reign knew how to kill monsters.
The safehouse Reign had taken was more bunker than cabin.
Concrete walls. Low light. A half-finished whiskey bottle on the metal table. Her jacket hung over the chair like she might have someone coming home to her.
But no one ever did.
She sat on the floor, back against the wall, rifle propped beside her. The only light came from the screen still blinking with her encrypted message to Liam. She hadn't heard back.
That worried her more than she wanted to admit.
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
And for the first time in years, she let herself remember.
Six Years Ago – The Dead Zone, Syria
Smoke everywhere. The kind that stung your lungs and settled in your bones.
Reign had been bleeding—she didn't remember how. Just the heat, the dizziness, the black.
She'd crawled behind a collapsed column with her last round chambered and her vision fractured. She remembered tasting blood. Metal. Dust.
And then a voice.
"You move, I shoot. Unless you're breathing for help."
Her vision cleared just enough to see a silhouette in the smoke—tall, rifle up, eyes unreadable.
"Friendly?" she rasped.
"If I were, you'd be dead already."
She coughed. Laughed, maybe. "Sounds about right."
He came closer. And that's when she saw his face for the first time.
Not the file photo. Not the legend.
Liam Blackwell.
Sharp jaw. Eyes like stormglass. Movements controlled like he didn't even trust his own bones. He crouched beside her and yanked her vest open to assess the wound.
"You're lucky. Shrapnel missed your lung."
"You're better looking than your intel photo."
He gave her a tight smile. "They always screw up the chin."
That was the first moment she realized he was more than the myth.
The second came three hours later, after he carried her out of that dead zone while fire bloomed behind them—and didn't ask her to say a word.
Now
Reign rubbed her hands together in the cold.
That was the thing about Liam. He didn't ask for loyalty. He earned it. Not by being clean or heroic—but by showing up. By dragging her out of hell without blinking. By being the kind of soldier who chose humanity anyway.
And that was exactly why Cassian wanted to break him.
Because Liam had walked away.
Because Liam had changed.
She pulled up a second window on her laptop and began scanning Ridgepoint's encrypted comms. Most were clean. Too clean.
Until she saw it.
A ping.
"Subject SH-2. Risk of extraction: HIGH. Proceed with controlled disruption. Target: Rivera."
Reign's blood ran cold.
They weren't trying to kill Elena.
They were trying to fracture her.
Make her question Liam. Make her run. Make her vulnerable.
Classic Cassian.
He wasn't here to win a war. He was here to dismantle the people Liam loved—and make him watch.
Reign stood abruptly.
No more waiting.
She loaded her weapon and gathered the go-bag she hadn't touched in months.
Time to move.
Because Liam might have chosen love over mission.
But she hadn't.
And she would not let him lose both.