The smoke had cleared hours ago.
But the scent of gunpowder still clung to the air.
Sebastian stood outside the safehouse, the cold wind biting against his skin as he stared out toward the ravaged hillside. The morning light painted everything in pale gold deceptive, like peace pretending it wasn't fragile.
Behind him, the house hummed faintly with generators. Liam was repairing the damage to the shutters. Alison was replacing burnt cables. Isabelle was resting upstairs, though Sebastian doubted she was asleep.
Every sound felt louder in the quiet the scrape of metal, the soft shuffle of boots, the faint rustle of the wind through the trees.
Sebastian's mind replayed the battle in fragments the way Vale's men moved, their precision, their timing.
He'd seen that kind of coordination before not random mercenaries, but people who had intel.
His intel.
Someone had given Vale their exact location.
And that realization burned deeper than the wound on his shoulder.
