Page 85 of The Vagabond

My voice drops low enough to be a threatening promise.

“I spent six months buried in Albania for this task force,” I snap. “Watched kids in cages get sold and had to turn a blind eye. I watched girls overdose in brothels while we waited for ‘legal leverage.’ You know what I got for it? A half-burned alias and a bullet scar in my goddamn side.”

Dorsey leans back, calm as can be.

“You volunteered.”

“No,” I growl, “I believed. I thought this was bigger than me. That we were doing something good. And now what? I’m tainted because I showed basic fucking humanity to one girl?”

“Because you got too close to one girl.”

I clench my jaw.

“I’m not the one who signed off on sending agents to her door without my knowledge. I’m not the one pulling strings behind my back. And you’ve got the balls to question my loyalty?”

“You made yourself a liability.”

“I made myself useful.”

“You made yourself disposable,” he snaps, and the way he says it—so casual, so sure—it settles into my bones like frostbite. I don’t even flinch. Because in that moment, it’s clear. Crystal fucking clear. We’re never going to see eye to eye on this. Ever.

He looks at me and sees recklessness. A liability. A man who went rogue because of emotion, because ofher. But me? I see every scar I earned crawling through the Bureau’s dirtiest corridors.I see years of silence and sleepless nights, of selling off little pieces of myself just to keep wearing that badge. Of bleeding for a country that never bled for me. I gave them everything. My time. My conscience. My soul. And now? Now I’ve become disposable. Cast aside like the mission never mattered. Like all I ever was… was a tool they used until the edge dulled, until the blade slipped and cut too deep.

Now they’re tossing me out, not because I failed—but because Icared. Because I gave a damn about a girl the Bureau labeled a “complication” instead of avictim. Because I burned down the wrong empire without asking for permission. Because I made noise in a system that only rewards silence. He thinks I made myself disposable? No. Our goals were just never aligned.

“I won’t let you use her as your in to the Aviary.”

“You’re officially on restricted duty. No field work. No clearance.”

A sharp laugh slips out before I can stop it—bitter, jagged, laced with disbelief. It scrapes up my throat like something half-dead finally trying to claw its way free. Cold. Joyless.

“You really think I’m going to stop this war because you clipped my wings?”

Now I don’t have to pretend to give a fuck about your rules.

“I think you’re going to do what you’ve always done, Saxon.”

“And what’s that?”

“Break the rules. Then act surprised when you bleed for it.”

He pushes a folder across the desk. My official reassignment. Office work. Paper trails. Nothing that creates waves. I don’t touch it. I just stand. Slow. Controlled. One last look around the office I used to consider safe ground.

“Tell them whatever you want,” I say, already turning to the door. “But if anyone touches her—if anyone so much as looks at her the wrong way—there’s not a piece of protocol in the world that’ll protect them.”

And then I leave. Because I’ve already made my choice. The Bureau made me a weapon. Now they get to live with what happens when they lose control of it.

I never should’ve touchedher again. But I did. And one taste? Was never going to be enough. Not when it was her. Not when every broken piece of me recognized every broken piece of her and still wanted more.

Because now that I’ve had her—reallyhad her—with no lies between us, no threats pressing in from all sides, no deals keeping me leashed… now that I’ve tasted her skin and watched her come undone beneath me, whispering my name like it was the only truth left in the world? Now I’m ruined.

I’ve felt her fall apart in my hands like a secret finally set free. I’ve heard her gasps, her cries—thatsound she makes when she lets go and thinks, for just one breathless second, that the world might not hurt her anymore. And that sound? That sound fucking branded me.

Now I know, with horrifying, bone-deep certainty, that she’s mine. Until the end of the goddamn world. And that makes this a problem. Averydangerous one. Because loving Maxine Andrade isn’t soft. It isn’t gentle. It’s not something you do and then forget about like it didn’t rearrange your molecular structure. It’s the kind of love that redefines gravity. That warps reality. That takes a man like me—already unhinged—and snaps the last bolt loose. It’s the kind of love that costs blood. That causes you to lose sleep. The kind that costs entireidentities.And I don’t care.

I should. Ireallyshould. But all I’m doing is planning how to kill the next man who looks at her like she’s anything other thanuntouchable.My Maxine. Not in the romantic sense. Not in the poetic, sunrise and poetry bullshit sense.

In the feral, possessive, tear-out-your-throat-and-burn-your-life-to-the-ground sense.

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