Page 136 of Zorro

Ray chuckled. “You always did skip to the truth.”

A beat passed. Then Ray sighed and looked up.

“My only regret is not knowing what happened to Ayla. I will carry that with me when I go to the Spirits.”

Bear bit down on the swell of grief. “You gave everything for us.”

Ray turned to him, eyes bright with clarity. “You gave more. Nathaniel is thriving. Your mother is working one job instead of three, and she’s dating again, laughing. Your father lives in regret. Let me tell you, that is its own punishment.”

Bear looked away.

Ray’s voice dropped. “Let it go, Dakota. Let that rage fly to the stars. Let it lift from your shoulders. You have met and surpassed anything we could have hoped for you.”

He reached over, his hand rough and warm, and gripped Bear’s forearm.

“You are a hero. A warrior. A fierce protector of your land. But maybe now, my grandson…” Ray’s eyes softened. “Maybe it’s time you found your heart.”

Bear didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His throat burned.

It wasn’t that simple.

His mind kept looping back to Bailee.

To the way she’d touched him, to the quiet certainty in her fingers, to how her braid had fallen across his chest while she combed his hair like it meant something.

But he didn’t feel hope.

There were too many walls. Too many truths between them. She was fire and secrets and precision. He…he was bone-deep tired of losing people.

Still, his gaze drifted up to the stars.

His body ached, not just from wounds but from absence. From the memory of her hands, the echo of her breath at his neck. Her gentleness still lived in the strands she’d braided.

Could someone ache like this and still walk upright?

He didn’t know.

But he feared that hollowness inside him would eat him alive, like the Iya, the devouring spirit of Lakota legend, a hungry shadow with no heart, only mouth.

Ray’s words circled back in his chest.

Maybe it’s time you found your heart.

Bear stared at the sky.

Wondered if he could find it…before the darkness swallowed him whole.

Sleeping Wind, Bonita, San Diego, California

The late afternoon sun stretched long shadows over the dirt track behind Bear’s house, casting gold across the low hills and softening the hard lines of the barn, the corral, the land where a warrior walked, rode, and rested. Oak and mesquite framed the edge of the horizon, and a faint wind stirred the dust just enough to keep it alive. A picnic table stood in the shade of the old pine, warped at one edge, its surface worn smooth by years of elbows and sweat and coffee cups and arguments.

Zorro leaned against it, one leg kicked out in front of him, a bottle of lime Jarritos sweating in his hand. Bear sat on the edge of a nearby bench, Flint stretched out in the dirt beside him, head on his paws, watching the team with quiet alertness.

They were all there. Buck in full relax mode, Stetson tilted low. Blitz cleaning something that might have once been sunglasses. Gator sprawled with his arms behind his head. D-Day was eating beef jerky like it owed him money, and Joker was lying with his head in his wife’s lap, looking nothing like their LT. Even Professor looked halfway relaxed, sipping slowly from a glass bottle of kombucha like it didn’t secretly contain the souls of a thousand berries crushed under historical pressure.

Zorro tipped his bottle at Bear. “You know what I like about this place?”

Bear didn’t look up. “It’s not Rio?”

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