Page 19 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
The silence is broken by the soft buzz of the encrypted terminal in the corner. I set the glass aside and cross the room, the screen flickering to life with a single message. Michaelis again, his words stripped of preamble.
Roman is consolidating. Syndicate forces moving through Marseilles, Palermo, and Algiers. Early signs of full mobilization.
Of course. Roman never was content with scraps. He has been circling the Syndicate for years, whispering in ears, buying loyalty, promising blood and power. Now he’s binding them, one by one, turning them into something that will move against me sooner than I’d planned.
The lion stirs, restless, eager for the fight. My hands tighten on the desk.
Something colder seeps in, not from the screen, but from deeper inside.
A voice.
Not heard, but felt.
Malek.
It cuts through bone and marrow, not in sound but in memory, a summons that pulls from the old oath, from theseal that no longer binds us but still echoes through what’s left. Darius. His call is sharp, heavy, threaded with command.
Come back. The war isn’t over.
I shut my eyes, jaw tightening. The call drags at me, pulling from the center of my chest, from the part of me that still remembers what it was to fight as one. I see his face in my mind: brow furrowed, eyes lit with fire, the scowl that never lifted even in peace. I hear Rafe’s laugh on the edges of it, Cassian’s silence waiting like judgment.
The lion presses forward, as if ready to answer the wolf and the bear.
I don’t let it.
I push the voice back, grind my teeth against it, and force my body still until the echo fades. My breathing is rough by the time it breaks, my chest aching as if something inside me has been torn out.
Not again.
That life is dead. I buried it centuries ago. The Pact is broken, and I will not bleed for it again.
I take the glass from the shelf and drink until it’s empty, then pour another.
The maps spread across the table blur under my gaze. Borders once marked by loyalty are meaningless now. Roman is consolidating. Darius is still calling. And Jennifer—Jennifer is digging in deeper every day.
I tell myself I don’t miss them. That I don’t miss firelight oaths, or blood spilled in trust, or the sound of brothers’ voices carrying through the night. I keep telling myself I don’t miss the way it felt to believe in something larger than myself.
I drain the glass and let it shatter against the stone wall.
I walk away from the terminal without answering.
And I remind myself, with every step, that the only war worth fighting now is the one I choose.
12
JENNIFER
Prague has always felt like a city suspended between centuries, where the cobblestone streets and gothic spires refuse to let the present bury the past. Tonight that weight presses down harder than usual. The lamps glow too dim, the shadows stretch too long, and I can’t shake the sensation that every uneven stone under my boots remembers secrets I haven’t yet uncovered.
I keep my collar up against the wind, one hand tucked inside my coat where the cold steel of a concealed Glock rests like reassurance. The intel I followed here came fast, almost too fast, a chain of whispers that ended with the promise of a meeting with a man who used to be buried deep in Thorne Strategic’s inner circle.
Vega had warned me there were more like him: disillusioned, discarded, or simply too frightened to keep their mouths shut. This one, he said, had more to lose than most, which meant he might be desperate enough to talk.
The café is quiet when I slip inside, the kind of place tourists overlook, its chipped walls and mismatched chairs holding the kind of anonymity that makes dangerous conversationspossible. The smell of bitter coffee and wet wool lingers in the air, and the only sound comes from the hum of an old espresso machine.
He’s already there.
Mid-forties, sharp cheekbones, a week’s worth of stubble, eyes darting too fast between the door and the window. He sits hunched in the far corner, his coat buttoned to his throat like he expects a bullet any second.
