Sleep never came easily to Dean Taylor.

Tonight, it didn’t come at all.

He lay flat on his back atop tightly tucked sheets, staring at the faint hairline crack in the ceiling paint above his bed. The digital clock on his nightstand glowed an unforgiving 02:13 in dull red numbers. He hadn’t moved in nearly forty minutes.

He knew better than to close his eyes.

When he did, memories liked to crawl out of the dark.

Flashes of desert heat rippling over broken asphalt. The smell of burning insulation. A teammate’s blood soaking into his sleeve while he tried to keep pressure on a wound that wouldn’t stop spilling life. A door blown inward. A child crying somewhere he couldn’t reach.

And sometimes, worse than memories, were the dreams that twisted them.

Nightmares didn’t scare Dean. They just pissed him off. They dragged him back into moments he couldn’t change, forced him to relive decisions that had no right answers. In sleep, there was no control—only replay.

So he stayed awake.

His hands were folded behind his head, muscles still humming from a late-night training session meant to exhaust him into unconsciousness. It hadn’t worked. Sweat had dried. Adrenaline had faded. His brain, however, refused to stand down.

Langley at night was quieter than most places in the world, but never silent. Ventilation hummed through the walls. Distant footsteps echoed occasionally. Somewhere down the corridor, a door shut with soft finality. The building breathed.

Dean didn’t.

He exhaled slowly through his nose and turned his head toward the dark outline of his duffel near the wall. Missions, training, evaluations—his life existed in a cycle of readiness. He had been raised for endurance, for loyalty, for decisive action under pressure. His father had trained him to hit hard and stand firm; instructors had refined him into something precise but never cold.

He felt everything.

He just chose what to do with it.

Which was why Ana Davidson both grounded him and drove him insane.

She had been in his life longer than conscious memory. Their childhoods had been carved from the same brutal curriculum, their parents turning resilience into doctrine and pain into education. They’d bled together, learned together, endured together. Where others saw competition, they found alliance. Where others saw weakness, they found survival.

Ana was control. Calculation. Steel wrapped in composure.

She trusted almost no one.

Dean was the exception.

And he guarded that trust like it was oxygen.

He rolled onto his side, staring at the door across the room.

Something restless moved under his skin tonight, an unease he couldn’t file away. He’d felt it during evening drills, a tension in the air like pressure before a storm. He’d almost gone to find her afterward—but it had been a solo simulation night.

She’d be locked down in evaluation.

She’d be fine.

She was always fine.

A knock sounded against his door.

Dean was already sitting up before the second tap landed.

Not loud. Not tentative. Two measured strikes spaced with precision.

Ana.

Surprise flickered through him. She didn’t knock unless something was wrong.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and crossed the room in three silent strides, hand closing around the handle.

When he opened the door, she stood under the corridor light like she’d been carved from it.

Chestnut brown hair pulled into a tight braid over one shoulder. Green eyes steady but shadowed at the edges. Her posture remained upright and controlled, but tension lived in the line of her shoulders. She wore a fitted gray thermal and dark cargo pants, sleeves pushed to her forearms as if she’d needed air or movement or something to keep from splintering.

She looked composed.

She looked lethal.

She looked alone.

He blinked once, then his voice came out low and immediate.

“Ana? What happened?”