The call came at 2:14 a.m.

Slade had been cleaning his blades, the quiet rhythm of metal and cloth keeping his thoughts from drifting anywhere they didn’t belong. Then the phone buzzed—an unfamiliar hospital number, late enough to mean only one thing. He froze, muscles tensing in a way battles never could. Hospitals didn’t call mercenaries.

They called family.

Or whatever was left of it.

He answered before the second ring finished. The nurse’s voice was brisk, professional, unaware she was speaking to a man who had once killed a platoon before breakfast. She simply informed him that his ex-wife had been admitted… and he was still listed as her primary emergency contact.

A title she had never bothered to erase.

The hospital lights were harsh when he arrived, sterile hallways reflecting off his armor as he walked through them like a ghost with purpose. Some guards tensed. Some stepped back. None stopped him.

She lay in the bed, pale but breathing, monitors beeping in steady rhythms that didn’t match the pounding in his chest. Her chart sat clipped at the foot—injury, exhaustion, stress. She’d pushed herself too far again. She always did.

He stood beside her, arms crossed, jaw tight. She didn’t stir, didn’t even know he was there. But Slade knew. And that was enough to drag up an ache he’d buried under war, under missions, under every excuse he’d built to keep his distance.

Even after everything—after the fights, the divorce, the wreckage—they still called him first.

Because part of her must have known he would come.

He always did.

And he always would.

Even if she never asked.