The conversation started behind her, low and professional, just another layer of background noise.

“You said you’d worked logistics before?” her supervisor asked.

She ignored it.

“Yes,” the man replied, his tone even, controlled. “Regional coordination. Mostly backend, but I adapt quickly.”

The world didn’t stop. It tilted.

Amber didn’t turn. Didn’t move.

She knew that voice. God, she knew that voice.

Her heart kicked hard against her ribs, sudden and violent, before she forced it down, locking it behind years of discipline that had kept her alive when nothing else would have.

No. Not here. Not him.

“Then we’ll start you in data,” her supervisor was saying. “See how you handle the workload.”

“Sounds good.” His tone was calm and easy.

Amber’s breath came in shallow, controlled pulls, her fingers moving again across the keyboard because stopping would be noticed.

Everything had to stay normal.

“Okay, so, you’ll be working this row,” her boss continued. “Empty desk near the end.”

Footsteps followed.

Measured. Deliberate. Each one landing too close, too heavy, too real.

Amber kept her gaze locked on the screen, forcing her focus back into the data, into the rhythm of the work, into anything that wasn’t the man closing the distance behind her.

Until he stepped into her peripheral vision.

She didn’t look.

Couldn’t. But she had to.

Dominic.

He looked different. Cleaner lines. Sharper edges. Control worn like a second skin instead of something he was still figuring out.

But it was still him. It would always be him.

Something in her chest surged—relief, sharp and immediate, cutting through everything else before it fractured just as quickly. Because he wasn’t supposed to be here. This place—this world—wasn’t his, and now he was standing in it like he belonged.

Damn the Covenant.

Damn Freya.

And of course he would be the one to come.

Her throat tightened, emotion rising faster than she could bury it, pressing hard against everything she had built to keep herself steady.

She forced it down. Hard. Because feeling didn’t keep you alive here.

Dominic stopped at the desk two down from hers, close enough that she could feel the shift in the air when he sat. Close enough that she caught the quiet exhale he let out, controlled but not quite steady.

He didn’t look at her.

Didn’t acknowledge her at all.

Good.

That meant he understood. That meant he knew this wasn’t the place for recognition. For anything personal. For anything that could get them both killed.

As she continued to process the data before her, her breathing evened out slowly, deliberately, each inhale measured, each exhale controlled as she forced herself back into the work.

But her mind was already moving.

He’d gotten in. Which meant the network had let him. Which meant there were holes here she hadn’t seen yet. And if Dominic was inside this operation—then everything had just become infinitely more dangerous.

Not less.

Her jaw tightened slightly as she adjusted her glasses again, the motion small, forgettable.

Did he know? About her past? No, she would not go there.

Amber drew in a slow breath, letting it settle deep before releasing it just as carefully.

She didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t break.

But inside—everything had already shifted and she had no idea how she was going to survive this.

Let alone get them both out alive.

****

Dominic didn’t change much about himself before walking into the building.

He could have. He knew exactly how to. A different cut to his hair, a beard grown in just enough to alter the line of his jaw, a shift in posture, in movement, in presence—he could have become someone else entirely.

But he didn’t.

Because if she saw him—if she so much as glanced his way—he needed her to know it was him.

Not a version. Not a mask.

Him.

He stepped onto the data processing floor with the same controlled ease he carried into every hostile environment now, his gaze moving once, quick and efficient, cataloguing exits, sightlines, movement patterns, blind spots.

And then—her.

She was exactly where Mateo had said she’d be. Third row. Midway down. Head angled slightly toward her screen, fingers moving across the keyboard in a rhythm that would read as routine to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking at.

He saw the precision in it. The intent beneath the surface. The way she wasn’t just processing data—she was tracking it, following it, breaking it apart in real time.

His chest tightened before he could stop it.

She looked different.

The oversized sweater swallowed her shape, turning a body he remembered too well into something deliberately forgettable. The fabric hung loose, softening every line, dulling the presence she’d once carried without trying. The glasses perched low on her nose caught the overhead light just enough to obscure her large hazel eyes unless someone was paying attention.

Her hair was pulled back, but it hadn’t changed—not really. Still long. Still thick. Darker than he remembered, or maybe just muted by the lighting, with loose strands escaping around her face like they always had when she didn’t bother fixing them.

And her face—God. She had always been beautiful.

Not in a way that invited softness.

In a way that held strength. A mouth that never hid what she was thinking.

Every part of him locked onto her like nothing in the last eight years had touched that connection.

Tall. Curved exactly where his hands still remembered without permission.

She was exactly as he remembered, and not even close to the same.

Dominic forced himself to move.

Step forward. Stay in role. Because everything in him was pulling in the opposite direction—toward her, toward closing the distance, toward dragging her out of that chair and into his arms just to feel that she was real.

To tell her—I’m sorry.

The words pressed hard against his chest.

He swallowed them down and kept walking.

“You said you’d worked logistics before?” the supervisor asked.

Dominic shifted his focus, letting the conversation settle over him like it belonged there, like he hadn’t just found the one person he’d never stopped looking for.