Hiya!

The concrete could have cracked open under your boots and swallowed you whole, and you would have considered it a kinder welcome.

You stopped in front of him, keeping your distance. Never too close with Price, because he had a habit of making proximity feel more meaningful, even when it wasn’t. Especially when it wasn’t.

“Captain.”

“Lieutenant.”

He said it like he was humouring you.

You held his stare.

You had not been called rookie in years. Not by anyone with a functional sense of self-preservation, anyway. It was a nickname people only used when they wanted to remind you of a version of yourself that no longer existed, back when your boots were too clean and your hands shook after your first close call. Price, unfortunately, had known that version. Worse, he had survived long enough to keep referencing it.

“I was told this was a temporary coalition assignment.”

“It is.”

“I was also told Laswell requested my direct involvement.”

“She did.”

“And yet here you are.”

Price gave you a mild look, and it would have seemed innocent on a less irritating man. “That a problem?”

Yes. You wanted to say that being dragged into his orbit less than a month before your promotion meeting in late November was a problem. That you had spent the better part of the year being told, plainly and repeatedly, that you were on track to captain. That this could well be your last operation as a lieutenant, and instead of being allowed to finish it cleanly with your own people, you were standing on foreign concrete in front of a man who had once seen you at your worst and intended to keep the memory alive.

Instead, you shifted your bag higher on your shoulder. “No, sir.”

Polite, for untrained ears. Damning, if one knew how to listen.

Price did.

His brows lifted a fraction. “Good.”

It became clear within the first forty-eight hours that you hated John Price. You didn’t only dislike him. No, you hated him with enough force that even a blind man would have worked it out.

You answered his questions when they pertained to Aleksandar Kovač and ignored most of the rest. On comms, your acknowledgements arrived late, shortened down to the barest syllable, and sometimes not at all when you decided the order did not require one. During briefings, you sat with your arms folded and your attention fixed somewhere over his shoulder, treating the entire affair like an administrative delay between landing and doing the job properly.

Price noticed every instance.

The first time, he let it pass. The second, his eyes narrowed. By the fourth day, he had begun saying your rank like he was imagining how satisfying it might be to demote you himself.

It did not help that you were good. Had you been careless, obstructive, or merely unpleasant without the competence to justify it, he could have removed you from the operation and sent Laswell a report thick enough to stop a door. Instead, every time you ignored his preferred approach, you produced something useful. You recognised one of Kovač’s couriers from the shape of his shoulders in grainy surveillance footage. You corrected a mistranslated call sign that had sent British intelligence looking for a village instead of a person. You identified three fallback properties no one else had connected because Kovač had purchased them through companies registered under the maiden names of dead relatives.

Aleksandar Kovač had been born in Mostar, trained in military logistics, and spent the better part of two decades making himself indispensable to people who preferred wars without official involvement. He moved weapons, men, forged documents, and occasionally bodies across borders with the same fluidity. Governments had been looking for him for years; you had been looking for him for eleven months.

No one knew more about Kovač than you did.

Laswell knew it. Price knew it. The lads knew it too, which meant everyone had to tolerate you regardless of whether they wanted to.

They did not.

Gaz had made an effort on the first evening, asking about your flight and offering to show you around the temporary barracks. You had thanked him, declined, and watched the friendliness retreat from his face by degrees. Soap tried once to draw you into a card game and received a look unpleasant enough that he never tried again. Ghost had dispensed with the pretence entirely and simply moved around you as though you were an unexploded shell someone had neglected to mark.

Still, they weren’t rude. They were professional, civil, and unmistakably loyal to Price.

You understood why.

Damn him, John Price was a good captain.

Now.

He knew when Soap’s knee was bothering him before Soap admitted it. He noticed when Gaz had gone too long without eating and pushed a protein bar across the table without interrupting the briefing. He adjusted patrols when Ghost’s shoulder stiffened in the cold, never drawing attention to the fact, and stood the least desirable watch himself when the team had been running too long without proper sleep. When plans went wrong, he absorbed responsibility before anyone else had the chance. When they went right, he handed the credit down.

The men trusted him because he had earned it.

That made your contempt worse.

To them, Price was the captain who brought everyone home. The captain who measured risk carefully, who never spent lives cheaply, who understood that the people under his command were not expendable simply because the objective mattered.

You had known him before he learned that.

The incident in the operations room did little to improve matters.

You had been leaning over a satellite map with one hand braced against the table, tracing an old smuggling road through the foothills when Price moved in behind you. He reached past your shoulder to shift one of the markers, his chest close enough to your back that cigar smoke clung to the air between you.

You stopped speaking. Price, either oblivious, left his hand on the table.

You planted your palm against the centre of his chest and shoved him backwards.

It was not hard enough to hurt him. It was, however, hard enough to throw him half a step back in front of his entire team.

The room went silent.

Soap stared down at the map trying his hardest to seem another piece of furniture. Gaz’s mouth tightened. Ghost did not visibly react, which in Ghost amounted to watching very closely.

Price looked first at your hand, then at you.

Something worked in his jaw.

You returned to the map and finished explaining the route.

He could have reprimanded you, and, frankly, he should have. Instead, he waited until the meeting ended and caught you in the corridor, one hand closing around your upper arm before you could walk past.

“Whatever this is,” he said quietly, “you keep it away from my op.”

You looked at his hand until he removed it. “The op is the only reason I’m here.”

“I’m aware.”

“Then we understand each other.”

His nostrils flared. For one brief, gratifying second, you thought you might finally have pushed him past that infuriating restraint. Price had always possessed a temper; age had merely taught him where to put it. You could see it gathering behind his eyes, pressing hard against the calm expression he wore for the benefit of everyone nearby.

Then his radio crackled with Laswell’s voice, and the moment passed.

Kovač had surfaced again.

You were needed.

Price stepped aside.

He was furious, but there was nothing useful he could do with the anger. He could not send you home. He could not confine you to base or remove you from field work without losing the only person who could reliably anticipate Kovač’s movements. Every alternative source had either vanished, been killed, or started lying the moment the money changed hands. You were not merely helpful—you were the reason the operation had moved at all.

So Price endured you.

By the end of the week, the tension had become another piece of equipment the team carried everywhere.

The forward camp stood beneath a range of black mountains, little more than two armoured vehicles, three tents, and a line of thermal sheeting stretched between the trees. Kovač maintained a hunting property somewhere beyond the northern ridge, though the house itself had never appeared on local records. The approach roads had been watched for two days. No movement. No lights. Nothing on thermal except deer and the occasional fox cutting through the snow.

Price ordered rotating patrols through the surrounding woods.

You drew Ghost for the midnight watch.

Neither of you objected, although Soap looked relieved not to be paired with you himself.

The temperature dropped drastically after dark. Frost gathered along the low branches, and every breath emerged white in front of your face. You moved along the southern part of camp with your rifle held close, boots digging into the crusted snow. Ghost kept several paces to your left, large enough that the trees seemed narrower around him.

For the first hour, neither of you spoke.

It suited you.

Ghost did not feel compelled to fill silence merely because it existed. He checked the tree line, paused when you paused, and shifted formation without discussion when the trail tightened. There was none of Soap’s restless energy or Gaz’s careful politeness. 

Near two in the morning, Ghost stopped beside a fallen pine.

You watched him scan the ridge before lowering his rifle. He hooked two fingers beneath the edge of his balaclava and lifted it just enough to expose his mouth, then reached into his vest and pulled a battered packet of cigarettes.

He held it out.

You considered him for a moment before taking one.

Ghost placed another between his lips and struck his lighter. The flame threw a brief orange light across the lower half of his face, catching on old scars before he drew in and snapped it shut.

You stepped closer, cigarette poised between your fingers.

He raised the lighter again. As you bent towards it, he pulled it away.

You stared at him. Ghost stared back, smoke rising from beneath the raised edge of the mask. “What’s your issue with Price?”

For several seconds, the only sound was the wind moving through the branches. Then you scoffed as you reached into your own pocket, bringing out a lighter.

Ghost made no attempt to hide the satisfaction in his eyes.

You lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and resumed walking. The answer, when you gave it, had nothing to do with the light. “Worked under him a couple of times.”

Ghost fell into step beside you. “Figured.”

“Last time was six years ago. Joint task force running counter-proliferation across central Europe. Price wasn’t captain then, nor was I anything worth mentioning.”

Your boots found the narrow track between two rows of trees. Beyond them, the land dropped steeply into darkness.

“There was a broker named Milan Varga. He supplied rifles to militias, explosives to separatists, anti-air to anyone with enough cash and a border dispute. Half the weapons recovered from unsanctioned conflicts in Europe could be traced back to him if you had the time and enough dead informants.”

Ghost took a drag but said nothing.

“We had been trying to locate him for almost two years. Everyone knew his name, no one knew where he slept. He changed houses every few days, travelled in other people’s passports, never used the same driver twice. Price’s task force had lost three assets before I joined.”

You flicked ash into the snow.

“Found a guy.”

That had been the beginning of it. A young freight coordinator named Petar Radović, ambitious enough to work for Varga and frightened enough to regret it. You had noticed discrepancies in customs records, shipments declared twice under different weights, and spent months arranging conversations that looked accidental. A drink in Vienna. A cigarette behind a hotel in Bratislava. A train journey during which neither of you acknowledged the other until the final stop.

Radović had not trusted British intelligence—he had trusted you.

“He agreed to take me to Varga,” you continued. “One meeting. No phone, no comms, no weapon. I was to meet Radović alone, get into his vehicle, and go wherever he took me. Varga would speak to me if he believed I was ready to sell access to NATO procurement routes.”

Ghost’s head turned slightly towards you. “You went in as a traitor.”

“I went in as someone young enough to resent being overlooked and arrogant enough to think she deserved more. It wasn’t a difficult performance at the time.”

That earned no reaction, though you saw his gaze linger before returning to the woods.

“The meeting was set for eight in the evening. At nineteen forty-three, Price received an intercepted message confirming Varga already knew who I was.”

Ghost stopped walking.

You went another two steps before turning back.

“He knew?”

The cigarette burned between your fingers. You watched the ember brighten in the dark. “Yes.”

Ghost’s face revealed little even with the mask raised, but his stillness changed. He was no longer merely listening.

“There was enough time to stop it,” you said. “Price could have sent a team to intercept Radović’s car before it reached me. He could have triggered the abort through the secondary contact. Either option would have pulled me out.”

“But Varga would disappear.”

You looked at him, surprised. Ghost had already reached the same conclusion Price had years ago.

“Radović would have been exposed. Varga would have killed him, abandoned the network, and vanished for another five years. We would lose the first reliable route to him anyone had found.”

Ghost lowered the cigarette from his mouth. “So Price let you go.”

“He let me get into the car.”

The wind picked up along the ridge. Below, ice cracked with a sound like a distant branch breaking.

Radović had been nervous that night. You remembered that more clearly than anything else: the dampness at his hairline, the way his fingers kept tightening around the steering wheel, the smell of clove gum in the enclosed car. He had apologised twice for the blindfold before putting it over your eyes.

He had not known, that you were certain of.

“He took me to a warehouse outside Brno. Varga wasn’t there. Four of his men were.”

The old wound sat beneath three layers of clothing, invisible but suddenly present.

“They asked who else knew about Radović. I told them no one. They asked how long I’d been intelligence. I told them I worked in acquisitions. They broke two fingers before they stopped pretending to believe me.”

You had not spoken about it in years. The official debrief had reduced everything to sequence and duration, injuries described in detached clinical language by men who had not been there. Contusions. Fractures. Ballistic trauma. No permanent compromise.

The body could survive a great deal and still be considered an acceptable outcome.

“They moved me the next morning,” you breathed out. “Price’s people tracked the first vehicle to the warehouse, then lost the second in an underground loading bay. They found Radović dead in the original car.”

Ghost’s jaw tightened.

“I was held for thirty-one hours. They shot me when they realised the extraction team had located the compound. Through the abdomen. Low enough to miss the liver, high enough to make the surgeons complain.”

You took another drag and found the cigarette had burned nearly to the filter.

“Varga was captured alive. His records dismantled six trafficking routes and put fourteen men in prison. The press called it the largest counter-arms operation in a decade.”

Ghost’s cigarette had gone untouched between his fingers. “And Price?”

A laugh escaped you, but there was no humour in it. “He came to the hospital.”

You remembered waking to the smell of cigar smoke. Price had been sitting in a plastic chair beside the window, elbows on his knees, looking as though he had not slept. Younger then, less grey in his beard, but already practising the expression he wore now when carrying the weight of a decision he had no intention of regretting aloud.

“He said the objective had required a difficult call,” you told Ghost. “Said he knew I understood the stakes when I volunteered for intelligence.”

Ghost’s eyes hardened. You ground the cigarette beneath your boot.

“Three months later, he received a medal for the operation. Exceptional judgement under pressure. Decisive command action resulting in the capture of a high-value weapons trafficker. I was not included in any of the ceremonies.”

Ghost looked back towards camp, though the trees blocked any view of it.

“So that’s my issue with Price,” you said bitterly. “Your captain is very good at bringing his people home now, I’m sure that’s comforting. But know that he learned that from me.”

Ghost watched in silence before he held out the cigarette packet again.

You took one, and this time, when he flicked the lighter open, he did not pull it away.

The patrol ended just before dawn.

Price was waiting near the vehicles when you emerged from the tree line, cigarette in one hand, hat pulled down against the cold. His attention moved over Ghost first, checking automatically for injury, then settled on you.

“Anything?”

“Nothing on the ridge,” you answered. “Tracks near the eastern boundary, but they’re at least a day old. Two men, possibly three.”

Price nodded. His eyes shifted between you and Ghost, picking up whatever subtle alteration had occurred during the night.

Ghost handed him the patrol log.

“Lieutenant knows her work,” he said.

Price’s gaze lingered.

It was not praise. From Ghost, it was something more thought out: a correction entered into the record.

You continued towards the tents as the first weak strip of daylight appeared over the mountains, grey spreading slowly across the snow.

They found Aleksandar Kovač two days later.

A burst transmission intercepted shortly before dawn placed him at a hunting lodge eleven kilometres north of the forward camp, where he was expected to meet a transport team and disappear across the Croatian border before midday. The building belonged to a forestry company that had ceased to exist nine years earlier. No electricity on record, no legal road access, no reason for four vehicles to be sitting beneath camouflage netting behind it.

By four in the morning, the camp had been stripped down to essentials.

Price stood over the map with one palm pressed flat against the folding table, assigning routes while snow tapped softly against the canvas overhead. Soap and Gaz would take the eastern slope, where the terrain narrowed around the access road. Ghost would move above them through the trees and cover the upper windows. Price would approach the rear of the lodge through the service yard.

You were going with him.

Kovač knew you. More importantly, you knew how he ran. If he had built an exit into the property—and he would have—then it would not follow the most obvious path. Kovač disliked underground tunnels because they became graves when compromised, but he trusted old service corridors, drainage channels, and construction gaps that did not appear on plans.

Price finished outlining the breach and looked directly at you.

“We move together.”

You leaned against the table, eyes on the map. “I understand how pairs work.”

Soap became suddenly interested in checking the magazine he had already checked twice. Gaz kept his face neutral. Ghost, positioned near the tent entrance, watched without appearing to.

Price’s gaze remained fixed on you. “You do not break off. You do not advance without confirmation. You do not decide you’ve spotted something the rest of us are too stupid to see and vanish after it.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“I haven’t started.”

Price straightened and gathered the photographs from the table. Since the night patrol, Ghost had become less actively cold towards you, though not warmer. He had not repeated what you told him. You knew that because Price had not looked at you differently afterward, and John Price was not capable of hearing something like that without carrying it visibly somewhere in his face.

Still, Ghost had begun watching the space between you and Price with a new kind of attention.

The team moved before dawn.

The snow had deepened overnight, soft enough to swallow the sound of boots but deep enough to make every step dangerous. You approached from the south beneath a low canopy of pine, moving single file until the lodge emerged through the trees. It was larger than the aerial photographs suggested, built from dark timber over an older stone foundation. No lights. No visible movement. The vehicles behind it were cold.

That meant little.

Price crouched beside you behind a fallen trunk and raised two fingers to his headset.

“Bravo, report.”

Gaz answered first. “East road covered. Two outside, both armed.”

“Upper floor,” Ghost murmured. “Movement behind the northern window. Can’t confirm how many.”

Soap’s voice followed. “South side clear. Got a cellar vent near the foundation.”

You looked towards the rear of the lodge.

The service yard was enclosed by a low stone wall, much of it collapsed beneath years of frost. There were two doors at the back. One newer, reinforced, with a camera positioned above it. The other narrow and almost hidden beneath an overhang, the wood warped and grey.

Price indicated the reinforced door.

You shook your head and pointed towards the narrow one.

He frowned.

You moved closer, keeping low, and spoke beneath your breath. “Servants’ entrance. Original building is older than the upper structure. That door will lead into the stone section.”

“And?”

“Kovač always takes the oldest exit. Less likely to appear on updated plans.”

Price studied the building for another second, then changed direction.

The narrow door opened into a passage barely wide enough for Price’s shoulders. The walls were unfinished stone, damp near the floor, with electrical cables running overhead. A single yellow bulb burned at the far end. You entered first, pistol raised, moving past stacked firewood and shelves of cleaning supplies until the corridor divided ahead.

Price touched two fingers to your shoulder.

Hold.

Ghost had not yet confirmed the upper floor. Soap and Gaz were still moving into position. The breach was supposed to happen simultaneously, before anyone inside had time to burn documents or reach the vehicles.

You stayed where you were—for perhaps seven seconds.

Then a door clicked somewhere beyond the junction.

You knew the sound because you had heard it in three different safe houses connected to Kovač: a weighted fire door releasing from an electronic lock.

Someone was moving.

Price’s hand closed around the back of your vest as you shifted forward.

“Wait.”

“There’s an exit.”

“We hold until Ghost clears the second floor.”

“If Kovač reaches the rear channel, he’ll be under the tree line before we breach.”

“You don’t know it’s him.”

You looked down the passage. There was a scrape beyond the wall, then the unmistakable drag of something heavy crossing stone.

“He’s moving.”

Price tightened his grip. “Lieutenant.”

The warning in his voice should have stopped you, but you pulled free and rounded the corner. The corridor opened into a storage room with a second door at the opposite end. A man stood beside it with a rifle already raised.

The muzzle flashed.

Something hot tore past the side of your face. Stone exploded from the wall behind you, fragments striking your cheek and collar. Your ears rang so violently that the second shot seemed to happen at a distance.

Price hit you from the side.

He drove you behind a support column with one arm locked around your chest, turned, and fired twice over your shoulder. The gunman staggered backwards into the door, his rifle dropping from his hands before he collapsed against the frame.

For half a second, neither of you moved.

Price’s body was pressed hard against yours, his breath rough near your ear. His hand had closed over the front of your vest so tightly that the knuckles had gone pale. You felt the violent rise and fall of his chest before he shoved you further behind cover and checked the corridor.

“Contact rear,” he snapped into comms. “One down. Breach now.”

Gunfire erupted elsewhere in the lodge.

Soap detonated the eastern charge. Glass shattered above you, followed by Ghost’s rifle from the tree line and Gaz shouting movement near the stairs. Price grabbed your jaw and turned your face towards him.

A thin line of blood ran from your temple to the edge of your cheek.

The bullet had not struck you. A piece of stone had. It had missed your skull by less than an inch.

Price stared at the blood with fire in his eyes. “What the fuck did I just tell you?”

You pulled your face out of his hand. “We don’t have time.”

His expression changed, going from irritation to coldness in a matter of seconds. “Stay behind me.”

You stepped around him.

Price caught your vest again and slammed you back against the stone. “I said behind me.”

The wall jarred your shoulder. His face was close enough that you could see the burst blood vessels in the whites of his eyes, the fine snow melting into his beard, the restraint holding his jaw rigid.

The second door at the end of the room swung inward.

Price released you immediately and raised his weapon.

Aleksandar Kovač appeared between two armed men.

He looked older than the last photograph. Thinner too, his grey hair cut close to the scalp, one hand gripping a hard-sided case against his chest. Recognition crossed his face when he saw you, oddly…disappointed?

“Lieutenant,” he hummed.

One of his men fired.

You and Price moved in opposite directions. Price took the left gunman while you dropped behind a steel worktable and fired beneath it, catching the second man through the calf. He went down hard. Kovač turned and ran through the doorway behind him.

Price followed.

You were by his side despite the order.

The passage beyond the room descended sharply, the old stone stairs slick with moisture. Kovač abandoned the case halfway down and reached the lower door just as Price caught the back of his coat. The fabric tore. Kovač twisted, produced a compact pistol from beneath his jacket, and raised it blindly over his shoulder.

You struck his wrist with the butt of your weapon.

The pistol fired into the ceiling.

Price drove Kovač face-first into the wall, dragged one arm behind his back, and forced him to his knees with enough pressure to pull a strangled sound from his throat. You kicked the pistol away.

“Target contained,” he reported.

Soap answered through a wash of static. “Ground floor clear.”

“East clear,” Gaz added. “Two detained.”

Ghost’s voice came last. “Upper level secure.”

It was over.

Nearly a year of tracking shell companies, bribed customs officials, false passports, dead intermediaries, and abandoned houses had ended in a stairwell beneath a hunting lodge. Kovač knelt against the wall with blood running from his mouth while Price searched him and you stood close enough to feel your pulse beating in the shallow cut beside your eye.

Kovač looked up at you.

“He will spend you too,” he said, accent thick.

Price stopped searching him.

You met Kovač’s gaze without answering.

Price hauled him upright and passed him to Gaz when the others reached the lower level. He did not speak to you for the remainder of the extraction.

The flight back to London took just over three hours. Soap slept through most of it with his arms folded beneath his head. Gaz reviewed body-camera footage. Ghost sat opposite you, still enough to resemble part of the aircraft, his eyes occasionally moving to the plaster taped beside your temple.

Price remained near the cockpit.

Once, during turbulence, you looked up and found him watching you.

He looked away first.

Kovač was transferred into British custody shortly after landing. You were separated from the team for medical assessment, then debriefed twice by people who had not been in Bosnia and wanted to know why your camera footage showed you advancing before the agreed breach.

You told them you heard movement consistent with an escape attempt.

They asked whether Captain Price ordered you to hold.

You told them yes.

They asked whether you complied.

You told them no.

The second debrief ended at half past six in the evening. You expected to be released back to your own unit after that, perhaps with a formal reprimand waiting by morning. Instead, a uniformed aide intercepted you outside the secure conference room and handed over a visitor pass for the upper level.

“Captain Price wants to see you.”

You stared at him. “Where?”

“His office.”

Of course he had an office. A proper one, at that.

The brass plate on the door bore his name and rank. Inside, there were shelves, locked cabinets, a scarred wooden desk, and a wide window overlooking a section of Whitehall. A framed regimental photograph sat near the corner, beside a smaller picture turned slightly away from the room. Price had removed his jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves to the forearms. His hat rested on the desk beside a closed file.

He did not tell you to come in.

You did anyway and shut the door behind you.

Price remained standing. “Sit down.”

“No.”

His mouth tightened. “That wasn’t a request.”

“Then you can record my refusal.”

You stayed near the door, arms folded. The cut at your temple had begun to throb beneath the dressing. Price’s gaze flicked towards it before returning to your face.

“You’re suspended from field duty, effective immediately.”

For one clean second, you thought you had misheard him.

Then you laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve already done it.”

“You don’t have the authority.”

He placed one hand on the file. “I do.”

“You are not my captain.”

“No?”

Something in his expression warned you before he opened the folder, but the satisfaction of saying it had already carried you too far. Price removed a document and slid it across the desk.

You did not approach.

“Read it.”

“I know who I report to.”

“Read the bloody order.”

You crossed the room, snatched the paper, and scanned the first page.

It was an operational attachment authorisation, amended three days earlier. Your placement under Task Force 141 had been extended through the formal closure of the Kovač investigation, including debriefing, evidence recovery, source review, and any resulting action against associated networks. Tactical and administrative control remained with Captain John Price until Laswell formally released you.

Laswell’s signature sat at the bottom. Beneath it was your own commanding officer’s.

You read the page twice.

Price watched you do it.

“This operation is finished.”

“Kovač’s in custody. His network isn’t. The operation remains active until Laswell closes it.”

“You had this amended before the raid.”

“Yes.”

“You went around me.”

“I went through your chain of command.”

“Without telling me.”

“Didn’t realise I needed your permission.”

You dropped the paper onto the desk. “You smug bastard.”

Price’s eyebrows lifted. “Careful.”

“No. You do not drag me into your unit, extend my assignment behind my back, then suspend me the moment you’ve got what you need.”

“You suspended yourself the moment you ignored a direct order and stepped into a rifle sight.”

“I stopped Kovač from escaping.”

“You nearly painted the wall with the back of your skull.”

“But I didn’t.”

The desk stood between you, though neither of you treated it as much of a barrier. Price planted both palms against the wood and leaned forward. “A round passed your head close enough to cut you with the debris.”

“Nothing else happened.”

“You think that makes this better?”

“I think we captured the target.”

“That was not the only acceptable outcome.”

Price’s face hardened. You stepped closer to the desk. “That’s interesting.”

“Don’t.”

“The target is in custody. The network’s compromised. No one on your team was killed. I would have thought that qualified as a success.”

“This isn’t Brno.”

“No. In Brno, you had the decency to let somebody else pull the trigger.”

His hands curled against the desk.

You saw it. The slight shift of his fingers, the tendons standing out through his forearms. Price looked down once, briefly, before meeting your eyes again.

“You don’t get to use that to justify what you did today.”

“Why not? You taught me the calculation.”

“I taught you the wrong fucking lesson.”

The room went still.

Rain ran in thin streams down the window behind him. Somewhere beyond the closed door, phones rang, footsteps crossed the corridor, someone laughed at something you could not hear. The ordinary sounds of the building continued while Price stood across from you and finally said what he had avoided for years.

You searched his face for mockery and found that there was none.

“What?”

His jaw locked. “You heard me.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Price pushed away from the desk and straightened. “I was wrong.”

You almost laughed again, but nothing came.

He continued before you could recover. “I was wrong to let you get into that car. I was wrong not to abort the operation the moment we knew Varga had discovered you, and I was wrong when I walked into that hospital and spoke to you like the result justified what happened.”

Your throat tightened, which only made you angrier.

Price’s voice remained controlled, but the effort had started to show. “There. Is that proper enough?”

“You had years.”

“I know.”

“You took the medal.”

“Yes.”

“You let them write your judgement into the citation and erase me from the report.”

“I know.”

“You knew I was walking into a trap.”

“Yes.”

Each answer came without defence, which should’ve helped your anger. To know he acknowledge how wrong he’d been, how he didn’t take pride in it—but it did little to ease the anger bubbling at the pit of your stomach.

“You can’t just confess this because one bullet came near me and frightened you.”

Price’s eyes narrowed. “Frightened me?”

“That’s what this is, isn’t it? You saw blood and decided to discover a conscience.”

“I watched that muzzle turn towards your face.”

“And you got me out. Congratulations. You’ve finally balanced the books.”

“This is not a ledger.”

“It is to men like you.”

Price came around the desk. “You think I suspended you because I’m trying to punish you?”

“I think you cannot tolerate that I don’t worship you like the others do.”

“You nearly got yourself killed to prove I couldn’t control you.”

“I did my job.”

“You disobeyed because the order came from me.”

“You don’t know why I did it.”

“I know exactly why.”

He stopped several feet away. Without the desk between you, the office felt smaller. Price was still in his tactical pants, shirt collar open, the smell of rain and cigar smoke clinging to him beneath the cologne.

“You heard that door,” he said, “and decided the objective mattered more than the instruction. You knew the risk. You took it anyway because you were certain you understood the situation better than the man responsible for you.”

“I did understand it better.”

“Perhaps you did. That doesn’t make you bulletproof.”

“It made me right.”

“It nearly made you dead.”

You scoffed and looked towards the window. “God, you’ve become tedious.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

Price caught your chin and turned your face back towards him.

The movement was not gentle, but neither was it rough enough to hurt. His fingers stopped beneath the edge of the plaster at your temple. For a second, his attention shifted to the wound, and the anger in his expression became something more difficult to look at.

You knocked his hand away.

“Don’t.”

“You think because I failed you once, I’m required to stand back and watch you do this to yourself forever?”

“You didn’t fail me. You almost got me killed.”

“And I have lived with it every day since.”

You stared at him.

Price breathed through his nose, shoulders rigid. “You think I don’t remember that warehouse? You think I don’t remember how you looked when they brought you out? I can still tell you which surgeon took the bullet out. I can tell you how long the operation lasted and which corridor they made us wait in. I know you stopped breathing for forty-three seconds.”

The words struck hard enough to empty your lungs.

He had never told you that.

Price looked almost disgusted with himself for saying it, but he did not stop. “I know exactly what I did.”

“Then why did you never apologise?”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out. 

You smiled without warmth. “Figures.”

“I didn’t think an apology would be enough.”

“So you chose nothing.”

“I thought staying away was what you wanted.”

“What I wanted?” You stepped closer. “I was twenty-four years old, half my insides were stitched together, and the officer I trusted most told me I understood the risk. You made it sound as though I had done it to myself.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“No, it’s what you say when you want credit for admitting something without having to repair it.”

Price’s temper finally broke through.

“What would you have had me do?” he demanded. “Turn up at your door every year with flowers and another fucking apology? Follow you from post to post until you decided I’d suffered enough?”

“You seem to enjoy following me now.”

“Because you are under my command.”

“There it is. Everything has to be an order with you.”

“Because that is the only language you’ve left me.”

The room had narrowed to the space between you.

You could see the pulse beating in his throat. Price’s anger did not make him loud so much as intensely still, every movement reduced to what was necessary. It was the same stillness he’d known before violence, and some unwise part of you recognised it with an awareness that had nothing to do with fear.

You ignored that too.

“With this attitude,” you said, breathing through your mouth as you tilted your head, “it’s no wonder your ex-wife doesn’t let you see your son, John.”

Price did not move.

For a second, you thought he might not have heard.

Then his face emptied.

It was not the anger you expected. It was more like an abrupt removal of every expression, every trace of the man you had been fighting with, until only the officer remained.

“Don’t speak about them.”

You looked towards the photograph beside his desk. A boy of perhaps nine stood beside a river, grinning at whoever held the camera. Price was not in the frame.

“You make every room a chain of command because it’s the only way anyone stays. Your wife left. Your son has to be kept from you. The only family you’ve managed to hold onto are three soldiers obliged to answer when you call.”

Price crossed the remaining distance.

“Enough.”

“Perhaps she realised what I did. That you can turn anyone expendable if the report reads well afterward.”

His hand closed around your arm.

You looked down at it, then back at him.

“Take your hand off me.”

“Stop.”

“Or what?”

His grip loosened immediately, but he did not step away. You could feel the heat of him through your uniform, his chest rising hard beneath the open collar of his shirt.

“You want me to be that man forever,” he said. His voice had dropped quiet enough that you had to listen closely. “Because then you never have to admit what you did today had nothing to do with Kovač.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You heard me order you to hold and went anyway. You wanted to know whether I would stop you this time.”

You shoved him. Both hands against his chest, harder than you had in the briefing room.

Price took one step back.

You followed.

“Do not try to climb inside my head because you’ve run out of ways to control the room.”

“You wanted me to make the choice again.”

“You see everything when it’s too late.”

“And you keep putting yourself in front of the gun.”

“At least I know where I stand when it’s pointed at me.”

Price caught your wrists when you shoved him again.

The movement happened quickly, his hands closing around yours and lowering them between your bodies. He held them while you stared up at him, both of you breathing too hard for an argument that had not become physical.

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

The office seemed to tilt around the silence. Your wrists remained inside his hands, pulse hard and fast. 

“Let go,” you said, though the words lacked the force they should have carried.

He did.

His gaze moved over your face, from the plaster at your temple to your eyes, then lower again. There was anger in it still, but no longer the clean sort. It had become tangled with recognition, with years of resentment forged into an intimacy neither of you had agreed to acknowledge.

“You hate me.”

You almost laughed. “Brilliant deduction.”

His jaw tightened at the answer, but the hand that rose towards your face stopped before touching you.

It hovered beside your neck.

A question, however badly phrased.

You lifted your chin.

Price kissed you.

There was nothing tentative about it. His hand closed around the side of your neck and his mouth met yours with all the restraint he had failed to maintain elsewhere, rough and furious and tasting of coffee and tobacco. The first impact pushed you back half a step.

Then you caught the front of his shirt and dragged him with you.

Price made a low sound against your mouth.

It went straight through you.

Your back met the edge of his desk, scattering the papers you had dropped there. His free hand found your waist and tightened, fingers spanning the space above your hip as he crowded closer. The kiss deepened without becoming softer. His beard scraped your skin. You bit his lower lip hard enough to make his grip flex.

He answered by pressing you more firmly against the desk.

It was hateful.

It was hungry.

It felt like every argument neither of you had finished, every conversation he had avoided and every accusation you had sharpened in his absence, driven into the space between your mouths until there was no room left for speech.

Your fingers slid beneath the open edge of his collar, feeling heat and the coarse hair at his chest. Price inhaled sharply. His mouth moved to the corner of yours, then along your jaw, beard scraping a raw path that left your skin singing. When his teeth found the curve where neck met shoulder, your head fell back without permission.

It gave him more room.

Price took it.

The hand still braced against your waist tightened, fingers pressing into the muscle above your hip bone hard enough that tomorrow there would be marks. He was not gentle, but you had not expected him to be. His breath came hot and uneven against your throat, and when you arched into him, the solid line of his body against yours answered with an insistence that bordered on demand.

“You never listen,” he said against your skin, the words muffled by proximity.

“And you never stop talking.”

His laugh was a short, humourless exhale. His free hand moved from your neck to your jaw, tilting your face until you had no choice but to meet his eyes. The blue of them had darkened to something nearer storm than sky. His thumb pressed against the corner of your mouth, and when you parted your lips in response—defiance, invitation, you could not have said which—his gaze flickered down to watch.

The thumb at your mouth pushed inside.

The taste of salt and coffee, the rough pad pressing against the flat of your tongue, shut you up more effectively than any shouted command ever had. Your teeth closed around the first knuckle, not biting, but threatening. 

Price’s nostrils flared.

He withdrew his thumb slowly, dragging it across your lower lip until it came away wet.

“You want to know what I thought about,” he said, voice scraped low, “while you were in surgery?”

“Enlighten me.”

“What I would have written to your next of kin.”

Your fingers, still tangled in the open collar of his shirt, tightened until fabric strained against buttons. “Liar.”

“I had the letter drafted. Three different versions.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“I’m your captain.”

You pulled him down by the shirt and kissed him again, harder, all teeth and fury and a horrible kind of desperation. He met you measure for measure. His hand fisted in the back of your shirt, twisting the fabric until it pulled tight across your shoulders, and when you gasped at the pressure, his tongue slid past your lips and took what you had not offered.

The kiss went on until your lungs burned.

It ended only because his hands moved to the front of your uniform shirt, and the first button came undone with a jerk that sent it skittering somewhere across the floor. Then the second. The third.

“You’re breaking my uniform.”

“I’ll buy you another.”

“That’s government property.”

Price did not answer.

He opened the rest of the buttons with an efficiency that suggested he had done this before, though not to you, and the thought made something hot twist behind your sternum. The shirt fell open, and cool air hit your chest before his palm flattened against your stomach—just below the band of your sports bra—and pushed.

Your spine met the desk.

Papers that had not already scattered crumpled beneath you. Something hard—a pen, a paperweight—dug into your shoulder blade. Price followed you down, one hand braced beside your head, the other still splayed low on your belly, and the weight of him between your thighs made coherent thought impossible.

“The door,” you managed.

“Locked.”

“When did you—”

“The moment you walked in.”

That should not have been as attractive as it was. The forethought of it. The anticipation. As though he had known, even then, where this argument was headed.

Your hips rolled up against his without conscious decision.

Price’s jaw tightened.

The hand on your stomach slid higher, pushing the bra up—not off, just out of the way, the elastic band digging into the flesh above your breasts as he exposed you to the dim light of his office. The window behind his desk looked out onto a courtyard. Anyone walking past would see only the back of his chair and the top of his head. The angle of the desk, the height of the sill—he had thought about this too.

Bastard.

His mouth dropped to your chest.

The hollow of your throat first, where your pulse hammered visibly against the skin. Then the slope of your breast, the curve where rib gave way to softer tissue. His beard burned a path that you would have to explain tomorrow, and in the moment you could not find it in yourself to care.

When his lips closed around your nipple, your back arched clean off the desk.

He held you down.

The suction was cruel. Sharp pulls of his mouth alternating with the flat of his tongue, and between them the scrape of teeth—never hard enough to hurt, always hard enough to draw out a groan. His free hand found your other breast and treated it with the same merciless focus, thumb circling the bud until it ached with sensitivity, rolling and tugging until you made a sound that was hard to describe.

“Be quiet.”

You laughed, breathless and unsteady. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

He bit down.

Your hips bucked, and the seam of your pants ground against the front of his, and the contact was so inadequate it made you want to scream. Your hands, which had been braced against his shoulders, slid to the back of his neck and pulled.

Hair softer than you expected. You twisted your fingers through it and held.

Price made a sound against your breast and the vibration travelled through your rib cage and into your lungs. He pulled back far enough to look at you, and the expression on his face was a ruin of composure. His lips were wet. His pupils had nearly swallowed the blue. The flush that crept up his throat disappeared beneath the salt-and-pepper of his beard, and you wanted to follow it with your tongue.

Later.

He straightened.

The loss of his weight was a physical shock. You levered up onto your elbows, ready to protest, and found him looking down at you with an expression you could not read. His hands went to your belt.

“Lift.”

You did not lift.

“I said lift.”

“I heard you.”

Price’s eyes narrowed. For a long moment neither of you moved—you propped on the edge of his desk, shirt gaping open and bra rucked obscenely above your breasts, him standing between your thighs with his hands paused at your buckle and a muscle ticking in his jaw.

Then his hands moved anyway.

He unbuckled the belt without your cooperation, threading leather through metal with short, hard tugs. The button on your pants followed. The zipper. His knuckles brushed the skin below your navel, and the casual contact made your stomach muscles jump.

“You’re insufferable,” he grunted.

“And you’re still here.”

Your pants came down with your underwear in one motion—he did not bother separating them, did not bother with the boots you still wore. He pulled fabric down to mid-thigh and left you bare from the waist to the knees while you watched his face.

He looked at you the way a strategist looked at a map—cataloguing terrain, noting vulnerabilities.

Your first instinct was to close your legs.

You ignored it.

Price dropped to his knees.

The sight of him, between your thighs on the floor of his office, shoulders level with the desk edge and breath ghosting against the inside of your knee, did something horrible to your brain. His hands found your thighs and pushed them apart with an authority that demanded compliance.

You did not comply.

He pushed harder.

Your knees parted.

His mouth landed on the sensitive skin just above your boot, where leather met the bare stretch of your calf. The kiss was surprisingly gentle. Almost reverent. Then his teeth scraped upward along the inside of your thigh, and the contrast made your hips shift forward.

He took his time.

“Price.”

He ignored you.

His mouth moved to your other thigh and started the same slow ascent. His beard left a trail of sensation like sandpaper, and the wet heat of his tongue chased it, and by the time he reached the crease where thigh met pelvis, your hands had fisted in the papers beneath you and torn something—a report, a memo, you did not care.

Then his mouth reached your cunt.

The first touch was his tongue, flat and broad, dragging through the slick that had gathered there. Your head fell back against the desk with a sound that was louder than you intended.

“Quiet.”

The word vibrated against your clit.

You clamped your mouth shut so hard your teeth clicked. Above you, the ceiling was the same institutional white as every other ceiling in the Ministry of Defence, and you stared at it while his tongue circled the place that made your vision blur, and you did not make a sound.

His tongue was clever.

It mapped you with the same thorough attention he brought to missions—methodical, cataloguing responses, noting which movements made your thighs tremble and which made your breathing hitch. When he found the rhythm that made your hips chase his mouth, he settled into it and did not deviate.

The pressure built.

You bit the inside of your cheek and tasted copper.

His thumb joined the effort, pressing just below where his tongue worked, and the combination was other-worldly. Your foot kicked out involuntarily. Something fell off the desk with a clatter. Price’s free hand clamped down on your hip and held you in place while his tongue pushed you further, faster, closer.

Your back arched.

A sound escaped.

“I said quiet.”

He stopped.

His mouth lifted, his thumb retreated, and the sudden absence of sensation was so abrupt that your hips chased him without your permission. Price leaned back on his heels and looked up at you from between your thighs, and the smug satisfaction in his expression made you want to hit him.

“Or what?” You asked. The words came out hoarse, stripped of defiance. 

Price stood.

The movement was unhurried. He rose from his knees like a man who had all the time in the world, and when he reached the desk, he bent to retrieve something from the floor. Your shirt.

He tossed it at you.

The fabric landed across your chest.

“Get dressed.”

Rage spiked through you like a flare. You pushed up onto your elbows, almost completely naked and furious and dripping onto the edge of his desk, and the look you levelled at him could have stripped paint.

“You chose the wrong woman if you think I’m going to beg.”

Price caught your chin between his thumb and forefinger. He tilted your face up until your neck strained, until you had to look at him, and the expression in his eyes was something that had no business being in a commanding officer’s face.

“I don’t want you to beg,” he said. Each word was a separate, deliberate thing. “I want you to shut up.”

You stared at him.

He stared back.

Your chin, still trapped in his grip. His thumb, pressed into the soft hollow beneath your lower lip. The wetness cooling on your thighs. The shirt crumpled against your sternum.

Slowly, deliberately, you lay back down.

Price watched you for another moment. His grip on your chin loosened, then fell away. His hand moved to the back of your neck instead, fingers threading through the short hairs at your nape, and the grip there was almost tender before it tightened—just enough to communicate that tenderness had never been the point.

He pushed you flat.

Your spine met the desk again. The shirt slid off your chest. You did not pick it up.

And Price went to town.

His mouth returned to your cunt like a man starving, like the interruption had only deepened his appetite, and the noise that tried to escape your throat was stopped only by sheer stubbornness. His tongue pushed inside you—deep, then deeper, then curling in a way that made your inner walls clench around nothing when he withdrew. His thumb found your clit and pressed circles that matched the rhythm of his mouth, and the dual sensation was so much, so fast, that your hips jerked against his hold.

He did not let you move.

His forearm braced across your pelvis pinned you to the desk, and the restraint itself became another layer of sensation. You could not grind against his mouth. You could not chase the pressure where you wanted it. You could only take what he gave you, exactly how he gave it, and the surrender of control was infuriating and intoxicating equally.

His tongue circled your entrance before two fingers pushed inside.

The stretch was immediate and perfect—callused fingers, thick knuckles, curling forward against the spot that made sparks burst behind your closed eyelids. Your hands scrabbled for hold on the desk and found none. The papers were gone, the pen and paperweight long since knocked to the floor. You had nothing to grip but the edge of the desk itself, and your fingers ached with the strength of your hold.

His fingers moved inside you in a rhythm that his tongue echoed on your clit, and the combination was building something behind your navel that you could feel in your teeth. His beard was soaked. You could hear it—slick sounds that filled the quiet office, obscene and unmistakable, and the knowledge that anyone walking past the door might hear only sharpened every sensation.

“Price—”

His mouth lifted. “What did I say?”

You bit your tongue so hard you tasted blood.

His lips curved against your inner thigh—insufferable, insufferable—and then he added a third finger.

Your vision whited out for approximately three seconds.

When it cleared, he was still working you, dragging you toward a precipice you could feel approaching like a wall of heat. His fingers curled and your hips tried to buck and his forearm held you still and his tongue was doing something you had no vocabulary for and—

He stopped.

Again.

Your snarl of frustration was cut short by his hands on your hips, pulling you forward. The movement dragged you across the desk, pants still tangled around your boots, until your legs hung over the edge and your ass was barely supported. Price grabbed the back of your neck and hauled you upright into a kiss that was more teeth than lips.

“Will you ever fucking listen to me?”

You could taste yourself on his mouth, the flavour strong on the wetness that coated his beard pressed against your chin. Your chest heaved against his, bare skin against the fabric of his shirt, and the roughness of it against your nipples made thinking impossible.

“Look where listening to you has gotten me,” you gasped.

The sound he made was barely human.

He spun you.

The movement was efficiency itself—one hand on your hip, the other between your shoulder blades, and suddenly your chest was pressed against the cool wood of the desk and your boots were scraping the floor for support. Your bare ass was in the air, and you could feel him somewhere behind you, still fully clothed, breathing hard.

His boots appeared on either side of your ankles.

Metal—a belt buckle, his belt buckle—clinked in the quiet.

The head of his cock pressed against your cunt from behind, and you felt him pause.

Waiting.

For what, you did not know. Permission? You had never given it—never even been asked. Perhaps he wanted you to say something. Perhaps he wanted you to object.

“Can you hurry up,” you said instead, voice muffled against the desk.

He slammed into you.

The sound you made was not quiet.

It was not quiet at all, and before you could draw breath for another, his hand clamped over your mouth from behind. His palm sealed across your lips, his forearm pressed against your throat, and the angle of his entry shifted with the movement until he was so deep you could feel him in your stomach.

“You’re in the Ministry of Defence,” he said against your ear, voice ragged, voice wrecked. “You will be silent, or I will stop.”

You bit his palm.

He fucked into you harder.

The rhythm he set was brutal, a pace that did not ask permission and did not offer reprieve, and your body took it and took it and took it. The desk creaked beneath you with each thrust. Your boots slipped on the floor. His hand on your mouth kept you still and quiet, pinned while he drove into you from behind with a force that felt like a tornado.

Your walls clenched around him.

He groaned directly into your ear, and the sound bypassed your brain entirely on its way to your cunt.

The hand that was not covering your mouth found your hip before sliding forward, palm flattening against your belly, and when you arched into the contact his fingers tracked lower. Through the thatch of hair, parting the flesh that his cock was already splitting.

His fingertip found your clit.

The touch was devastating.

It was the lightest pressure, but combined with the relentless rhythm of his hips, it was enough to send you hurtling toward the edge you had been approaching for what felt like hours. Your scream was muffled by his palm. Your body tightened around him, and he did not slow, fucking you through it while his finger circled your clit and his breath rasped against your ear.

The orgasm hit in waves.

Not one peak but several—each one triggered by a different angle, a different pressure, the sound of his breathing or the scrape of his uniform against your bare back. Your vision went white. Your hands, trapped beneath your chest, clawed at the desk and found nothing. The only solid thing in the universe was him—his cock, his hand, the weight of him behind you.

It went on long enough that you forgot how to breathe.

When it finally ended, when your body stopped convulsing around him and the world reassembled itself, you were limp against the desk and Price was still hard inside you.

He withdrew.

His hand left your mouth. You heard him breathing behind you, harsh and uneven, the sound of a man holding himself together by the thinnest of margins. His fist moved against himself in quick, desperate strokes, and when he came, it was across your back. Hot and thick and pooling in the dip of your spine.

His palm landed on your ass, the slap hard enough to echo.

“You’re still suspended.”

It took three full seconds for the words to register. When they did, you pushed yourself upright so fast your vision swam. Your trousers were still around your knees. Your shirt was somewhere on the floor. His come was dripping down your back.

“Excuse me?”

Price was already doing up his belt. His hands were steady. His expression, when he looked at you, was the same one he wore on the field—professional, impenetrable, completely and utterly unreadable.

“The suspension stands. Two weeks. Desk duty.”

“You absolute bastard.”

“I prefer Captain.”

You grabbed the edge of the desk because hitting him would have required standing, and standing required pulling up your trousers, and pulling up your trousers meant acknowledging that you had just let him fuck you on his desk while the afternoon light streamed through the window and his cum cooled on your skin.

His hand found your chin again.

The grip was gentler this time, almost caring. He tilted your face up until you met his eyes, and the storm-dark blue held something you could not name.

“This suspension won’t get in the way of making captain,” he breathed out. The words were quiet, each one placed like a chess piece. “So you’ll shut up and take it.”

Your jaw tightened in his grip.

“Or?”

“Or I will make sure you never see a promotion board for the rest of your career.”

The threat was delivered without malice or anger, only certainty—a man aware of how much power he held and had no fear of using it.

Some samples below!!