Page 100 of Specter Bred

"The flags! Toss them to me!"

My blood boiled. Fucking asshole! Redwood wasn’t about to sacrifice himself to cover me. And he sure as hell wouldn’t let me be the one who crossed that line.

He’d been sitting there the whole time, tucked safely behind cover, steps from the finish line, like a snake in the grass, waiting for me to bring the flags to him so he could take the final run and the credit that came with it.

Fuck him.

I ignored the asshole and sprinted straight for the barrier, but the second I dove behind it, a training round slammed into the back of my calf. Pain ripped through my leg, sending me crashing hard into the dirt. I bit back a scream. Before I could recover, Redwood ripped the flags from my arms.

Then he rain straight across the finish line with all twenty flags.

We’d done it.

Phase One complete.

We were all moving on to Phase Two of Specter training.

As the others flooded the finish line, they swarmed Redwood, clapping him on the back, praising him like he’d won the damn thing himself.

I pushed myself up onto one elbow, leg throbbing, dirt coating my skin. The only one who came to me was Hayes. Colored powder still stained his uniform where he’d been hit. He crouched beside me, offering me that crooked, dimpled, grin of his.

"Good work, Archer,” he said, holding out a helping hand. And somehow, that meant more than all the other recruit’s praise put together.

Alvarez and Cutter hopped off the back of the convoy, slinging their rifles over their shoulders as they joined the recruits in celebration. But Graves didn’t move. He stayed behind the wheel, watching. The scarred side of his face hid whatever he was thinking, but from what I could see, he didn’t look pleased.

Not at all.

His eyes swept over the remaining recruits, surveying the field, the finish line, the aftermath, taking it all in. Then, without a word, he climbed out of the driver’s side. Instead of heading toward the group gathered around Redwood, he cut around them entirely.

Straight for me and Hayes.

The hair along the back of my neck lifted as I watched him approach, all six-foot-eight of him moving across the field with the kind of presence that made everyone else seem smaller. Broad, scarred, and brutally built, he looked less like a man and more like something carved from stone, dragged through hell, and sharpened for war.

My attention caught on the burns first, twisted scars cutting across his face before disappearing down the side of his neck and beneath the collar of his shirt. I’d seen them enough times by now that they shouldn’t have fascinated me anymore, but they did. So did the way he moved. Graves never hurried. He didn’t have to. Every step was deliberate, controlled, carrying the quiet aggression of a predator that knew nothing on the field was stupid enough to challenge it.

Then those hazel eyes locked onto mine.

For one humiliating second, my breath caught.

Fuck.

I hated that he could still do that to me. No matter how pissed off I was at him, no matter how badly I wanted to knock that permanently unimpressed expression off his face, my body had apparently refused to join the rebellion.

And the closer he got, the worse it became.

His scent rolled over me, growing heavier with every step until it swallowed the sweat, mud, and churned earth around us. It wrapped around Hayes and me, sinking into my skin with the same commanding force as the man carrying it.

Power. Smoke. Steel.

And beneath it all, the one thing Nolan Graves seemed to possess in endless fucking supply.

Control.

Then he stopped in front of us, towering over where Hayes and I still crouched in the dirt. His gaze settled on me first, those hazel eyes holding mine for a beat longer than necessary.

“Teacup.”

That stupid fucking nickname which he only ever used for me and the one I’d hated from the second it first left his mouth. Somewhere along the way, though, without my permission, it had grown on me. Especially when the way he said it now, low and rough, his attention fixed entirely on me which sent a confusing pull through my chest.