Cassian's POV
The helicopter lifted from the cliffside with a violent surge of power that bent the surrounding brush flat against the earth, its rotors tearing through the coastal air in widening arcs until the road below dissolved completely into darkness.
Loose gravel skittered across the clearing as the aircraft rose, floodlights cutting hard white shapes into the night while the ocean far beneath them stretched wide and indifferent, swallowing sound, debris, and evidence with the same quiet inevitability.
Cassian remained standing near the open cabin until the doors sealed shut, his gaze steady as he absorbed the controlled urgency unfolding around him with the same focused detachment he brought to negotiations that shifted markets and destabilized governments.
Inside the helicopter, the world narrowed into steel, light, and motion, the interior bright and clinical in a way that stripped everything down to essentials.
The flight medic moved with swift, disciplined precision, his voice steady as he called out vitals and adjusted pressure dressings, securing lines and stabilizing her body without wasted movement despite the vibration of the rotors and the subtle sway of the aircraft.
The girl lay strapped to the stretcher, her body alarmingly small beneath the equipment, the severity of her injuries standing in stark contrast to how young she appeared even now. Blood darkened her clothing, but it had already begun to dry, receding into something that felt dangerously close to history rather than the present moment.
As the medic completed his initial assessment, his hands paused briefly while his gaze sharpened with professional focus, shifting from injury to context, from damage to implication.
"She's young," he said carefully, glancing up from the monitors. "Sixteen, possibly seventeen."
The words settled into the cabin with quiet weight.
Cassian did not equate youth with weakness, but neither did he dismiss the significance of it.
Whatever she had been dragged into was not something someone her age should have survived, and yet she had endured long enough to reach a road she had never been meant to touch, holding herself together through instinct and will rather than luck.
Cassian took the seat opposite her as the helicopter angled inland, the jagged coastline slipping beneath low cloud cover while distant city lights gradually emerged below like a fractured constellation.
The medic continued working mid-flight with unbroken focus, stabilizing her condition while the steady hum of the engines underscored the quiet urgency of the moment.
Cassian observed closely, not for signs of panic, but for patterns that revealed resilience. She did not flinch when the aircraft banked sharply. Her breathing, though shallow, remained controlled and even. There was no slackness to her posture, no indication that her body had surrendered to shock or fear.
What struck him most was not the extent of her injuries, but the restraint with which her body held itself together, as though the damage had interrupted something deliberate rather than destroyed it entirely.
The hospital had been prepared long before their arrival.
By the time the helicopter touched down on the private helipad, a secured corridor had already been cleared, senior staff assembled and waiting in disciplined silence.
The hospital director stood at the front of the reception area, posture composed, expression carefully neutral, and eyes keenly aware of the consequences of failure. The warning had been delivered hours earlier and without embellishment: a patient was incoming whose care could not afford error.
Names were unnecessary, because influence carried its own clarity.
They moved her through sterile corridors and secured doors with speed sharpened by awareness rather than confusion, bypassing triage entirely and transferring her directly into surgery without hesitation.
Cassian stopped where protocol required, handing off his jacket and rolling his sleeves back as his presence subtly altered the rhythm of the floor. He positioned himself where he could wait without obstructing movement, observe without drawing attention, and remain close enough to receive updates without interference.
Time lost its familiar shape.
From the corridor, Cassian conducted business in low, controlled tones as instructions moved outward in widening circles, security adjusting, records restricted, and access narrowed until only those who needed to know remained involved.
Rafe came and went with quiet efficiency, receiving orders and executing them without question, the operation continuing seamlessly despite the interruption to routine.
Midway through the procedure, Cassian's phone vibrated with precise insistence.
He didn't look down at it immediately. His attention remained on the operating room doors, on the steady red light above them that neither flickered nor dimmed, indifferent to the gravity of what was happening behind it.
When he finally answered, his voice was calm, unhurried.
"Report."
"They know the girl is missing," Rafe said the moment the call connected.
Cassian's gaze sharpened, lifting fully to the doors now.
"Whoever ordered the hit expected everyone in that car to die."
Cassian's gaze lifted toward the operating room doors, where the red light glowed steadily, indifferent to the shifting consequences outside.
"The car was found," Rafe continued.
"Burned wreckage scattered at the base of the cliff. The terrain made recovery impossible, so officially it's being treated as a fatal crash."
Cassian remained silent, allowing the report to unfold.
"The two adults in the front seats are presumed dead, no bodies recovered, no confirmation either way," Rafe added.
"What concerns them is the blood trail in the forest. Someone returned to the site, followed it through the trees and across the ridge until it ended near the road."
Cassian's jaw tightened slightly as the implication settled into place.
"They know someone made it out," Rafe said. "They don't know how, and they don't know who helped, but they know she survived long enough to reach the road."
Cassian's fingers flexed once at his side.
"And now they want her dead," Cassian said evenly.
"Yes," Rafe answered without hesitation.
"Her and anyone connected to that car. No witnesses, no loose ends.
"Whatever she is," Rafe added, "she was never meant to leave that cliff alive."
Cassian allowed the silence to stretch.
His attention remained fixed on the sealed doors, on the sterile wall beside them, on the faint hum of machines bleeding through the barrier. Somewhere beyond it, the girl lay unconscious—unaware that her survival had just rewritten someone else's plans.
"Contain it," Cassian said finally.
Rafe straightened on the other end.
"Erase the trail beyond the road and make certain no connection can be drawn to where she is now."
Rafe exhaled once before responding. "Already in motion."
"And the people searching?"
"Redirected. Misdirected. Some of them won't be searching for long."
Cassian's expression didn't change.
"And her identity?" he asked.
Rafe hesitated for the first time.
"That's… complicated," he said. "We're still working through the fragments. Whatever she is, they didn't just want her gone. They wanted her erased."
Cassian's gaze darkened.
"That will not happen," he said.
Rafe gave a short, knowing breath. "I assumed."
Cassian ended the call.
He didn't move.
He simply stood there, eyes locked on the doors, on the light, on the invisible line between survival and consequence.
Whatever she was—
She was his problem now.
When the surgery concluded and the lights shifted from emergency to recovery, Cassian was permitted to see her clearly for the first time.
She had been cleaned of every trace of violence—no blood, no debris, no evidence of what had been done to her. What remained was the girl herself, and without the ruin to distract from her, her beauty became impossible to ignore.
Her hair spilled around her in thick, untamed waves—long, dark, and impossibly soft-looking, as if it refused to obey gravity. It framed her face in a wild, deliberate way, like something nature had shaped slowly and with intention. Even unconscious, it made her look alive.
Her face was… arresting.
Not in a delicate or forgettable way—but in the kind that made people stop without realizing they had.
High, sculpted cheekbones. A narrow, elegant nose. Full, expressive lips that curved as though they were made for emotion—laughter, defiance, longing, grief. Her eyebrows were dark and bold, giving her gaze a quiet intensity even with her eyes closed.
When her eyes opened briefly during neurological assessment, that impression deepened further.
Large, feline in shape, framed by thick lashes, their color sitting somewhere between brown and gray, shifting slightly under the examination light. He registered the details out of habit, the way he did with everything, but they weren't what held his attention.
What mattered was how she looked back at the room.
She wasn't disoriented. She wasn't frightened.
There was no frantic searching, no confusion, no panic flickering beneath the surface. For someone who had suffered that level of trauma, her gaze was unnervingly steady, focused in a way that suggested awareness rather than recovery.
Cassian had seen survivors before. He had seen shock, fear, desperation, confusion.
This was none of those.
There was a quiet weight in the way she looked at people, something composed and deliberate that didn't belong in someone who should have been barely holding on.
And Cassian knew, with the same certainty he trusted in every other decision he made, that her survival had not been accidental.