Blood Wolf's heart pounded in his chest. His anger evaporated, leaving only a profound sense of awe and bitter regret.
If he had brought a larger squad, if they had moved just a little faster, they might have actually saved this legend.
As he turned to follow Sigrid, something felt wrong. The air shifted. He sniffed the damp wind and glanced into the brush.
The tracker dogs that had hunted them down were lying silently in the tall grass. They were dead.
A sudden realization hit him like a freight train. Without looking up, he discreetly unclipped his last smoke grenade and a few spare magazines, letting them slide off his belt and vanish into the mud.
High in the canopy above, Loyce narrowed her eyes. The temperature in the storm seemed to drop to freezing.
Down in the mud, Lucian's desperate attempt to arm himself was violently cut short. The commandos surrounded him, laughing sadistically as one kicked the rifle out of his reach. They began stomping on his fresh wounds, driving their boots into his mangled shoulder and deliberately crushing his shattered knee.
They weren't in a rush to kill him. They wanted to savor the suffering of a god.
The pain was so catastrophic that Lucian's brain was starved of oxygen, yet he didn't utter a single sound. His mind was entirely consumed by one terrifying thought: Loyce is here.
He prayed she hadn't turned back. He prayed she wouldn't do something suicidal to save him. He desperately hoped she had already boarded Sigrid's boat and escaped. He looked like a slaughtered animal, and he couldn't bear the thought of her last memory of him being this pathetic, blood-soaked mess.
The enemy commander pushed his men aside and drew his sidearm, aiming it squarely at Lucian's forehead.
"You are a titan," the commander said, his tone laced with twisted respect. "You shouldn't be butchered like a dog. Die with dignity."
The commander's finger tightened on the trigger.
Thwip!
A near-silent, supersonic round sliced through the rain.
The commander's temple exploded in a mist of pink. His expression froze, and without a single sound, he crumpled face-first into the mud.
The commandos froze in sheer terror. They whipped around, finally noticing their tracker dogs lying dead in the brush.
"Sniper!"
"Incoming fire!"
Total panic erupted. The soldiers wildly sprayed bullets into the dense canopy, but without the dogs, they were blind. One commando hastily flipped down his night-vision goggles, frantically scanning the trees.
"I got her! She's on the—"
Before he could call out the coordinates, a hollow point round caved his skull in.
Rain poured off her tactical suit, washing away the blood of the dogs she had slaughtered, revealing eyes as cold and unforgiving as a reaper's.
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