: The Hunt Beneath the Silence**
The night Sher disappeared, the palace lights glowed a little too bright — as if trying to mask the growing shadows.
Hana knew.
They told her Sher was on a diplomatic assignment.
They told her he left without saying goodbye because it was confidential.
They told her everything *except the truth.*
She stared at his last message for the hundredth time:
> *Don't trust them.*
That was three days ago. Since then, *silence.* His AI interface, Mira, had gone into lockdown mode. That only happened when Sher's vital stats were compromised. No one could access it — not even top-tier engineers.
Hana didn't scream. She didn't cry. Instead, she pulled her hair back into a bun, slipped on Sher's old coat — the one that smelled like pine and danger — and whispered to herself,
> "They're trying to lie to me. Let them. But I'll lie better."
---
### ✦
"Klein," she said, her voice calm, "get Mira's backup chip from the vault. We're doing this our way."
"Wait—"
She looked at him.
He shut up.
---
### ✦
Two hours later, Hana stood in the underground intelligence chamber Sher had once forbidden her from entering.
She smiled at the memory. He had yelled at her for sneaking in here. Called her reckless. Dragged her out and kissed her senseless in the hallway just to shut her up.
She missed him. But she didn't break.
> "No tears," she told herself. "Not now. I'll cry when I have him back."
Klein decrypted the last known location: **Sector 9 — The Frost Line.**
A restricted zone. Off-limits. Run by old enemies from the royal war era.
A region Cenric had tried to sell years ago for a shady deal.
Her heart slammed in her chest.
> *Cenric.*
---
### ✦
"Why do I feel like he's behind this?" Kai muttered, leaning on the console, his jaw tight.
"Because he is," Hana said. "But this isn't just about power anymore."
"What then?"
"It's personal."
---
### ✦ Flashback
"Stay behind me," Sher had once said when she was nearly poisoned in a gala by Liora's faction. "You are not allowed to bleed for me."
"I can handle pain," she had answered, proud.
"You don't understand," he whispered then, brushing his hand over her cheek. "If you hurt, I break."
---
She pulled a black blade from the vault. Sher's dagger. One she had hidden behind her books, pretending to hate weapons.
> *Not anymore.*
She wore it on her thigh. Her smile returned — small, dangerous.
> "If he's broken, I'll piece him back together. And then I'll burn whoever did it."
-
Where You Bled, I'll Burn**
The sky was too calm for what had happened.
In the silence of twilight, the Wolter estate stood still — too still. Not even Mira's soft hum broke the stillness. Not Klein's laughter, not Kai's dramatic pacing.
Because Sher was gone.
Kidnapped.
---
### **The Empty Corridor**
Hana stood in the corridor where he was last seen.
His coat still hung on the wall. His black comm-ring had been tossed on the floor — scratched, crushed — as if Sher had fought hard before being taken.
Mira hovered near her shoulder, scanning for clues, but Hana wasn't listening.
Her eyes were glued to a single smear of blood on the ground. Barely noticeable. But she saw it.
Sher's blood.
The storm inside her rose with no warning.
She knelt, her fingertips grazing the floor, trembling.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. *He* was the protector. *He* was the ruthless one.
But now…
"He called me his home," she whispered.
And they took him away.
---
### **"Find Him. Or Burn Everything."**
Down in the tech lab, the temperature dropped ten degrees when Hana walked in.
Kai spun around. "Hana—"
Her voice was colder than winter steel. "I need locations, identities, and the last place Cenric's men were seen."
Klein stepped forward. "We already—"
"I wasn't asking for progress reports." She slammed her hand on the table. "I'm *not* losing him again. I'll rip apart the capital if I have to."
Even Mira hesitated.
Kai swallowed hard. "You're… scary right now."
"Good," Hana said without emotion. "Then maybe Cenric should be terrified too."
---
### **Where They Took Him**
Sher had been bound with energy cuffs, tossed into a surveillance-black transport ship, and taken to a military-grade underground bunker that was supposed to be decommissioned.
Inside, Cenric stood before him — smug and dressed in ceremonial robes, the **Wolter heir's seal** spinning between his fingers like a toy.
"This always should've been mine," he whispered.
Sher didn't flinch, even as blood ran down the side of his mouth. "And yet… you're still hiding like a rat in the dark."
Cenric's smile thinned. "You won't be smiling when I offer your seal to the High Tribunal and declare you mentally unstable. Hana will be removed from your estate. The empire will kneel to someone *with control*."
Sher's eyes narrowed. "You forget something."
Cenric raised a brow. "Enlighten me."
Sher smirked, even bloodied. "She's *not* controllable."
---
### **The Infiltration**
By nightfall, Hana was already there.
Suited in black, with silent boots and zero backup, she moved through the shadows of the canyon base with terrifying grace.
No words. No hesitation. No mercy.
Every guard that crossed her path went down — poisoned dart, disarmed, or unconscious in seconds.
Inside, she finally found Mira's tracked signal: **Sher's vitals — fading, but stable.**
She closed her eyes.
Then she moved faster than fire itself.
---
### **Where You Bled, I'll Burn**
When Hana reached the main cell, she paused.
Sher sat chained, shirt torn, face bruised — but his posture was still proud, chin high. His eyes locked with hers through the glass wall.
And for the first time in forever… he looked *relieved*.
She pressed a code Mira had decrypted.
The wall hissed open.
But before she could take a step—
"Behind you!"
She twisted — barely avoiding a shot meant for her head. Cenric stepped out of the shadows, holding a plasma dagger and the seal.
"You think you can steal him back *again*?" Cenric growled. "Like he's yours?"
Hana didn't blink. "He was *never* yours to begin with."
---
### **The Fight**
It wasn't graceful.
It wasn't noble.
It was raw and messy and vicious — Hana fought like she wasn't saving a husband, but avenging something sacred.
Every move was filled with unsaid rage. Her body remembered every scar Sher had taken for her. Every threat he'd silenced. Every time he'd stood in front of her, not beside.
Now it was her turn.
She dodged Cenric's swipe, grabbed a metal pipe, and slammed it into his side with a crack that echoed through the base.
He fell to one knee, but lunged up again, grabbing her wrist.
They struggled.
The seal clattered to the floor.
Sher, still cuffed but far from helpless, surged forward — broke the weakened glass with a desperate roar and reached for the seal.
Just as Cenric struck Hana across the face.
Sher caught the seal.
It glowed — the Wolter crest responding to his DNA.
Energy surged through the cuffs.
And they *snapped open*.
Sher stood.
And Cenric *finally* backed up.
---
### **They Walk Out Together**
Hana wiped the blood from her lip. "You're late."
Sher smiled. "You stole my line."
They didn't speak much after that.
They didn't need to.
They fought through the exit together — back to back, defending each other like twin storms — until the sky opened above them and Klein's emergency jet descended.
Sher collapsed beside her in the craft.
She didn't reach for his hand.
But her shoulder pressed silently into his.
And he leaned into her just enough to breathe again.
---
#
### ✦
The Frost Line was colder than memory.
Hana disguised herself, posing as a buyer for illegal AI weaponry. Her eyes scanned every camera. Her ears heard every whisper. She moved like silence wrapped in silk.
In the darkest corridor, she found it:
**The prison cell with retinal lock.**
Mira synced.
**Click.**
Inside, barely conscious, bound to a metallic wall… was Sher.
---
"Hana…?" His voice was rough. Weak.
But even half-dead, the first thing he said was:
> "Why did you come? You… shouldn't be here."
She crouched down, her fingers trembling as they touched his face.
"Shut up," she whispered, voice breaking. "Let me save you for once."
---
### ✦
She broke the chains.
Kissed his bruised knuckles.
Fought off guards like a demon.
Sher tried to stop her. She ignored him. He tried to argue. She knocked a man unconscious and said,
> "Wanna argue now or after I drag your handsome face out of here?"
---
Outside, they barely made it to the aircraft before gunfire exploded behind them.
Klein covered them from the rooftop. Mira activated smoke shields. Kai hacked the gates.
Hana grabbed the stolen seal — Cenric's spy had hidden it in the prison vault.
Sher leaned on her shoulder, injured but smiling faintly.
"You're terrifying," he muttered.
She looked at him, eyes soft but proud. "You say that like you don't love it."
---
## **Back at the Mansion**
Later that night, patched up and recovering, Sher looked at her across their shared room.
"You… didn't say anything," he said softly.
Hana stared at him. "I didn't need to."
"You didn't even say you missed me."
She raised an eyebrow. "You were only gone two days. Don't be dramatic."
"But you were about to set the capital on fire."
"Not because I love you."
"Oh?"
She stood up, walked to him, and looked down with a smirk.
"Because *no one* gets to hurt what's mine."
Then she leaned in, brushed his lips — soft, almost lazy.
And whispered, "Sleep. Next time, I might not save you."
He chuckled, even as his eyes softened.
"Even when you don't say it," he murmured, pulling her into his arms, "I hear you louder than the whole world."
, Sher's wounds were treated.
He was quiet. Staring.
Hana avoided his eyes.
He finally spoke. "You risked everything."
She shrugged. "Didn't want to be bored."
He caught her wrist gently. "I would've died if you hadn't come."
Her lips twitched. "Then next time, don't get kidnapped."
He pulled her close, forehead resting against hers. "You're the only war I'd surrender to."
She didn't confess. She never would.
But she didn't pull away either.
And for Sher, that was enough.
---