Chapter 25 *

Chapter 25 *

Logan’s POV

Two weeks later, my phone showed a message from Damon: Ironridge meeting confirmed for 1400 tomorrow. Recommend overnight.

I'd been considering the Ironridge proposal for months. Early-stage organization, independent structure, women's division that actually had budget behind it — unusual, in my experience. Worth a second look.

I sent back: Confirmed. Book it.

The venue was a regional rec center. I arrived with twenty minutes of the main card left, stood near the back where the sight lines were clear, and watched the ring.

There were eight fights on the card. I tracked five of them with any real attention.

Then she came out for the sixth bout.

She was shorter than her opponent by a visible margin. Her corner was two people — a coach with a towel and someone else who kept looking at the wrong parts of the ring. The announcer said her name and it didn't register. I wasn't listening to the announcer.

The first exchange was feeling-out. She let her opponent come forward twice, absorbed the angles, gave nothing back that committed her. Then she shot.

The takedown was clean enough that the woman three spots down from me made a noise. Emery's weight was already transitioning before the moment finished resolving — from standing position to ground control in the span of a breath, her opponent's back hitting the mat with that specific flat sound that meant it was over unless something dramatic changed.

Nothing dramatic changed.

After the card ended, I worked my way toward the back corridor where the fighters came out. I found her, eventually.

She wasn't where I expected.

The back corridor had a row of folding chairs along one wall. One of the chairs had a young fighter in it — male, couldn't have been more than twenty, still in his gear, bag between his feet. He'd been on the card earlier. He'd lost.

He wasn't crying. He was just sitting in a way that said he'd stopped fighting gravity.

She was crouched in front of him. She had her gym bag over one shoulder and a bottle in her right hand, and she held it out to him across the space between their chairs.

He looked at it for a moment. Then he took it.

I was three steps behind her. The rotor of the ventilation unit overhead was loud. I caught most of it anyway.

"You showed up. That's already more than most people manage."

She stood up. Pulled the strap of her bag back onto her shoulder. Walked away down the corridor without looking back.

I stood there, and my heart was going in a way I hadn't felt in a long time.

I found her name the next morning.

It took less time than it should have. A scout contact on file, a professional circuit offer that had apparently been on the table for two weeks.

I had Damon pull the full profile before the Ironridge meeting.

Three months later, the offer expired uncollected.

Her name dropped out of the regional circuit records. No injury report. No withdrawal statement. The kind of disappearance that meant it hadn't been a decision about fighting.

I found out where she'd gone through a different channel, the one that tracked pack-level movements, and when the information came back I sat with it for longer than I should have.

Easthaven Pack. Keaton Remington's mate.

I had lost the most important woman in my life. My mother, I hadn't been able to reach in time. By the time I knew how far the damage had gone, there was nothing left to intercept.

But Emery Hensley had a record and a professional contract sitting unsigned.

She wasn't gone. She'd just been redirected somewhere she didn't belong.

That, I thought, is a different kind of problem.

The kind that could be corrected.

The altimeter showed we were beginning the descent.

I pulled the cyclic back fractionally and trimmed the approach, letting the nose come level while the ground rose incrementally to meet us. Below, the landing pad lights had come on.

I kept my eyes on the approach path. "You want me to fall for it?"

She went still. I could feel the change in the cabin.

"What does it matter what I want?" Her voice was low.

The pad was fifty feet below us. Forty. The landing lights laid themselves across the nose of the aircraft in two clean lines.

I watched the approach markers. The instruments were all reading exactly right.

Twenty feet. The rotors changed pitch above us.

"Because if you believe it," I said, "I do."

The skids hit the pad.

The rotor noise crested — loud enough that by the time the words were out of my mouth the sound had already covered them.