He lay heavy on me, sweat cooling between our bodies, the taste of iron and sex still on my tongue. My thighs trembled; every pulse inside me echoed the shape of him, as if my body had learned a new language in one violent lesson and refused to forget a single syllable. I was ruined in the sweetest way, split open and filled with him, and still I wanted more.
I turned my face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in like oxygen after drowning. My arms slid around his back, careful over the fresh bandages, and my fingers found their way into his damp hair. The strands were coarse, military-short, but I stroked them like silk.
"Akira," I whispered, voice cracked raw, "why so sudden? Last night you could barely stand."
He lifted his head. Those storm-grey eyes were softer than I'd ever seen them, stripped of every mask he wore for the world. "I've been starving for you since the first time you looked at me without fear," he said, voice low, almost broken. "Every day I told myself to keep my distance. You deserve a man who comes home at night, not one who might come home in a box. But holding back was killing me slower than any bullet."
His thumb brushed my swollen lower lip, apology and worship in one touch.
I tangled my fingers tighter in his hair and pulled him closer until our foreheads touched. "Listen to me." My voice shook, but I didn't care. "I'm already dead without you. If you leave me behind to 'protect' me, I'll follow you anyway. I'll enlist tomorrow. I'll learn to shoot, to bleed, to stand in front of whatever comes for you. I won't let you fight alone. Never again."
For a heartbeat he was perfectly still. Then his mouth found mine—not the brutal claim from before, but something gentler, devastating in its tenderness. When he pulled back his eyes were wet, though no tear fell.
"As per order, my beautiful wife," he murmured against my lips.
Wife.
The word detonated inside my chest. Butterflies? No—there were ravens in there, black-winged and ecstatic, ripping me apart with joy. In one night he had gone from captor to savior to husband in my heart, and I would burn the world down before I let anyone take that from me.
He kissed me once more, soft and final, then rolled off the bed. The loss of his weight left me cold and aching, but I watched, greedy, as he dressed. Muscles flexed under scarred skin; dog tags settled against his chest like a claim. When he buttoned his fatigues he looked every inch the soldier again—except for the faint, possessive smile curling his mouth when he glanced back at me sprawled naked and wrecked on his sheets.
"Time to move, baby girl," he said, voice rough with lingering hunger. "Army doesn't wait for anyone. Not even for newlyweds who've just been thoroughly fucked." His grin flashed, wicked. "I gave you an energy boost. Up."
I laughed—shocked, breathless, delirious—and the sound hurt my raw throat. "Energy boost? I'm not sure my legs remember how to work."
He crossed the room in two strides, leaned down, and nipped my lower lip hard enough to make me gasp. "Then crawl if you have to. But wear the uniform. "
He straightened, all lethal elegance again. At the door he paused, hand on the knob. "Pearl's transport lands in twenty minutes. Come to the yard. She missed the attack last night—lucky kid. She'll want to meet the woman who saved her brother's life." His eyes softened a fraction. "And the woman I'm keeping forever."
Then he was gone, the door closing with a soft click that sounded like a vow.
I lay there a moment longer, feeling him leak slow and hot down my thighs, proof that this was real. My body was bruised, trembling, gloriously used—and still humming with the need for more of him.
Forever might be a lie in this war.
But I would steal every savage minute of it.
I dragged myself from the bed on shaking legs, every step reminding me exactly who I belonged to now. The uniform waited on the chair—freshly pressed.
The uniform fit like it had been waiting for me my whole life: olive drab, crisp, the name tape still reading AMANE . The fabric rasped against the bruises he'd left on my hips, my throat, the inside of my thighs. Every small hurt felt like a secret signature. I walked taller because of it.
Outside, the wind knifed across the yard. Pearl's Black Hawk had just touched down, rotors whining down to silence. She hopped out before the crew chief could help her, backpack slung over one shoulder, eyes too old for a twelve-year-old face.
Akira was already there, crouched so she could throw her arms around his neck. I hung back a few paces, suddenly unsure where I belonged in this reunion. Then Pearl's gaze snapped to me, sharp and assessing.
"You're the one who patched him," she said, not a question. She let go of her brother and marched straight over. "Thank you." Simple. Final. Then, quieter, "He looks… alive again."
Before I could answer, her expression cracked. Not tears (something colder).
"Amane-nee," she used the honorific like she'd already decided I belonged, "Japan is burning."
The words hit harder than any mortar.
Akira straightened, every muscle locking. "Explain."
Pearl's voice didn't shake, but her knuckles were white on her backpack strap. "Mainland got hit six hours ago. Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama (carrier groups in the Sea of Japan, hypersonics, cyber blackouts). The government activated Article Nine override. Total mobilization. Every base on alert. They're pulling every overseas unit home, including this one."
A ripple went through the soldiers nearby. Someone cursed in Korean. Someone else started praying.
Akira's face turned to stone. "Timeline?"
"Wheels-up in seventy-two hours. Maybe less. They want First Battalion on the first wave of transports." Pearl looked at me, then at him. "They're calling it Operation Kuroyami. Blackout. They don't expect us to come back."
Seventy-two hours.
Three days.
The world narrowed to the sound of my own pulse.
Akira didn't flinch, but I saw the fracture lines appear behind his eyes (the same ones that had looked at me an hour ago and called me wife in everything but law). Now those eyes were calculating distance, tonnage, survival rates.
He reached for Pearl, pulled her against his side like he could shield her from the future with his body. Then his gaze found mine across the frost.
I felt the question he didn't ask: Will you still follow me into this?
I answered without words. I stepped forward, close enough that Pearl was bracketed between us, and I laid my hand over Akira's heart (right over the place where his dog tags should have been). The beat under my palm was fast, furious, alive.
"I'm not staying behind," I said quietly. "If the country wants its soldiers, it gets me too."
Pearl looked up at me with something close to awe. "You'd really—"
"I already died once in that first-aid room when I thought he wouldn't wake up." My voice didn't waver. "I'm not doing it again from the sidelines."
Akira's fingers closed over mine, crushing hard enough to bruise. His jaw flexed. "You enlist today," he said, low and lethal. "Under my command. My responsibility. My—" He stopped himself before the word wife slipped out again, but it hung in the air between us anyway, heavy as incoming fire.
Pearl glanced between us, understanding more than any child should. "Gross," she muttered, but she was smiling, small and fierce. "Just don't die before I get to be flower girl."
A humourless laugh cracked out of Akira. He ruffled her hair, then looked at me (really looked) like he was memorizing the exact shade of my eyes before the world turned them to ash.
"Seventy-two hours," he repeated, softer this time, only for me. "I'm going to marry you in them. Paperwork, priest, blood oath (whatever it fucking takes). Then we go home together. Or we burn together. No third option."
I leaned in until our foreheads touched, uncaring who saw. "Clock's ticking, Captain."
Somewhere in the distance, the alert sirens began their rising wail (the sound of a nation bleeding).
I tasted iron on the wind and knew it was only the beginning.
Seventy-two hours to make him mine in every way that mattered.
Then we would march into the dark side by side.
And if death wanted one of us, it would have to take both.